Trump wants to make the GOP a ‘leader’ on IVF. Republicans’ actions make that a tough sell
CHICAGO– Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump vow to promote in vitro fertilization by forcing health insurers or the federal government to pay for the treatments runs counter to the actions of much of his own party.
Still, his surprise announcement Thursday reveals that the former president realizes the GOP’s positions on abortion and reproductive rights could be negatively influenced. huge debts for his chances of returning to the White House. Trump quickly sought to reframe the narrative around those issues after Vice President Kamala Harris entered the presidential race.
Even before he made his proposal for the cover, Trump had promoted the idea that the Republican Party should “leader” in IVFThat characterization is rejected by Democrats, who have seized on the common but expensive fertility treatment as another dimension of reproductive rights threatened by Republicans and a second Trump presidency.
It’s not just political partisans.
“Republicans are not leaders on IVF,” said Katie Watson, a professor of medical ethics at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “Some of them are a threat to IVF, and they’re trying to figure out how to be pro-abortion and pro-IVF, and there are internal inconsistencies and problems there. It seems like Republicans are trying to repair the political damage that came from their own choices.”
Trump’s proposal, which he announced without providing details, illustrates how reproductive rights have become central to this year’s presidential race. It’s also the latest example of the former president trying to seem moderate on the issue, despite repeatedly boasting about the appointment of the three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion.
While the Republican Party has attempted to create a national narrative open to in vitro fertilization, many Republicans struggle with the innate tension between support for the procedure and the laws passed by their own party that grant legal personality not only for fetuses, but also for embryos destroyed during the IVF process.
The message it sends is also being undermined by state legislatures, Republican-majority courts, and anti-abortion leaders within the party, as well as opposition to legislation to protect access to IVF.
Before the Republican National Convention in July, the Republican Party has a policy platform which supports states establishing fetal personhood through the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which provides equal protection under the law to all American citizens. The platform also encourages supporting IVF, but does not explain how the party plans to do so while also encouraging fetal personhood laws that make the treatment illegal.
In May, the Republican Party of Texas Platform Committee rejected at the last minute a proposal to classify embryos created through IVF as “human beings” and label their destruction as “murder.” A bill aimed at expanding access to IVF, meanwhile, passed in California on Thursday despite opposition from nearly all Republican lawmakers.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat who shared her own IVF journey on the Senate floor and co-sponsored a bill to protect the treatment, criticized Republicans for saying they supported IVF in their campaign but not backing it with their votes.
She added that Trump’s Supreme Court appointments paved the way for the overturning of Roe v. Wade and its impact on reproductive rights, including access to IVF.
“It’s absurd that Republicans are openly claiming to support IVF,” she told AP.
The issue emerged on the national political landscape in February after the all-Republican Alabama Supreme Court promised frozen embryos the legal rights of children. That decision forced clinics in Alabama to break their IVF treatments, devastating patients struggling to be parents. Shortly after, and facing a national backlash, Alabama’s Republican governor signed legislation protect doctors from legal liability so that IVF procedures could continue.
In the weeks following the Alabama ruling, Republicans in Congress fought rush to tackle IVFMany rushed to create a unified message of support, despite the history of voting in favor of fetal personhood laws and the argument that life begins at conception, the same concept that supported Alabama’s decision.
“The reality is you can’t protect IVF and you can’t defend the personhood of the fetus — they’re fundamentally incompatible — and the American people are not going to be fooled by another lie from Donald Trump,” Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat and co-sponsor of the Right to IVF bill, told The Associated Press.
Republican Senators Katie Britt and Ted Cruz introduced a bill this year that would ban states from receiving Medicaid funding if they ban the procedure. But that came after Senate Republicans blocked legislation that would have made IVF a federal right. All Republicans except Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine voted against the measure.
“It’s not easy for a Republican lawmaker to say he’s pro-IVF and actually mean it in a direct, tangible way without angering a lot of voters,” said Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law.
An AP-NORC poll A June poll found that more than 6 in 10 American adults support protecting access to IVF, including more than half of Republicans, with only about 1 in 10 opposed. But many anti-abortion groups and some lawmakers oppose the procedure, including several members of the right-wing Freedom Caucus who have opposed expanding IVF access to veterans.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that advocates for abortion rights, at least 23 bills aimed at establishing fetal personhood have been introduced in 13 states so far this legislative session.
Such legislation, all proposed by Republican lawmakers, is based on the idea that life begins at conception and could jeopardize fertility treatments that involve storing, transporting and destroying embryos.
Still, many GOP lawmakers have voiced support for IVF. The issue is personal for Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who shared his daughter’s IVF experience. But while Johnson said he fully supports IVF, he wasn’t entirely sold on Trump’s proposal because of the potential price tag. Other Republican lawmakers who spoke publicly after Trump’s announcement expressed similar concerns.
“I would need to see cost estimates, impact on insurance rates, etc. before making any decisions or commitments to support a proposal,” Johnson said.
Republican lawmakers have a history of opposing federal health care funding, including by repeatedly trying to undo the Obama-era Affordable Care Act. They are unlikely to support similar plans, including those for IVF.
Lack of health insurance coverage for fertility treatments is a major hurdle for those seeking to start or continue treatment. Although coverage has expanded in recent years, fewer than half of employers with 500 or more employees in the U.S. offered IVF coverage in 2023, according to benefits consultant Mercer.
Republican Rep. Michelle Steel of California faced criticism for supporting a GOP bill aimed at constitutionally protecting embryos at “the moment of conception” after she publicly shared her own experience with IVF. Steel withdrew her co-sponsorship of the measure in March, two days after winning her primary, stating that she does not support federal restrictions on IVF.
In a statement to the AP, she said Congress “must enact policies to support and expand access to IVF treatments.”
Such Republican pivots only fuel Democrats’ argument that Trump and his party cannot be trusted to protect reproductive rights.
Rep. Elissa Slotkin, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, warned voters to “pay attention to what they do, not what they say.”
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Associated Press reporters Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Tom Murphy in Indianapolis and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.