Tim Walz, the Democratic Minnesota governor vying for vice president, has become a reproductive rights champion, not only advocating against abortion bans, but he has been outspoken about the right to maintain access to fertility treatments like in vitro fertilization (IVF) and intrauterine insemination (IUI.) For Walz, as he’s discussed before, the issue is personal. In a couple of his speeches on the campaign trail, including at the Democratic National Convention, he’s talked about how he and his spouse, Gwen, struggled to conceive.

“Even if you've never experienced the hell of infertility, I guarantee you know somebody who has,” Walz said. “I remember praying each night for a call with good news, the pit in my stomach when the phone would ring, and the agony when we heard the treatments hadn't worked.”

Walz and Gwen used intrauterine insemination to conceive, which is the insemination of sperm cells directly into the uterus. In an interview with Glamour, Gwen said the family's "infertility journey was an incredibly personal and difficult experience.” For a while, the family kept it "largely” to themselves.

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It’s unusual for a man in politics to talk openly about infertility. Only recently has it become a more discussed topic, in part because it’s difficult to separate from other discussions on reproductive rights, including abortion. As the nation witnessed in February of this year, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are “extrauterine children” sending devastating ripple effects across the state halting IVF........

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