Questions arise over Trump administration’s plans for IVF

Months after President Trump issued an executive order (EO) stating that the administration’s policy was “to… eas[e] unnecessary statutory or regulatory burdens to make IVF treatment drastically more affordable,” some are asking why no further apparent action has been taken.

Key Takeaways:

• The Trump administration has not yet mandated insurance coverage for IVF.

• According to the Washington Post, White House insiders say the administration is exploring restorative reproductive medicine (RRM) as an ethical IVF alternative.

• Live Action wrote to the administration this year, urging support for RRM instead of IVF.

• An administration official claimed the president cannot mandate insurance IVF coverage without Congressional approval, according to the Post.

• IVF is highly destructive to human life, as “surplus” embryos are destroyed or frozen indefinitely.

The Backstory:

In August 2024, Trump raised eyebrows when he called the Republican party the “party of IVF,” and made campaign promises to mandate insurance coverage for it.

“The government is going to pay for it, or we’re going to get — we’ll mandate your insurance company to pay for it, which is going to be great. We’re going to do that,” Trump said at the time, according to the Washington Post. “We want to produce babies in this country, right?”

In February, he issued an EO with the aim of reducing the costs associated with IVF. Under the order, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy was to issue policy recommendations to reduce the costs associated with the procedure.

Shortly after the release of the EO, Live Action called on the administration to reconsider, pointing out that IVF “results in the destruction of millions of human lives, is exceedingly expensive, and has a low success rate, leaving many families still struggling after multiple attempts.” Instead, Live Action recommended support for Restorative Reproductive Medicine (RRM), which “addresses the root causes of infertility, works with the body’s natural processes of both parents, and supports healing rather than bypassing it.”

Some conservative leaders also cautioned against the move. Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow Patrick T. Brown told Fox News at the time:

There’s actual guardrails that need to be pursued, rather than just going full speed ahead.

The U.S. allows people to select sex or to screen for different genetic traits in a way that most other countries don’t. We’re kind of the ‘Wild West’ when it comes to some of this stuff.

And it opens the can of worms for eugenics and some of these other things that I don’t think President Trump actually intends.

The Details:

Now, the Post reports that a senior administration official said President Trump will be unable to make any insurance mandates for IVF coverage without the support of Congress. Two people speaking on the condition of anonymity told the Post that taking up such legislation is not currently on the table, and insiders claimed that disagreement over whether or not the fertility treatment can be considered an “essential health benefit” under the Affordable Care Act is part of the issue at hand.

Kaylen Silverberg, an outside advisor to the administration, has also confirmed that he has been asked guidance on more holistic approaches to improving fertility over IVF, including restorative reproductive medicine.

Despite these statements, the White House is promising that IVF is still a “huge priority” for the Trump administration.

“President Trump pledged to expand access to fertility treatments for Americans who are struggling to start families,” said spokeswoman Abigail Jackson in a statement. “The Administration is committed like none before it to using its authorities to deliver on this pledge.”

Why It Matters:

Though IVF is often touted as a positive way to bring new life into the world, it results in the destruction of human life.

Each IVF cycle typically results in the creation of many embryos, which are all human beings. According to research published in Reproductive Biomedicine Online, over 2.5 million IVF cycles are performed every year, but of those, only 500,000 babies are born annually. The embryos that are not implanted in the mother’s womb are either frozen and stored, sometimes indefinitely, or destroyed.

IVF Doctors and Parents Who Conceived Using IVF Share Their Regrets

The Bottom Line:

“By the numbers, the IVF industry violates the lives of children more often than the abortion industry does,” Katy Faust, founder of Them Before Us told Live Action News in a previous interview. “If you love babies, you are going to oppose these reproductive technologies because the core technology that’s at the root of most of these processes, IVF, destroys more embryonic life than abortion does every year.”

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