President Donald Trump has declared himself the “fertilization president.” Vice President JD Vance wants a baby boom. The administration has pledged to put family first, yet so far, some conservatives believe it isn’t going far enough. This Washington Examiner series, Baby Boomers, will analyze the Trump administration’s early policies and pledges — if they have been successful or if they have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Part 3 is about how Trump’s IVF policies are straining relationships with pro-family allies in the anti-abortion movement. Read Part 1 and Part 2.
President Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed “fertilization president,” and his position on expanding access to in vitro fertilization are alienating anti-abortion advocates, a key part of the broader pro-family policy coalition.
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Following up on his initial directive in February, a new executive order from Trump is expected early this month as part of the president’s multipronged pro-family agenda aimed at kick-starting a new “baby boom” to combat stubbornly low birth rates in the United States. One possibility for the order under consideration is mandating insurance companies to cover the costs of IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies.
Only 3.62 million babies were born in the U.S. in 2024, according to a report released in April by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although that’s up slightly from 2023 numbers, birth rates have been on a steady decline of about 2% each year from 2015 to 2020.
Increasing insurance coverage of IVF or otherwise lowering its high price tag is one of the tools Trump could use to reverse the downward trend in birth rates.
However, while Trump has touted IVF as a pro-family measure, many anti-abortion advocates disagree. They have attempted to sway Trump away from his campaign promise of an Obamacare coverage mandate for IVF and other artificial reproductive technologies, citing the destruction of embryos created in the process as tantamount to abortion.
In general, they are proponents of other pro-family measures. Multiple anti-abortion groups told the Washington Examiner they strongly support Trump’s efforts to boost the child tax credit and promote intensive education programs on menstrual cycles and ovulation windows to encourage natural conception. However, they part ways with Trump when it comes to IVF.
The matter became politically volatile during the heat of the 2024 presidential election, when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in a complicated medical malpractice case that frozen embryos created via IVF had the same human personhood status as a child in the womb.
Trump steered his party in a pro-IVF direction following the bombshell ruling, condemning Alabama’s high court and urging the state to clarify the anti-abortion statute to carve out legal protections for IVF.
Noah Brandt, spokesman for the anti-abortion group Live Action, told the Washington Examiner that his organization wants to support the administration in its pro-family agenda, but is “extremely opposed to the way IVF is done in this country.”
“The fertility cliff that we’re facing is one of our biggest long-term threats as a country,” Brandt said. “We need more families and more children, but expanding IVF is not the way to go.”
Moral objection to IVF
Anti-abortion organizations and religious groups maintain that life begins when a woman’s egg is fertilized by sperm, and that the destruction of embryos that are not transferred into a woman’s uterus amounts to the taking of a human life.
Dr. Lauren Rubal, a reproductive endocrinologist and former IVF practitioner, told the Washington Examiner that she has seen the heartbreak of families experiencing infertility in her years of practice, “but the solution is not IVF.”
“IVF destroys millions of human lives each year, reduces human embryos to commodities, and offers false hope at staggering financial and emotional costs,” Rubal said. “Every human life begins at fertilization and must be protected, whether in the womb or in the lab.”
According to the CDC, 2.6% of all infants born in the U.S. in 2022, more than 98,000 children, were conceived via artificial reproductive technologies.
The agency said more than 435,000 embryo transfers were completed in 2022, but the CDC does not collect data on the number of embryos created during the IVF process that are either cryogenically frozen or destroyed.
A policy memo drafted by Live Action and shared with the White House Domestic Policy Council during a meeting about the IVF executive order highlighted that more than 85% of embryos are “either frozen indefinitely, miscarried, discarded, subjected to experimentation, or die during the IVF process.”
Objection to Obamacare-style mandate
On top of the ethical concerns, conservative policy groups that hold anti-abortion positions have also opposed Trump’s IVF executive order on the basis of forcing private companies to cover a procedure by issuing new regulations under the Affordable Care Act.
John Shelton, policy director for Advancing American Freedom, the think tank affiliated with former Vice President Mike Pence, told the Washington Examiner that “the admin’s priorities don’t map onto what I see most pro-life and most religious groups advocating for.”
“A lot of us who are pro-life are also still very fiscally, traditionally conservative, and so their solutions aren’t really that reassuring,” Shelton said.
IVF costs can exceed $30,000 per individual cycle, defined as ovarian stimulation, egg retrieval, and embryo transfer. However, considering that it can take multiple cycles for a woman to become pregnant through IVF, the costs add up quickly.
Kristi Hamrick, spokeswoman for the anti-abortion group Students for Life, told the Washington Examiner that her group has “serious concerns with any mandate in favor of IVF, any taxpayer-funded support of that, any forced-funding through insurance policies.”
“We think that this is an unregulated and poorly monitored and very profit-centered thing,” said Hamrick, adding that it’s a “fee for service, not a fee for outcome, kind of model in which there’s mass destruction of life.”
Public opinion on IVF
Despite objections from anti-abortion or religious groups, expanding access to IVF is broadly popular among the electorate. An executive order on expanding access could help Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections.
A May 2024 Pew Research Center poll found that 70% of Americans said having access to IVF would be “a good thing.” Only 8% said it would be “a bad thing.”
Roughly 60% of those who said abortion should be illegal in most cases supported access to IVF.
A 2024 Gallup poll found that IVF is the second most “morally acceptable” behavior or practice that finds itself amid culture war battles, seconded only to birth control.
Gallup found that 82% of respondents deemed IVF “morally acceptable,” while 49% of respondents found destroying frozen embryos created during the IVF process to be acceptable as well.
Destroying human embryos was ranked as more morally acceptable in the Gallup survey than medical testing on animals, pornography, suicide, and extramarital affairs.
Trump’s general relationship with anti-abortion groups
Despite the suspicion that the Trump White House might not listen to anti-abortion groups on their IVF positions, Trump 2.0 has advanced many of the priorities of the anti-abortion lobby.
Even after removing a significant portion of anti-abortion language from the Republican Party platform last year and refusing to support a federal 15-week abortion ban, Trump has ticked off several items on the anti-abortion advocacy wish list.
That includes freeing federal prisoners charged with violating anti-harassment statutes against abortion clinics, preventing federal dollars from promoting abortion internationally, and adding language to defund Planned Parenthood in the 2026 budget reconciliation bill.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration delivered two new victories for anti-abortion advocates by committing to do a safety review of the abortion pill mifepristone and rescinding Biden-era guidance essentially requiring doctors to perform emergency abortions against their conscience.
Advocates of the anti-abortion groups Live Action, Students for Life, Priests for Life, and Advancing American Freedom told the Washington Examiner that they still have varying degrees of access to the administration to collaborate on policy.
TRUMP WANTS MORE BABIES AND MARRIAGE. CAN THE GOVERNMENT DELIVER?
There have been no indications from the White House on how the impending executive order will treat IVF and whether or not attempts from anti-abortion organizations to push holistic medicine alternatives to IVF will be included.
An IVF executive order is expected within the coming days.
Mabinty Quarshie contributed to this report.