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What are the differences between IVF and IUI, the fertility treatment used by Tim Walz’s family?
Around 1.7% of women ages 15 to 49 years old have tried a procedure called artificial or intrauterine insemination to start a family, the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests.
Among them was the wife of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the running mate of Vice President Kamala Harris, as part of what she describes as an “incredibly personal and difficult experience.”
“The only person who knew in detail what we were going through was our next door neighbor. She was a nurse and helped me with the shots I needed as part of the IUI process,” said Gwen Walz in a statement shared by a campaign spokesperson.
The Walzes have two children, Hope, 23, and Gus, 17.
The Trump campaign has accused Walz of lying about starting a family with another type of fertility treatment called in vitro fertilization, or IVF.
IVF has become a key campaign issue amid calls from groups like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America for Republican-led legislatures to tighten restrictions and state laws that threatened to curb access to this fertility treatment.
Congressional Democrats have also petitioned to force a bill prohibiting limits on IVF nationwide out of a House committee, in hopes of bringing it to a vote.
What has Tim Walz said about his family and IVF?
Before this week, Walz has discussed the infertility treatments undergone by his wife as being “like IVF.”
“Gwen and I have two beautiful children because of reproductive health care like IVF,” Walz wrote on Facebook after a ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court determined that embryos created through IVF should be considered children, which potentially subjects them to laws governing the wrongful death of a minor. “This issue is deeply personal to our family and so many others. Don’t let these guys get away with this by telling you they support IVF when their handpicked judges oppose it.”
The Harris campaign defended the times Walz suggested their family had used IVF, saying he “was using commonly understood shorthand for fertility treatments” and that “attacks on reproductive rights are putting all fertility treatments at risk.”
“The Trump campaign’s attacks on Mrs. Walz are just another example of how cruel and out of touch Donald Trump and JD Vance are when it comes to women’s healthcare,” said Mia Ehrenberg, a spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign.
Why are there objections to IVF but not IUI?
IUI works by collecting semen from the male partner, which is then cleaned and concentrated. Then when the female partner is ovulating, the provider can insert the semen into the uterus using a catheter, improving the chances that sperm can reach the egg.
By contrast, IVF involves a number of steps to take eggs out of a woman and fertilize them in the laboratory with sperm from a man.
The Southern Baptist Convention voted earlier this year to condemn “the way IVF is routinely conducted now,” echoing calls from other groups for bans on “practices which encourage couples to harvest and fertilize more eggs” than they plan to use.
“Though it does not necessarily occur in the womb, the willful destruction of fertilized embryos conducted in the typical practice of IVF is not theologically different from abortion,” the church’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission wrote.
Meanwhile, IUI has not drawn the same outcry from some abortion rights opponents. While fertility treatments used in IUI yield more eggs, that results in a higher chance of multiple pregnancies — for twins or more.
Denominations like the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod that have rejected other approaches like surrogacy have not objected to IUI.
“Artificial insemination is implicitly accepted, given that the sperm and egg belong to the married man and woman, but it is viewed with some skepticism as adults may be tempted to use this method in lieu of addressing other underlying issues,” Emma Waters of the Heritage Foundation wrote earlier this year.
How are fertility medications used in IUI?
Fertility medications like the ones Gwen Walz mentioned in her statement are also commonly given in hopes of improving the chances of success with IUI, either as oral medications or injections.
Common options to produce this “ovarian stimulation” are either tablets of clomiphene citrate or treatment using shots of hormones called gonadotropins to make more eggs.
These shots generally work over a few days to stimulate the growth of eggs, followed by a shot of another kind of hormone to “trigger” ovulation to begin.
Patients can prepare and inject shots themselves at home, though the Food and Drug Administration approved the first premixed injection pens in 2004 as an alternative.
Why do some choose IUI over IVF?
IUI is often a “first-line treatment option” offered by providers for couples struggling to have a child around the world, though success rates are lower than with IVF. The procedure is less invasive or costly than IVF and usually painless.
