CHICAGO — Vice presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s big moment Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention was marred by party officials having to defend his inaccurate claim that he and his wife relied on in vitro fertilization to have children. Mr.
Walz, 60, said he and his wife, Gwen Walz, used IVF to conceive their two kids and publicized his experience to attack Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance on abortion and reproductive care issues.
But Mrs. Walz revealed this week the couple did not use IVF and instead relied on a different procedure, intrauterine insemination, or IUI, that does not create an embryo outside the body and is not part of the abortion debate. Republicans are calling Mr.
Walz, who was accepting the nomination Wednesday at the DNC, a liar. “Today it came out that Tim Walz had lied about having a family via IVF,” Mr. Vance posted on X.
“Who lies about something like that?” Democratic officials chalked it up to nothing more than mixing up three letters. “It’s a little bizarre that J.D.
Vance and Donald Trump want to attack the governor for experiencing something that, again, millions of Americans go through themselves,” said campaign spokesman Michael Taylor. “I think it’s a little bizarre that those attacks are not simply limited to the way that they’re trying to characterize his experience with infertility treatments. They continue to attack reproductive rights writ large.
” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshe.