President Donald Trump’s executive order signed on Tuesday aimed at expanding access to in vitro fertilization and other assisted reproductive technologies caused fallout among anti-abortion organizations.
Trump’s order directing the Domestic Policy Council to draft policy recommendations on “protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plant costs for IVF treatment” has drawn sharp criticism from staunch anti-abortion advocates.
Because the IVF process involves the destruction or perpetual freezing of human embryos not inserted into a woman’s uterus during the process, religious conservatives, particularly Catholics, argue that IVF is morally hazardous.
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, condemned the executive order, calling the action “tragic.”
“IVF is unethical, doesn’t cure infertility, and is a scam,” Hawkins wrote on X. “Better and cheaper alternatives exist to help couples conceive.”
Anti-abortion advocacy groups splintered during the 2024 election over then-candidate Trump’s direction for the Republican Party with respect to abortion policy, but they also began to diverge over his stance on IVF during the election.
IVF became a flashpoint in the election when the Alabama Supreme Court in February 2024 as part of a complicated civil lawsuit ruled that frozen embryos created through the IVF had personhood rights equivalent to unborn children in the womb under the state constitution.
Although the Alabama legislature quickly reversed the court’s decision through legislation, the ordeal ignited a national discussion on IVF that Democrats spun to portray Republicans as too conservative.
Trump on the campaign trail promised to issue a health insurance mandate for coverage of “all costs associated with IVF treatment,” adding that he had been supportive of IVF “from the very beginning.”
Lila Rose, founder of the anti-abortion group Live Action, commented on X shortly after news of the executive order broke that “IVF is NOT pro-life.”
Rose and other anti-abortion advocates also opposed to IVF often highlight the upwards of $30,000 per cycle cost for the fertility treatment in comparison to the high failure rate of the technology.
Anti-IVF advocates argue that holistic medicine techniques, such as restorative reproductive medicine or natural procreative technology, are more humane because they address the root causes of infertility.
“BIG FERTILITY doesn’t sell [restorative reproductive medicine] because it’s not the IVF cash cow selling powerful drugs, injections, and labs where embryos are created and frozen,” Rose wrote on X. “RRM focuses on improving health of our natural reproductive systems. We should be funding and encouraging RRM, not IVF!”
During the presidential election, Rose was also an outspoken critic of Trump, arguing that anti-abortion advocates should not be loyal to the Republican Party following Trump’s significant changes to its platform to remove pro-life language.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, said in a statement that her organization “does not object to ethical fertility treatments paired with strong safety standards that help couples struggling with infertility.”
Dannenfelser, whose organization works closely with Republicans, did not condemn the order but said that the Trump administration should “at a minimum” account for improving “health and safety protections for parents and embryos.”
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“Rogue practitioners who switch human embryos, fail to follow basic safety standards, or negligently destroy human embryos desired by infertile couples must be held to account under any federal role in fertility treatment,” Dannenfelser said.
Over 86,000 children in the United States in 2021 were conceived via IVF, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s about two in every 100 children born each year in the U.S.