LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Advocates for reproductive rights have a new champion. It's the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
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TIM WALZ: We've got a golden rule - mind your own damn business.
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FADEL: Tim Walz is leading the charge for reproductive care on a personal level, as NPR's Jeongyoon Han reports.
JEONGYOON HAN, BYLINE: On night three of the DNC, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz told the story again about how he and his wife, Gwen, struggled to conceive.
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WALZ: The pit in your stomach when the phone'd ring and the absolute agony when we heard the treatments hadn't worked.
HAN: People in politics on both sides of the aisle have shared their experiences with infertility, like Michelle Obama and Mike Pence, but male politicians have not been as open about the subject on the campaign trail in the way Walz has.
SEAN TIPTON: For a long time, there's been a stigma around having fertility issues.
HAN: That's Sean Tipton, chief advocacy and policy officer for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
TIPTON: So nobody wanted much to talk about it, let alone men, and let alone men in the public eye, or men who are expected to meet some certain model of what it meant to be a man.
HAN: Democrats have made reproductive rights, particularly abortion access, a major part of their campaign. Now, the second slot on the ticket is Walz, who is openly talking about this other part of reproductive care. Mini Tammaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom For All, says that's a big deal.
MINI TAMMARAJU: I'm just thrilled to have him and Gwen out there talking about this, connecting the dots and really giving permission, in some way, to other men to say, this is you. This is - you're part of the story, too.
HAN: After the Alabama Supreme Court made a ruling in February that raised questions about access to IVF, Republicans have had to answer how they draw the line between abortion rights, which they largely oppose, and access to reproductive care more broadly, like infertility treatments. Sean Tipton says former President Donald Trump is navigating just that. Trump said on Truth Social last week that he supports reproductive rights.
TIPTON: They don't want to be on the wrong side of that issue, but they have to show that support in ways that isn't going to alienate some of their anti-choice constituency, who seem to want to see this issue as something that they should be against.
HAN: Harris and Walz head to Georgia this week. There, Walz will likely, once again, talk about his emotional struggles with infertility, which Tipton says is creating a new mold of male leadership.
Jeongyoon Han, NPR News, Chicago.
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