Tim Walz’s wife has walked back a claim that the couple conceived their children through in vitro fertilization (IVF), saying it was a different fertility treatment that made them parents.
Gwen Walz’s husband had repeatedly said that their daughter, Hope, and son, Gus, were born after “IVF.”
IVF specifically means the fertilization of an egg outside the womb.
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But on Tuesday, Gwen Walz told CNN that their daughter Hope was conceived using intrauterine insemination, known as IUI, a procedure typically used before IVF. In IUI sperm is injected directly into the uterus.
The concession was pounced on by Republicans as more evidence of their case that Walz has not spoken truthfully about his past, including his military service and a 1995 DUI. It will also blunt what had been regarded by Democrats as a highly effective attack on Republican abortion policy.
“Like so many who have experienced these challenges, we kept it largely to ourselves at the time—not even sharing the details with our wonderful and close family,” Gwen said. “The only person who knew in detail what we were going through was our next-door neighbor.”
Gwen described the process as “an incredibly personal and difficult experience,” which relied on the help of a next-door neighbor.
“She was a nurse and helped me with the shots I needed as part of the IUI process,” said Gwen. “I’d rush home from school, and she would give me the shots to ensure we stayed on track.”
Walz and his wife Gwen (front, right) had claimed their children Hope (back, center) and Gus (back, right) were conceived by IVF but now say it was a different procedure.
Mike Segar/ReutersGwen’s husband Tim previously claimed, “Thank God for IVF, my wife and I have two beautiful children.”
At his first joint rally with Kamala Harris in Philadelphia earlier this month, he said, “Even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves, there’s a golden rule: Mind your own damn business. Look, that includes IVF. And this gets personal for me and my family.”
He had also suggested that his daughter was called Hope in celebration of IVF.
Walz had made the claim both before and after Harris selected him as her running mate for the Democratic ticket. He had said he was speaking out about the couple’s infertility because of concern that Republican-backed abortion bans would also effectively criminalize IVF treatments.
In February, a slate of Republican-appointed judges in Alabama ruled that embryos created in IVF were considered children, effectively ending the procedure in the state by increasing the risk that clinics may accidentally commit murder under Alabama’s abortion law if they were to mishandle frozen embryos. The preservation of frozen embryos does not happen with IUI, meaning Republican abortion laws would not affect people using the same procedures as the Walz family to conceive.
“After seeing the extreme attacks on reproductive health care across the country—particularly, the efforts in Alabama that jeopardized access to fertility treatments—Tim and I agreed that it was time to formally speak out about our experience,” Gwen added.
Harris campaign spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg told CNN: “Governor Walz talks how normal people talk. He was using commonly understood shorthand for fertility treatments.”
The concession by the Walzes drew an immediate response from his Republican rival, JD Vance, who posted a video on X of Walz making the claim that “my children were born that way,” and wrote, “Today it came out that Tim Walz had lied about having a family via IVF. Who lies about something like that?”
Walz has previously found himself in hot water for talking about “weapons of war,” that he “carried in war,” though he was never deployed to an active combat zone. The Harris campaign also had to update his online biography to make clear that while he served as a National Guard command sergeant major, he did not retire with the rank.
Walz also claimed he “served overseas with his battalion in support of Operation Enduring Freedom,” in a 2006 bio, not mentioning that he was deployed to Italy, not Afghanistan, while his 2006 Congressional campaign falsely claimed that he had not been drunk when he was arrested for a DUI.
