[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand joins us now as she does once a month. The biggest news from her office right now is that Senator Gillibrand has just introduced a bill responding to the Alabama Supreme Court decision declaring a frozen embryo to be a child under the law. One result of the ruling already in Alabama is that in vitro fertilization clinics in that state, as you've no doubt heard, have stopped serving patients trying to get pregnant.

That could happen nationwide depending on how this goes. Senator Gillibrand's bill would establish a woman's right under federal law to access IVF and other assisted reproductive technology. Let's find out more. Senator, always good of you to come on and answer questions every month. Welcome back to WNYC.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Thanks, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Tell us about your bill.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: As you said, it would create a federal law preempting state and local laws that are intentionally restricting access to assisted reproductive technology. That includes IVF, it includes other reproductive care, and it establishes an individual right to access this kind of care, and protects a medical provider to be able to provide it, and safeguards an insurance carrier's right to cover it. It's pretty much a protection so that if families want to access IVF and other types of technology that helps and assists with reproduction, that they have access to it. It's a widely supported bill, dozens of co-sponsors, including a Republican in the House.

Brian Lehrer: Can you do a little IVF 101 and explain why if the point of IVF, in vitro fertilization, is to implant an embryo for a pregnancy, that some embryos also get destroyed in the process?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: The way doctors like to do IVF is they typically like to have several embryos fertilized because when you have your fertilized embryos frozen, some of them die in that process. They want to be able to implant several embryos in the hopes that one matures into an infant. For a lot of families that have done IVF, they still have embryos being stored. Under this law in Alabama, it declares all of those embryos as children and that if you destroyed the embryo, that you'd be committing murder.

It's a very harsh ruling that makes it very hard for families who have used IVF to have the blessing of families, and it's a terrible extension of what Dobbs intended to do. When you take away a woman's right to privacy and take away her decision-making for her reproductive care, you are taking away her ability to make these decisions and to even access basic modern medical treatments. It's an absurdity and it shows how overreaching these Dobbs decision actually was.

Brian Lehrer: Do you find it an irony that it was the anti-abortion rights movement that was behind the frozen embryo case in Alabama and the effect of the ruling is to make it harder for women who want to have children to do so?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: It just goes to their view that they don't value women, and they don't trust women, and they just want women not to make any decisions. It's really so backwards and going back to an era where women didn't have equality on any level. I just don't think that's who we are as Americans. I don't think average Americans want women to be second-class citizens.

Brian Lehrer: This seems to be a political problem for Republicans because many take the position that life begins at conception, but they also support IVF and they know that abolishing IVF would be so unpopular. Given that, you mentioned that you had one co-sponsor in the House who's Republican. Do you have none in the Senate or is your bill getting early Republican supporters in the Senate who you can count?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: In the Senate, we only have two pro-choice Republicans, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. Those would be the only two, arguably, that we might be able to get as co-sponsors. Interestingly, Mitt Romney just said that without IVF, he would not have several of his grandchildren. That leads me to believe that maybe there is more support than what we have so far because the lived experience of Republican senators is that IVF can be life-changing for their loved ones to be able to have children. That's very much part of human rights to be able to have children in the way you want to have them.

Brian Lehrer: Who's that Republican partner in the House?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Her name is Anna Paulina Luna.

Brian Lehrer: That's a name that I have not seen yet in the other coverage of this that I've read. I did see on Politico this morning that in the House, Republican from South Carolina, Nancy Mace, drafted a non-binding legislative proposal expressing support for continued access to fertility care and assisted reproductive technology. She said she wants Republicans to be vocal about protecting infertility treatments.

Sounds like they are not in any number being vocal about that at all, they feel politically caught. Do you see something like Representative Mace's resolution as the basis of eventual bipartisan support for a bill like yours? Because a resolution is not a bill, it doesn't protect anything, it just states the opinion of people. Is that a step?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Maybe it could be a step to create a bigger conversation within the Republican Party. This one, a House member, Congresswoman Luna, she had IVF, so she's speaking from lived experience. Maybe Congresswoman Mace's idea of at least trying to see if there is support for IVF in general, not actually passing a law guaranteeing it, maybe that starts the conversation. I think anything that creates momentum towards having conversations about why this is so vital for families is beneficial.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, listeners, for those of you who don't know, Anna Paulina Luna's name, that Republican partner in the House for this protecting Reproductive Choice Act or protecting IVF Act from Senator Gillibrand, Anna Paulina Luna is a Republican from the Clearwater area of southwest Florida. At the other end of life, Senator Gillibrand, I see that you and Senator Bob Casey from Pennsylvania just introduced a bill called the Strategic Plan for Aging Act. Tell us about that bill.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Many states have strategic plans for aging in place. For example, New York, we have one, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, on and on, many, many states. Those master plans and these strategic plans are designed to look at different things that make the lives of our older Americans better. I've written a strategic plan for aging that is a unique piece of legislation.

