Most polls show that huge majorities of Americans support IVF and access to it. Many people who consider themselves pro-lifers also support it because they believe that the moral intention behind the act is to build a family, and they simply don’t know or don’t acknowledge that, in the medical process, many, many more embryos are created and discarded.  IVF leads to more abortions than there are legal surgical abortions.

Back in 2024, a pro-life law that interfered with IVF in Alabama became so politically radioactive that fear-struck Republicans ended up passing a law making even the most sensible regulations of the practice impossible. The Trump campaign then committed strongly to IVF during the campaign to soften the pro-life stance after the Supreme Court undid Roe v. Wade.

Wisely, the Trump administration is backing away from its pledge to subsidize insurers so that IVF will be available to any couple that wants it. The Trump administration would not be the first to eagerly express support for IVF, only to do more research before objecting.

Most opposition comes from highly informed pro-lifers, particularly Catholics, who view IVF as not only a sin because it leads to the disposal of human embryos, but because it separates procreation from the sexual act itself. But anyone whose pro-life stance is based on the conviction that once a unique human DNA has been conceived, it is wrong to deliberately will its destruction could come to the same conclusion.

Subsidizing IVF lavishly may actually have the unintended effect of reducing the number of families who conceive and have children, by encouraging more couples to wait longer and longer to begin trying, in the vain hope that this technology will rescue them from the ticking biological clock. IVF is perhaps the most expensive, uncertain, and difficult journey towards conception. Politically, its legal status is protected by the majority opinion of the American people. But, pro-life legislators, and those who are pro-natalist, believing that our society needs to increase its fertility rate to become sustainable, should be encouraging people to form families and begin trying to conceive at younger ages than they are doing so now, when women are more fertile, and less needful of medical intervention to do what comes naturally, and expect natural increase.