Average costs of IUI can be up to $2,000 per cycle, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology says, lower than the around $11,000 or $12,000 that IVF can cost. Not all states require coverage of fertility services like IUI or IVF, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
During each cycle, IUI can be successful as much as 20% of the time if the procedure is done monthly, the National Institutes of Health says.
For most couples who fail to conceive after three or four cycles of IUI, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine recommends trying IVF – though experts have suggested that IVF could be a first-line treatment for some patients.
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After Tyre Nichols’ fatal beating, Memphis officer texted photo of bloodied man to ex-girlfriend, she testifies
A former Memphis police officer charged in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols sent his ex-girlfriend a photo of the badly injured man on the night he was punched, kicked and hit with a police baton following a traffic stop, according to trial testimony Wednesday.
Brittany Leake, a Memphis officer and Demetrius Haley’s former girlfriend, testified during the criminal trial that she was on the phone with Haley when officers pulled Nichols over for a traffic stop. She said she heard a “commotion,” including verbal orders for someone to give officers his hands.
The call ended, but Haley later texted the photo in a group chat comprising Haley, Leake and her godsister, she testified. Prosecutors displayed the photo for the jury. It showed Nichols with his eyes closed, on the ground with what appeared to be blood near his mouth and his hands behind his back.
Leake said that when she saw the photo, her reaction was: “Oh my God, he definitely needs to go to the Med.”
The Med is shorthand for Memphis’ trauma hospital.
The fatal beating, caught on police bodycams and street surveillance cameras, has sparked protests and calls for police reform. Officers said they pulled over Nichols for reckless driving, but Memphis’ police chief said there was no evidence to substantiate that claim.
Haley, Tadarrius Bean and Justin Smith are on trial after pleading not guilty to charges that they deprived Nichols of his civil rights through excessive force and failure to intervene, and obstructed justice through witness tampering. Their trial began Sept. 9 and is expected to run three to four weeks.
George Walker IV / AP
The Memphis Police Department fired the three men, along with Emmitt Martin III and Desmond Mills Jr., after Nichols’ death. The beating was caught on police video, which was released publicly. The officers were later indicted on the federal charges. Martin and Mills have taken plea deals.
During her testimony Wednesday, Leake said she deleted the photo after she saw it and that sending such a photo is against police policy.
“I wasn’t offended, but it was difficult to look at,” she said.
Leake said Haley had sent her photos before of drugs, and of a person who had been injured in a car accident.
Earlier Wednesday, Martin was on the witness stand for a third day. Defense attorneys tried to show inconsistencies between Martin’s statements to investigators and his court testimony. Martin acknowledged lying about what happened to Memphis Police Department internal investigators, to try to cover up and “justify what I did.”
But Martin said he told the truth to FBI investigators after he pleaded guilty in August, including statements about feeling pressure on his duty belt where his gun was located during the traffic stop, but not being able to see if Nichols was trying to get his gun. Martin has testified that he said “let go of my gun” during the traffic stop.
Martin Zummach, the attorney for Justin Smith, asked Martin if he knew of any reasons why Nichols did not simply say, “I give up.”
“He’s out of it,” Martin said. “Disoriented.”
Martin testified that the situation escalated quickly when Haley pulled his gun and violently yanked Nichols from his car, using expletives and failing to tell Nichols why he had been pulled over and removed from the vehicle.
“He never got a chance to comply,” Martin said.
Nichols, who was Black, was pepper sprayed and hit with a stun gun during the traffic stop, but ran away, police video shows. The five officers, who also are Black, then beat him about a block from his home, as he called out for his mother.
Video shows the officers milling about and talking as Nichols struggled with his injuries. Nichols died Jan. 10, 2023, three days after the beating.
An autopsy report shows Nichols – the father of a boy who is now 7 – died from blows to the head. The report describes brain injuries, and cuts and bruises on his head and elsewhere on his body.
Jesse Guy testified that he was working as a paramedic for the Memphis Fire Department the night of the beating. He arrived at the location after two emergency medical technicians, Robert Long and JaMichael Sandridge.
