The wife of US vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has clarified that she and her husband did not undergo in vitro fertilization (IVF) after he repeatedly alluded to infertility treatments on the campaign trail.
In an interview with Glamour, Gwen Walz said they underwent intrauterine insemination (IUI) to conceive their daughter, Hope.
Walz has repeatedly mentioned the couple’s personal story of fertility issues on the campaign trail, warning that Republicans want to restrict women’s access to IVF and other reproductive rights.
During his first campaign stop with presidential candidate Kamala Harris — which served as his introduction to many voters across the country — he talked about health care and the choice he believes everyone should have. “That includes IVF,” he said, “and that’s personal to me and my family.”
Ms Walz shared more about their journey to parenthood with Glamour, saying a neighbour, who is a nurse, helped give her “the shots I needed during the IUI process”.
“Our fertility journey was an incredibly private and difficult experience,” she said. “Like many others who have gone through these challenges, we kept it largely a secret at the time.”
She noted that their family decided to share their experience after witnessing attacks on fertility and reproductive rights, particularly in Alabama — where State Supreme Court Rules Frozen Embryos Are Legally Considered Children and led to the closure of fertility clinics across the state.
In turn, The state legislature passed a measure protect physicians from the legal consequences of destroying unused embryos.
The issue has become a point of contention as Republicans now accuse Mr Walz of lying.
Conservatives have also attacked Mr. Walz over his military record, alleging that he exaggerated his time in the military and retired before his unit was deployed overseas.
“Today it was discovered that Tim Walz lied about having a family through IVF,” Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Who lies about something like that?”
Mr. Walz has turned his personal story into a signature in Democratic presidential campaigns, sharing the years he and his wife spent undergoing fertility treatments, waiting for good news from doctors and finally naming their daughter Hope.
At a recent rally, the crowd began chanting his daughter’s name, causing the Minnesota governor to become emotional.
Mia Ehrenberg, a campaign spokeswoman, denied that Mr. Walz was misleading.
“Governor Walz spoke the way people speak,” she said. “He used common abbreviations to refer to infertility treatments.”
IUI is a method of placing sperm directly into a woman’s uterus and is commonly known as artificial insemination.
It is sometimes tried as an alternative before IVF because it is less expensive, more invasive, and controversial
IVF involves additional steps and involves injecting hormones to stimulate the production of more eggs, then retrieving the eggs and combining them with sperm to form embryos.
IVF has faced political scrutiny over questions about unused embryos and their destruction, which some conservatives say is tantamount to killing an unborn child.
