Senate is voting on IVF bill that has become a presidential campaign flashpoint

Senate Democrats are once again attempting to advance legislation aimed at protecting access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) on Tuesday, but the bill will almost certainly fall short of the votes it needs to advance at the hands of Republicans.

Illinois Democrat Tammy Duckworth's Right to IVF Act failed to get the 60 votes it needed to advance during a vote in June. But as reproductive rights continue to be a flashpoint in the upcoming election, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is daring Republicans to again block the bill.

"If the Senate votes no today and strikes IVF protections down yet again, it will be further proof that Project 2025 is alive and well," Schumer said on the Senate floor on Tuesday. "Remember Donald Trump's Project 2025 is tied to the Heritage Foundation, one of the most important and extreme conservative think tanks in the country, and earlier this year, they came out fiercely against today's bill protecting IVF."

The vote comes after Trump on the campaign trail has reaffirmed his support for IVF.

During a town hall in August, Trump said he and his team had been exploring ways to help those wanting in vitro fertilization.

"I've been looking at it, and what we're going to do is for people that are using IVF, which is fertilization … the government is going to pay for it, or we're going to get -- we'll mandate your insurance company to pay for it, which is going to be great. We’re going to do that," Trump said then.

Then, during his Sept. 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump said he has "been a leader on IVF."

In response, Schumer said he'd again bring the bill to the floor for a vote to give Republicans another chance to support it. It would need 60 votes to advance.

"We have seen the Republican Party’s nominee for president claim to be “a leader in fertilization” and come out in support of expanding access to IVF by requiring insurance companies to cover IVF treatment -- a key provision included in the Right to IVF Act," Schumer wrote in a letter to his colleagues on Sunday. "So, we are going to give our Republican colleagues another chance to show the American people where they stand."

"So to my Republican colleagues today, you get a second chance to either stand with families struggling with infertility or stand with Project 2025, which aims to make reproductive freedoms extinct," Schumer said.

The Right to IVF Act combines several Democratic bills. It establishes a nationwide right for access to IVF, expands fertility treatments for veterans, and seeks to increase affordability for fertility care.

Efforts to advance this bill accelerated over the summer after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that embryos are children, which temporarily upended IVF access in the state.

But Republicans, who say they support IVF and note it is not currently illegal to access it in any state, blocked the bill in June, criticizing the vote as a political stunt and opposing the legislation as being an overreach.

They're expected to do the same during Tuesday's procedural vote.

Republicans on Monday attempted to flip the script by trying to pass pro-IVF legislation of their own and forcing Democrats to block it.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., asked the Senate to unanimously pass his bill which aims to make IVF more affordable by decoupling Health Savings Accounts (HSA) from high-deductible health plans, and doubling the contribution limits on HSAs to allow families to save for things like IVF.

That bill was blocked by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who opposed it on the grounds that families struggling to pay for IVF would not benefit from the legislation.

There are other Republican-led IVF bills that have also been introduced in the Senate. Republicans could effort passage of those by unanimous agreement before the end of the week as well.

One such bill, led by Sens. Katie Britt and Ted Cruz, would make states ineligible to receive Medicaid funding if they banned access to IVF. Democrats blocked its passage in May, arguing it leaves too many loopholes.