Why Trump’s pledge of free IVF for anyone divides his own party

Donald Trump’s recent announcement that, if sent back to the White House, either the government or insurance companies would pay for IVF “for all Americans that get it, all Americans that need it,” was greeted with a mixture of surprise and dismay by members of his own party.

While an April poll by Pew Research Center shows 70% of the general public and 63% of Republicans believe having access to in vitro fertilization is a positive thing, some within the GOP see things quite differently. Trump’s promise might have broad political appeal, but it enflames internal tensions among conservatives — some of whom oppose IVF on the same grounds as abortion.

For fiscal conservatives, Trump’s pledge of a government mandate on health care sounds like a reversal of his efforts to undo the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Under the pledge to “defend a vote of the people from within the states on the issue of life,” the GOP’s 2024 platform promises to both “support access to IVF” and stand with states as they pass laws upholding the 14th Amendment’s guarantee that “no person can be denied life or liberty without due process.”

In 2018, Alabama became the first state in the nation to recognize the “rights of the unborn child” in its state Constitution. This past February, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that, under this provision, frozen embryos that had been accidentally destroyed at a fertility clinic were “extrauterine children” endowed with the full rights of personhood.

Fertility clinics across Alabama closed their doors when the ruling was announced. In response to a public outcry, Republican legislators scrambled to protect Alabama IVF providers from legal action and declare their support for the popular procedure.

Anti-abortion activists on the far right would like to see those clinics closed permanently.

Anti-abortion activists on the far right, however, would like to see those clinics closed permanently.

‘Two sides of the same coin’

“Abortion and IVF are two sides of the same ‘reproductive rights’ coin,” says Katy Faust, head of the children’s rights group Them Before Us. Both “treat children as objects of rights, not subjects of rights. Both … destroy hundreds of thousands of tiny humans every year.”

Yet, labeling IVF as abortion hasn’t turned most conservatives against the practice. Even among Americans who think abortion should be illegal, 60% still favor access to IVF as a remedy for infertility.

In response, those like Faust who want to see IVF strictly controlled if not outlawed, are now adjusting their arguments. They’re no longer focusing on fetal personhood but on the definition of family and who gets to have one.

“Having children is not a right, it’s a privilege,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America — a privilege Hawkins and anti-IVF conservatives do not want to extend to single mothers and queer couples who use IVF to create “nontraditional” families.

Such families threaten the normative concept of the “nuclear family,” comprised of two heterosexual parents and their biological children. Although the nuclear family only came to prominence in the 20th century, many far-right conservatives (including vocal Christian nationalists) view it as the foundational social unit of Western civilization, which they define as the outgrowth of white, European culture. Because they also believe the United States is the pinnacle of Western civilization, in their reasoning if the nuclear family fails, America fails with it.

‘Marriage fundamentalism’

“Marriage fundamentalism,” a belief in the superiority of the nuclear family, has thus become the new rallying cry for those opposing open access to IVF.

The possibility that single women would use IVF to become mothers worried IVF’s earliest critics, who viewed it as a threat to the moral order. Similarly, Trump’s promise of IVF for all alarms Hawkins, who complained on X that the policy would “be encouraging families to delay childbirth,” a choice she told The Atlantic women “aren’t entitled to make” and one that “asserts the same problematic bodily autonomy” as abortion.

Hawkins also opposes the use of contraception.

Apart from the familiar moral, scriptural and theological arguments against abortion, stripping women of the ability to control if and when they have children is part of a larger patriarchal, theocratic worldview. Reproductive autonomy threatens male superiority within the nuclear family and in the social spheres outside it.

Preserving and propagating patriarchal systems entails legally restricting women’s access to reproductive health care, like contraception and IVF, and rhetorically reducing women to their reproductive capacity. This is why members of the New Right, like JD Vance, demean women who have not given birth by calling them “childless cat ladies,” while at the same time limiting the influence of those who have given birth to the domestic realm.

