Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois requested to pass the bill by unanimous consent, meaning any one senator could block it from advancing.
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Several Republican senators had warned in the past week that they believed legislation on IVF should be left at the state level, not the federal level, as they defended their support for the procedure after the Alabama Supreme Court warned that disposing of unused embryos could be categorized as "wrongful death."
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Duckworth spoke about her own experience with IVF, which she used to conceive both of her children.
"After decades of struggling with infertility after my service in Iraq, I was only able to get pregnant through the miracle of IVF. IVF is the reason I get to experience the chaos and the beauty, the stress and the joy that is motherhood," she said. "IVF made our family. It made my heart whole, it made my life full."
She noted that three of her five embryos were deemed nonviable, and that under the Alabama court's interpretation, she would have had to either implant them and endure miscarriages, or discard them and face possible criminal charges.
"That's the level of cruelty that we're facing," Duckworth said. "That's the kind of future that we're fighting to prevent - where frozen embryos have more rights than the women who would carry them."
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Though she argued that she supports "the ability for mothers and fathers to have total access for IVF," Hyde-Smith said she would not support Duckworth's legislation.
"The bill before us today is a vast overreach that is full of poison pills that go way to far, far beyond ensuring legal access to IVF," she argued.
The Mississippi Republican said that the bill did not include limits on genetic engineering, surrogacy, or even cloning.
Duckworth disagreed.
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"This bill does three things and three things only," said Duckworth. "It protects the right of individuals to seek assisted reproductive technology without fear of being prosecuted for seeking that technology. It preserves the right of physicians to provide that assisted reproductive technology without fear of being prosecuted. And it also allows insurance companies to cover assisted reproductive technology."
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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