Does Donald Trump Support Free IVF? You Can Almost Smell the Desperation | Arwa Mahdawi
WWould you like to do your bit to stop the population decline in the West? Fancy a house full of babies with very high IQs and extremely blond hair? Well, let me introduce you to the Donald J Trump Insemination Institute. On a sprawling ranch in New Mexico, women can be impregnated with Trump’s sperm for free, blessing future generations on Earth and Mars with a steady supply of highly stable geniuses.
Sorry to make your stomach turn, but I’m afraid I’m only half joking. It was actually Jeffrey Epstein – who used to party with Trump – who was in love with the idea of a ranch where 20 women would be impregnated at a time, to seed the human race with his DNA. Elon Musk, who is obsessed with babies and Trump, may harbor similar fantasies. Earlier this year, the New York Times reported reported that Musk “volunteered his sperm” to help seed a colony on Mars. (Musk has denied these claims.)
While Trump has yet to announce plans for a baby ranch of his own, he has suddenly become a big fan of artificial insemination. Last week, the former president announced that he would support free in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments if re-elected. “We want to produce babies in this country, right?” Trump said at a campaign rally in Wisconsin. He didn’t provide many details about how this would work, other than that the government or insurance companies would pay for everything.
Another vague detail? How government-sponsored IVF might mesh with the 2024 Republican Party platform, which states rights to pass fetal personhood laws. It is impossible to support broad access to IVF and simultaneously support the idea of fetal personhood, which states that an embryo is a person and destroying it is murder. I’m pretty sure Trump has no idea how IVF actually works, so here’s a little explanation: you typically fertilize multiple eggs because you have no idea how many of them will develop into viable embryos. You could fertilize 20 eggs and end up with no viable embryos or you could end up with 20. The only way to determine how many embryos you create is to harvest one egg at a time, which is incredibly expensive, inefficient, and emotionally draining. In short, Trump seems to be running on a platform where IVF is free but also effectively illegal.
While it may be half-baked, Trump’s free IVF policy makes it clear that he is desperate to entice female voters. Women have registered and voted on higher rates than men in every US presidential election since 1980 and now for obvious reasons they’re leaning heavily toward Kamala Harris. I’m not sure a last minute IVF policy is going to change the fact that abortion rights are a major issue in this election and Trump has bragged about being the guy who Roe v Wade overturned. Nor will it undo the fact that Trump is a legally defined sexual predator who can’t stop himself from expressing every misogynistic thought that creeps into his little head. At a recent rally in Pennsylvania, for example, Trump praised his male supporters for “allowing” their wives to attend his campaign rallies. without them.
While Trump is clearly trying to appeal to women with his IVF policy, you also have to wonder whether his buddy Musk – one of the most influential voices in the growing American pro-natalist movement – has a hand in this. If the billionaire were to take a position in a Trump administration (a possibility that has been floated repeatedly), one could imagine Musk encouraging the U.S. to emulate Hungary’s pro-natalist policies, which stem from a racist desire to boost births and repopulate the country with the “right” (AKA white) kind of children. “We want Hungarian “Children,” Viktor Orbán said in 2019. “Migration for us is surrender.”
Free IVF may sound like a progressive policy on its face, but for many on the right it is tied to the belief that women are nothing more than baby-making machines designed to pass on the legacy of men. A future Donald J Trump Insemination Institute may not be as far-fetched as it sounds.