Guy said he was not told about the medical problems Nichols had experienced before he arrived, and that Nichols was injured, seated on the ground and unresponsive.
Nichols had no pulse and was not breathing, and it “felt like he was lifeless,” Guy said.
In the ambulance, Guy performed CPR and provided mechanical ventilation, and Nichols had a pulse by the time he arrived at the hospital, the paramedic said.
Guy said Long and Sandridge did not say if they had checked Nichols’ pulse and heart rate, and they did not report if they had given him oxygen. When asked by one of Bean’s lawyers whether that information would have been helpful in treating Nichols, Guy said yes.
Long and Sandridge were fired for violating fire department policies after Nichols died. They have not been criminally charged.
The five officers also have been charged with second-degree murder in state court, where they pleaded not guilty. Mills and Martin are expected to change their pleas.
Federal prosecutors have previously recommended a 40-year sentence for Martin. A date has not been set in state court yet.
Nichols worked for FedEx, and he enjoyed skateboarding and photography. The city of Sacramento, where Nichols grew up, named a skatepark in his honor. “Tyre fell in love with skateboarding at a young age and it wasn’t long before it became a part of his lifestyle,” states the resolution approved by the city council. He had a tattoo of his mother’s name.
“Tyre Nichols’ family have been praying for justice and accountability from the very beginning of this tragedy,” Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, the civil rights attorneys representing Nichols’ family, said in a statement when the trial began.
Boeing’s CEO said Wednesday that the company will begin furloughing “a large number” of employees to conserve cash during the strike by union machinists that began last week.
Chief Executive Kelly Ortberg said the people who would be required to take time off without pay starting in coming days include executives, managers and other employees based in the U.S.
“While this is a tough decision that impacts everybody, it is in an effort to preserve our long-term future and help us navigate through this very difficult time,” Ortberg said in a company-wide message to staff.
Boeing didn’t say how many people will face rolling furloughs, but the number is expected to run into the tens of thousands. The aerospace giant had 171,000 employees at the start of the year.
About 33,000 Boeing factory workers in the Pacific Northwest began a strike Friday after rejecting a proposal to raise pay by 25% over four years. They want raises of at least 40%, the return of a traditional pension plan and other improvements in the contract offer they voted down.
Scott Brauer / Bloomberg via Getty Images
The strike is halting production of several airplane models including Boeing’s best-selling plane, the 737 Max. The company gets more than half of the purchase price when new planes are delivered to buyers, so the strike will quickly hurt Boeing’s cash flow.
Ortberg said selected employees will be furloughed for one week every four weeks while retaining their benefits. The CEO and other senior executives will take pay cuts during the duration of the strike, he said, without stating how deep the cuts will be.
All work related to safety, quality, customer support and certification of new planes will continue during the furloughs, he said, including production of 787 Dreamliner jets, which are built by nonunion workers in South Carolina.
Ortberg said in a memo to employees that the company is talking to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers about a new contract agreement that could be ratified.
“However, with production paused across many key programs in the Pacific Northwest, our business faces substantial challenges and it is important that we take difficult steps to preserve cash and ensure that Boeing is able to successfully recover,” he said.
Boeing’s chief financial officer warned employees earlier this week that temporary layoffs were possible.
The company, which is based in Arlington, Virginia, but has most of its commercial-airplanes business located in the Pacific Northwest, is also cutting spending on suppliers, freezing hiring and eliminating most travel.
Despite two full days of talks assisted by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the union said Wednesday that no resolution had been reached and no additional negotiations were scheduled, according to CBS Seattle affiliate KIRO-TV.
Striking workers are picketing at several locations in the Seattle area, Oregon and California. The union, which recommended the offer that members later rejected by a 96% vote, is surveying the workers to learn what they want in a new contract. The union’s last strike at Boeing, in 2008, lasted about two months.
If the walkout doesn’t end soon, Boeing’s credit rating could be downgraded to non-investment or junk status, which would make borrowing more expensive. Shortly after the walkout began Friday, Moody’s put Boeing on review for a possible downgrade, and Fitch said a strike longer than two weeks would make a downgrade more likely.
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