‘Biological essentialism’

Efforts to promote and ensure LGBTQ equality also threaten this hierarchy.

Scott Yenor, a Claremont Fellow who was instrumental in the creation of the uber patriarchal Society for American Civic Renewal, is a proponent of “biological essentialism” and believes gender roles are not constructed by society but are intrinsically linked to biology.

“Biological sex goes a long way in determining how societies conceive of gender, with perceptions of women as more passive and caring and less aggressive and violent than men … and more interested in and affectionate with children than more daring, rough-and-tumble men,” he has said.

Faust cites these stereotypes as evidence that same-sex couples also should not have access to IVF. Children “need male and female complement in the home,” she said.

Faust believes IVF is the “next front” in LGBTQ equality, something she is adamantly against: “A ‘right to parenthood’ via a ‘right to IVF’ is a critical step in the overhaul of the nuclear family.”

Only the ‘right kind’ of families

To be clear, those on the right have no problem demanding such rights for heterosexual couples whose relationships fall within sanctioned patriarchal “norms.” Among the “Federal Parental Rights Protections” listed by the America First Policy Institute, a think tank established by former Trump administration employees, is the “right to establish one’s family” — but only if you wish to establish your family the “right way.”

Just as she thinks biology defines gender roles, Faust also believes biology determines parental roles.

A lesbian couple who uses donated sperm to conceive a child through IVF is depriving that child of its biological father, she reasons. “Children have a right to their mother and father, … which means we reject all forms of modern families. … We will say ‘no’ to IVF in almost all situations.”

“Faust also opposes the adoption of unused embryos.”

Faust also opposes the adoption of unused embryos, a process she says “violates a child’s right to be known, loved and raised by his or her biological parents.”

Never mind that research comparing adolescents born via IVF to single women and lesbian couples to adolescents conceived without the use of IVF showed no differences in psychological adjustment or parent-adolescent relationships. For those against IVF, it’s nature over nurture, no matter how nurturing nongenetically related parents may be.

No details from Trump

Neither Trump nor his campaign have offered any particulars about his promise of free IVF. He certainly would need the support of Congress to fund such an endeavor and to mandate health plans cover the cost of IVF.

Senate Democrats put forth a bill requiring insurance providers do that very thing; but in June, Republican senators, including Vance, voted against it.

Another option would be to include IVF in the list of women’s health benefits, such as mammograms and birth control, that insurers are required to cover through the Affordable Care Act. However, not only would the inclusion of IVF be difficult to justify as a “preventive service,” Trump has promised to repeal the ACA should he win the election.

Even if IVF were successfully included, such a requirement might be difficult to enforce. Employers could object on religious grounds and challenge the requirement all the way to the Supreme Court, just as Hobby Lobby did with ACA mandates to cover the cost of birth control.

Coverage for IVF is advancing in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed a law requiring health insurers to provide coverage for a maximum of three egg retrievals and unlimited embryo transfers. The law would not apply to those enrolled in Medi-Cal, religious employers and companies employing fewer than a thousand workers.

Among the 9 million who would benefit from the new law are LGBTQ families looking to have children through IVF. The bill expands the definition of infertility to include “a person’s inability to reproduce either as an individual or with their partner without medical intervention.” Thus, the new California law will increase the number of nontraditional families that conservatives feel threaten the nuclear family.

A national 2023 Pew Research survey reported that, while the nuclear family is still the preferred American family unit with a 90% approval rating, 60% of those surveyed also found a single parent raising children on their own acceptable and 47% approved of a married homosexual couple raising children. Although these numbers reflect a growing acceptance for nontraditional families, the same report found 49% of people thought the overall trend of fewer children being raised by married parents would have a negative impact on the future of the country.

No doubt it is this sizable number of pessimistic Americans that Faust, Hawkins, Yenor and other would-be restrictors of access to IVF and contraception hope to persuade.

 

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