At a rally last week, former President Donald Trump vowed his presidency would make in vitro fertilization free to the public. It is his latest “pro-family” policy proposition.
This statement on IVF is only another vagary of the Trump campaign’s continual wavering on pro-life positions. The former president previously embraced a reputation as the “most pro-life president ever” and has now expressed opposition to Florida’s six-week abortion ban.
Trump wants merely to please the majority enough to win the election, and his changing abortion stances make that clear. Now, IVF has captured the attention of both parties after Gov. Tim Walz’s (D-MN) claims of personal history with the procedure and Vice President Kamala Harris’s complete focus on “reproductive rights.”
The move to provide government-funded IVF is one more example of a policy with concentrated benefits and dispersed costs. Through taxpayers’ dollars, the public, of which a considerable subset opposes the procedure on moral grounds, would pay to fuel the lifestyles of a very specific demographic.
Well-educated, older women comprise most of the IVF consumer base. It is not young, married couples who flock to the technology as a first hope for alleviating their infertility struggles, no matter what an optimistic pro-natalist might think. Rather, it is reasonable to conclude that many of these women were intentional about placing their careers over the fertility window. They pursued advanced degrees that left little room for child-rearing until about age 40, when they either regretted the decision or deemed the time acceptable for some slowing down.
Fertility difficulties are just part of the choice. To some, pursuing a robust career instead of having children ends up a poor choice. Free IVF, given the demographics, rewards these poor choices, promoting the lie that one really can have it all and give up nothing. Yes, some couples turn to IVF outside of that circumstance, and yes, it is good to be merciful despite bad decisions. But to cast aside one’s fertility for the opportunity at a career is, ultimately, to the detriment of society.
Imagine what might result if that were the majority course of action: It would look something like the fertility decline visible in America today. Common thought equates more babies with a correction for low fertility and sees IVF as the means. In reality, IVF is not the cause of a high fertility rate. Various factors related to technological and biological limitations, as well as human preference, contribute to stunted expectations for the technology’s success. That, and IVF has a live birth rate of around 21%.
Proponents are correct to consider the family a good, though the sense is somewhat distorted. Government-funded IVF, just like government-funded abortion or contraceptives, interprets the family as some sort of public good. It is just another thing, in this view, that the government really ought to provide and that everyone can use without diminishing it. The family, however, is full of meaning: Its existence has real implications. It is vital to the common good, itself a common good, and cannot be legislated into existence.
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Likewise, children are not a public good to be funded and provided. There is a difference between family-supportive tax credits and direct money-funneling into child production for the sake of family growth.
As backward as it might sound to think of abortion as “ending the cycle of poverty,” thinking of pro-family policy as a “we want more babies” idea is not so dissonant. The messaging in both processes echoes a utilitarianism that distracts from the good of a child. Neither addresses the worth of its object.