Video ads challenge Ayotte’s IVF and reproductive rights record as TV interview prompts fact checks

Leading Republican candidate for New Hampshire governor Kelly Ayotte has been on the receiving end of multiple fact checks over her legislative record on IVF treatments since an appearance on WMUR’s CloseUp where she pushed back on an accurate retelling of her record.

At issue is her support at the time of a Republican amendment to the Affordable Care Act that would have allowed employers to deny health care services over religious or other reasons, which could include birth control and IVF.

WMUR Political Director Adam Sexton presented the facts to Ayotte, saying, “In the Senate you were out front on the issue of in vitro fertilization with rights of conscience. You were urging that insurers be able to deny that coverage if that was against their belief or employers.”

Ayotte responded, saying the accurate retelling of her record was “the biggest whopper told in this race.”

“So you never did oppose the idea that IVF could be restricted by employers under rights of conscience?” Sexton questioned.

“No, there was absolutely no vote on that,” Ayotte said of the amendment she cosponsored.

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Pushback has since been swift, with multiple organizations seizing on the opportunity to highlight Ayotte’s record in the Senate as a co-sponsor of the Blunt Amendment to the Affordable Care Act, as has been reported in the Union Leader, which wrote Ayotte “consistently opposed universal access to IVF” in the Senate

New Hampshire political advocacy organization AmplifyNH has launched a 30-second digital ad on TV, social media, and New Hampshire news websites aimed at highlighting Ayotte’s decades of opposition to abortion rights and attempts to limit IVF access in the Senate.

“For decades, Kelly Ayotte’s political career revolved around banning abortion and limiting IVF access. Our ads will remind Granite Staters that contrary to her recent attempts to re-write the record, this is who Ayotte is,” said Amplify NH Executive Director Ryan Mahoney. “Time and time again, Kelly Ayotte’s words and actions don’t match up, proving she can’t be trusted to defend reproductive rights or to stand up to extremists in her party.”

The chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party issued a statement highlighting Ayotte’s attempts to whitewash her record.

“Kelly Ayotte is in for a rude awakening if she thinks her extreme, anti-choice record will simply disappear because she went on an eight-year hiatus pandering to corporate special interests,” said NHDP Chair Ray Buckley. “Granite Staters remember that Ayotte has spent her career trying to ban abortion and IVF, defund Planned Parenthood, and roll back reproductive freedom — and we know that’s exactly what she would do as governor.”

Earlier this month Kayla Montgomery, Vice President of Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood New Hampshire Action Fund Ayotte “published an op-ed in the Union Leader taking Ayotte to task for previous attempts to whitewash her record on IVF and abortion legislation. In the piece, she said Ayotte had a “long and well-documented record of working to dismantle Granite Staters’ reproductive rights — including attacking IVF — throughout her time in the United States Senate” and worked on behalf of national conservative groups to achieve those ends.

“The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), an anti-abortion extremist organization, urged the Senate to adopt the Blunt Amendment to ‘protect conscience rights.’ The group has advocated for so-called ‘fetal personhood rights,’ which directly threatens access to IVF. Kelly Ayotte sought and earned this group’s endorsement during her failed reelection campaign in 2016. It makes sense considering Ayotte spent her six years in the U.S. Senate greenlighting NRLC’s agenda by pushing for a national abortion ban, attacking protections for contraception coverage, voting to defund Planned Parenthood, and calling for the end of Roe v. Wade.”