Trump’s Massive Lies About IVF
Who’s the IVF daddy?
At the end of this you can find my answer to the reader question I am getting asked A LOT: “How much time do I have before IVF becomes illegal?”
At an all woman Fox News town hall this week, Trump anointed himself the “father of IVF.” He said that Republicans want “fertilization and it's all the way…we’re totally in favor of it.” And there was a lot of rambling that went along with it….
It’s obvious why Trump said this, 86% of Americans believe IVF should remain legal and, most importantly, Trump has a huge problem with women voters this cycle. If current polling is right, he will be the worst faring GOP candidate with white women this century.
And just for the record. The actual "father of IVF" is Dr. Robert Edwards, a British physiologist who pioneered the development of in vitro fertilization. In recognition of his groundbreaking work, Dr. Edwards was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2010.
Trump’s comments about IVF are a massive lie and we MUST remember that.
We talked about this before when Trump chose JD Vance as his running mate. REPUBLICANS JUST SAY WHAT THEY THINK PEOPLE WANT TO HEAR.
Trump is a liar who lies, so on the one hand you may say - why go through all this effort to explain away what is obvious to so many. But the reality is that Trump says this type of stuff because it works. He throws spaghetti at the wall and people who want to vote for Trump for financial or familial reasons cling to it.
Trump can claim he supports IVF all he wants. He can lie through his teeth and say he will back universal IVF access, but that is completely at odds with what his party is currently working towards.
There’s no way to untangle efforts to regulate abortion from the effects on IVF and pregnancy. So let’s back up and talk through it.
The Republicans have been trying to dismantle public coverage for healthcare for my entire adult life. Republicans also blocked the Right to IVF Act back in June, S.4445 received 48 votes, with 47 opposed, mostly along party lines. Only two Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), voted for the bill. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Trump’s running mate, voted against it. The Republican bill, the IVF Protection Act S.4368, written by Senators Ted Cruz and Katie Britt, does not include a right to IVF and does not remediate the most likely cause of IVF becoming inaccessible (fetal personhood laws, see more below) but rather says that if a state prohibits IVF they will lose Medicaid funding (ie: poor folks needing healthcare will be punished.) The bill includes an additional gaping loophole “Nothing in the IVF Protection Act shall be construed to impede States from implementing health and safety standards regarding the practice of in vitro fertilization.” One of the ways that Republicans limited access to abortion services over the years was “health and safety” standards like creating waiting periods, limiting where and how the services can be provided, and now we know they are suing the FDA to say that the drugs used in medication abortion are unsafe.
You might recall the same weekend the court came down with the ‘Presidential immunity’ decision, they came down with an administrative law decision that caused panic amongst the entire legal class. An IVF coverage mandate is a great example of how the decision will play out in the future. Historically, HHS would have been able to issue the mandate and the Court, under Chevron, would have been compelled to defer to their expertise. Now, after the Loper Bright decision, the court can rely on their own interpretation of ambiguous laws (everything is ambiguous in the law!) and, functionally, legislate from the bench.
Trump can claim he supports IVF all he wants. But it’s a bit of a magic trick he’s running, because like the Chevron issue, this campaign slogan doesn’t pass legal muster. If IVF is impossible to access, it doesn’t matter if insurers are mandated to pay for it!
First, we can look at what Project 2025 says, which is an endorsement of fetal personhood:
Then we can look at what the Republican National Platform says, which is a more detailed endorsement of constitutional fetal personhood via the 14th amendment:
You’ll note, they endorse fetal personhood while also saying BC and IVF should remain accessible. Let’s discuss what really happens if fetal personhood laws are instituted:
The way IVF became temporarily inaccessible in Alabama was because of a state constitutional fetal personhood amendment. Fetal personhood is a legal concept which says a fertilized egg (maybe implanted, maybe not!) is a living human being with all of the associated legal rights. Therefore if you are a fertility clinic, you could be sued for murder if something happens to one. No fertility clinic would be willing to engage in IVF under this type of legal liability. What the Alabama legislature did was amend their laws to say, murder is excusable in this instance.
When the Supreme Court makes a decision that says the 14th Amendment to the Constitution includes a fertilized egg as a person, will Congress pass laws allowing this type of murder? Or will running a fertility clinic and being a fertility doctor become economically unfeasible? Will inability to access the basic medicines required for these procedures (because, for example, of Comstock Act implementation or a lawsuit against the FDA) make it impossible for anyone to provide the procedure? Will state’s like Texas use bounty laws and try to reach across state lines to legislate outside of their borders?
At minimum, a constitutional fetal personhood law would require the implantation of every single embryo, we would likely see laws regulating how many you can make, and the costs would rise to astronomical degrees as the legal liability grows.
And litigation isn’t the only way this can happen; a hundred and twenty-five House Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), are sponsors of the Life at Conception Act, which would start personhood status at the “moment of fertilization”, without an exemption for IVF.
A question I get a lot in my DM’s is “How much time do I have before IVF becomes illegal?”