That includes right to affordable healthy meals to make sure we have access to food security, guaranteeing affordable healthcare and prescription drugs, protecting Social Security and financial security, safeguarding the ability to age in place through all sorts of measures, and then making sure we have age-friendly spaces and employment. I have different pieces of legislation under each of those ideas, but the Strategic Plan for Aging Act is to fund that, to basically give grants to states to say, "If you've come up with a strategic plan, we will give you the money to implement that."

For example, age-friendly spaces and employment, making sure we have sidewalks that are well lit, making sure when you cross a street, there's enough time. These are the kinds of things that allow a senior to stay in their community and age in place. You would be creating grant money for those kinds of changes, for example. Money for congregate meals for the not-for-profits that deliver healthy hot meals, or offer a community kitchen for seniors to get hot meals at, those are the kinds of things that could be funded through this Strategic Plan for Aging Act.

Brian Lehrer: You represent New York, of course, and we happen to have a story on the station this morning by our reporter, Karen Yi, about a new City program to expand food delivery for seniors because of the growing challenges to retired older adults in New York financially. One in four live in poverty in the City is a stat in that story, largely because the cost of housing is becoming so prohibitive. Would your Strategic Plan for Aging Act or anything else you can suggest help to address that?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: In my plan, housing is one of the components of it, getting more resources for affordable housing so that more seniors can age in place. We have a lot of challenges with housing in New York right now. I have several pieces of legislation that's not just for older people, but for everybody to make housing more affordable, to incentivize developers to develop more affordable housing, and to create better transparency for NYCHA and other public housing that's available that unfortunately continues to be plagued by fraud, corruption, and poor services.

Really ill-equipped housing that is either problematic because of lead paint, or because of vermin, or because of lack of heat, or hot water. We have chronic problems in our public housing. I have legislation to address all that directly and specifically. Feeding seniors is going to be a piece of the Farm Bill that I'm negotiating right now, and increasing the programs that we invest in that are available to seniors. I also want to create more ability for those feeding programs to be medically tailored meals. A lot of our older Americans who have diabetes or other healthcare conditions, if we could have medically tailored meals, it could help them live longer and have healthier lives.

We're trying to refine a lot of the food security programs. We'd also love it to be possible for a senior who has the SNAP benefit to be able to use their EBT card for food delivery, for actually these Meals on Wheels, and other types of not-for-profits. If they could be given the resources that the seniors could spend on groceries in exchange for just delivering hot nutritious meals, that would make a big difference for a lot of seniors who are finding it harder and harder to cook themselves.

Brian Lehrer: Let me touch two other things going on in Congress right now briefly before we run out of time. One is the House has now impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and the way impeachment works, as you know, it now goes to the Senate. Our listeners certainly remember the two trials of Donald Trump in the Senate after the House impeached him. I see Long Island Republican Congressman Andrew Garbarino is a leader on this, a so-called House impeachment manager. Obviously, you're a Democrat from New York. Do you expect to be a juror in a trial of Secretary Mayorkas with prosecutor Garbarino?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: What I think we're going to do in the Senate is review it very quickly. I think we're probably going to support a dismissal of the impeachment articles that come over from the House. I don't think we will be having a trial at all because most senators think this is a complete sham. We think this is a political stunt, and especially for Congressman Garbarino and other New York Republicans who refuse to even take up the bipartisan immigration bill that was thoughtfully put together by a bipartisan working group in the Senate just shows that they're unwilling to fix immigration.

They want chaos, and having this impeachment hearing is a perfect example of chaos. They have no intention of fixing the laws that are required, even though they're in charge. President Trump has said he wants it as an election issue. I don't think New Yorkers or the American people are very happy about that because they expect Congress to do its job and they expect the House to actually come up with common-sense bipartisan solutions to fix our immigration challenges.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing, also in the House, they may or may not cause a partial government shutdown by the end of this week if they can't agree on another temporary budget resolution. Speaking of housing, as we were, The Washington Post reports this morning that some of the roughly 5 million families who receive rental assistance from the US government could see sharp cuts to their benefits and even the threat of eviction unless lawmakers fully fund key housing programs.

From what I can tell in news coverage, Speaker Mike Johnson does not want his most radical right-wing members to rule the day on this, and he does want a continuing budget resolution. You're there, I'm not. How does it look to you?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Cautiously optimistic that at least we can create a little more time so that he could actually maybe work with his caucus to pass a funding bill. Right now the proposal is to shift the deadlines from March 1 to March 8, March 8 to March 22. He's only willing to do that if he has an agreement with Democrats on the four bills that are due to expire on March 1, which is the Agriculture, Energy and Water, MilCon-VA, and Transportation-HUD bills, plus two other measures, the Interior and Financial Services and General Government funding bills.

Those six bills would be negotiated now to be ready by March 8th. The Senate has bipartisan support for our funding bills. If we needed to get this done on our side by March 8th, I'm optimistic we could do it because we've done the work. It's already gotten through the appropriations committees and they're bipartisan. I'm optimistic we can get our work done. I just don't know if this new speaker can get any work done.

Brian Lehrer: Senator Gillibrand, thanks as always for coming on with us. We really appreciate it.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Thanks, Brian. Take care.

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.