Trump promises expansion of IVF through cost-saving measures

President Donald Trump has announced a plan to make in vitro fertilization (IVF) more affordable with employer insurance benefit coverage, along with a deal to lower the cost of fertility drugs.

Though the president's aim is to make the IVF procedure more available and affordable to American families, this could also mean an increase in the number of human embryos that are created and then destroyed or frozen indefinitely.

Key Takeaways:

• Trump detailed a deal between his administration and the pharmaceutical company EMD Serono to lower the price of fertility drugs.

• He also indicated plans to make IVF coverage an insurance benefit.

• The announcement follows campaign promises and an executive order in which he promised to expand IVF access.

• Despite the belief that IVF is pro-life, it results in the widespread destruction of human embryos and the commodification of children.

The Details:

Speaking in the Oval office on the afternoon of Thursday, October 16, Trump said his administration would be issuing guidance that would enable employers to offer IVF as an insurance benefit.

According to The Hill, administration officials said the new guidance would make opting-in to fertility benefits on an insurance plan similar to choosing dental or vision benefits.

According to the guidance, employers would not be required to offer this benefit.

The president also announced a partnership between his office and the pharmaceutical company EMD Serono, to provide fertility drugs at reduced prices.

“EMD Serono, the largest fertility drug manufacturer in the world, has agreed to provide massive discounts to all fertility drugs they sell in the United States,” Trump said.

This, he promised, will make the cost of IVF "go way way down."

Trump's announcement follows a February executive order, issued shortly after taking office. In it, he promised "to ensure reliable access to IVF treatment ... by easing unnecessary statutory or regulatory burdens to make IVF treatment drastically more affordable.”

“In the Trump administration, we want to make it easier for all couple to have babies, raise children and have the families they’ve always dreamed about,” Trump said during his Thursday press conference.

Why It Matters:

Many people mistakenly believe IVF to be "pro-life" because its end goal is the birth of a child. In reality, IVF destroys far more humans than are successfully born. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. even stunningly claimed on X that expanding access to IVF is "doing God's work."

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Earlier this week President Trump mused that he didn’t believe he’d get into heaven — but the truth is he’s doing God’s work here. Infertility is increasing in America, and the @POTUS MAHA Agenda is addressing the root causes. Today, through President Trump’s leadership, we’re

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Kennedy added, "Infertility is increasing in America, and the@POTUSMAHA Agenda is addressing the root causes." But this is incorrect; IVF does absolutely nothing to address "root causes" of infertility, nor will it "Make America Healthy Again," as Kennedy's tweet implies.

Restorative Reproductive Medicine (RRM), however, does attempt to address root causes. In a press release addressing Trump's IVF expansion, Live Action described RRM as "a life-affirming approach that treats infertility at its root without creating, freezing, or destroying human embryos" — unlike IVF.

Despite what IVF practitioners claim, RRM has a much higher success rate than IVF — without costing any precious human lives. As Live Action News previously reported:

While IVF has long been the mainstream and accepted way to combat infertility, it's been seen by many doctors as a band-aid approach to infertility rather than a healing approach. RRM, as the National Catholic Bioethics Center explained, "aims to treat the root causes of dysfunctions that make it difficult or impossible for couples to conceive and bring to birth children."

In an article published by The Heritage Foundation, Waters explained that RRM-based treatments have a higher success rate than IVF. According to Waters:

"RRM succeeds even after IVF has failed, at a fraction of the cost, especially across multiple pregnancies. One study published in 2024 found that 40% of couples previously diagnosed with infertility conceived naturally after undergoing RRM-based treatments compared with a 24% success rate with IVF. Another 2018 study found that 32.1% of women who had an average of two failed IVF cycles conceived naturally following targeted medical interventions with RRM."

In order to increase the odds of a "successful" pregnancy, fertility doctors typically create multiple embryos — each a unique and distinctive human life — and then often screen out the "undesirable" embryos, implanting only those that are rated to be the "best."

These embryos are commodified almost immediately — not seen as the individuals they are, but instead looked at in terms of quality or characteristics. Embryos may be labeled by a grading system determined by how likely they are to survive, and parents may then be given the opportunity to choose based on this grading system. This process reduces children to mere consumer products on a shelf rather than the unique and valuable individuals that they are.

Even if parents don't screen their embryos in this way, the standard IVF procedure needs to create a certain number of embryos for the process to have a chance at working.

“A recent study showed that the number of embryos needed to optimize cumulative live birth rates was nine,” explained Dr. Lauren Rubal, a board-certified OB/GYN and integrative medicine physician with a subspecialty in reproductive endocrinology and infertility, in a Live Action video. “This means that up to eight embryos may not survive or will be frozen or destroyed. So effectively, you are choosing the death of nine to get the life of one. Even though you have good intentions — you just want life — you’re also choosing all of the consequences that follow.”

Can You Be Pro-Life And Support IVF?

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 — roughly 20 percent. The remaining embryos either fail to implant, are discarded, or are frozen indefinitely.

These human beings were and are just as valuable as those who are born after being created through IVF procedures.

The Bottom Line:

Making IVF more affordable and easily accessible likely means more IVF procedures in the future. This increase may lead to an even greater loss of human life.

"This is the fundamental ethical issue of IVF,” noted Dr. Rubal in the Live Action Video: “the destruction or abandonment of human life.”

Though Trump indicated his intent to make it easier for families to have babies and raise children, there are ways to do this without the wholesale destruction of humans.