Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who is on the Democratic Party ticket with Vice President Kamala Harris, was incorrect when he said he had children because of in vitro fertilization (IVF), his wife said.
Gwen Walz told news outlets in a statement that she and her husband used a different fertility procedure, intrauterine insemination, not IVF.
“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 Walz said.
The only person who knew about the procedure, which involves using a catheter to place sperm in the uterus, was the couple’s next-door neighbor, a nurse who administered the treatments to Gwen Walz, according to the Minnesota governor’s wife.
Tim Walz, the Democratic Party’s vice presidential candidate, has said regularly that he and his wife have children as a result of IVF, which features taking an egg, putting it in a laboratory dish, and fertilizing it with sperm.
“Thank God for IVF, my wife and I have two beautiful children,” Walz said during a July appearance on MSNBC.
A spokesperson for the Harris–Walz campaign defended Walz’s past statements after Gwen Walz clarified the couple did not use IVF.
“Governor Walz talks how normal people talk. He was using commonly understood shorthand for fertility treatments,” the spokesperson said.
Tim Walz and his wife have two children, Hope and Gus.
“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,” she said.
Former President Donald Trump, who is running against Harris, has said that he strongly supports the use of IVF to conceive.
