Opposing taxpayer-funded abortion has been a bare-minimum pillar of the pro-life movement. It has served as a rallying cry for Republican politicians and voters alike for decades. Yet, under the guise of fertility treatments, this longstanding stance is at risk.
New proposals sponsored by Republican members of Congress and former President Donald Trump would fund the destruction of unborn children. In an interview with NBC News’s Dasha Burns, President Trump shared that “under the Trump Administration, we are going to be paying for [in vitro fertilization (IVF)] . . . or we’re going to be mandating that the insurance company pay.”
Then, during September’s presidential debate, President Trump claimed to be “a leader on IVF.” His campaign secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told NBC News that President Trump “supports universal access to . . . IVF.” Following these comments, Sen. Vance, when asked about “reproductive rights” during the vice-presidential debate, ambiguously stated, “I want us to support fertility treatments.”
And last month, Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer sought to corner Republicans on IVF by forcing another vote on an expansive legislative package that failed to pass earlier this year. The legislation raises weighty religious freedom, economic, and ethical concerns with the industry. The vote failed down party lines, with the exception of Republican Senators Collins and Murkowski voting in favor of the legislation and five senators not voting, including, notably, Sen. Vance.
Republicans, especially those who claim to be pro-life, should not be baited into engaging with the Democrats on these types of bills.
IVF, as practiced in the United States, involves the routine destruction of embryos prior to implantation, in addition to selective abortions after implantation. The leading cause of the destruction of human life at the embryonic stage is no longer abortion; it’s IVF.
The Big Fertility industry, which provides all forms of assisted reproductive technology, is largely unregulated and is known as the “Wild West” of reproductive medicine. Most assisted reproductive technologies, including surrogacy, involve IVF. The state and federal reporting requirements that exist are minimal, making it impossible to know the exact number of embryos destroyed through IVF. From the little data that does exist, it is estimated that only about 7 percent of embryos created survive to a live birth. That means around 93 percent of all embryos created die throughout the process of fertilization, preimplantation genetic testing, freezing, thawing, transfer, and implantation.
Some embryos are negligently destroyed, like in 2018, when over four thousand eggs and embryos were destroyed in a storage tank malfunction in California. Others are purposely destroyed after being deemed “unworthy” because of anything from having the “wrong” sex to eye color. And others are left on ice or cryopreserved indefinitely. Currently, over one million embryonic human beings are frozen in the U.S.
President Trump claimed in the NBC interview that “[IVF is] helping women [be] able to have a baby.” Having a baby is a laudable goal; as Sen. Vance stated during an interview with Megyn Kelly, “Babies are a profound moral good.” The pro-life movement is staunchly pro-baby and pro-family. Indeed, the pro-life movement has promoted and supported some of the most pro-baby and pro-family policies in recent years.
However, the pro-life movement cannot support creating a family at the expense of destroying human life. For Big Fertility, life is disposable; its focus is on success rates and profit. The fertility industry’s goal of creating a live birth supersedes any concerns about the other lives wantonly destroyed during the process.
As of 2021, the assisted reproductive technology market was worth over $5 billion and only continues to grow. One round of IVF can cost up to $30,000, and couples, on average, undergo 2.5 cycles, spending $61,000 before either achieving a live birth or giving up on assisted reproductive technology.
With an overall live birth success rate of only 23 percent for couples, IVF leaves a majority in the devastating position of loss and hopelessness. Women are often told that IVF is a reliable way to have children later in life, but many are surprised—and heartbroken—to find that the odds are not in their favor. Funding IVF with taxpayer dollars will allow Big Fertility to keep padding its pockets while selling couples a glamorized lie and gratuitously destroying embryonic life.
True, infertility plagues our society, with around 19 percent of couples struggling to conceive. But the answer to this crisis should not be funneling taxpayer funding to an ethically fraught and unregulated industry that prioritizes profit over the human life created during the process.
Instead of perpetuating this profit-based industry, Republicans should address the fertility crisis head-on and in a manner that gets to the root of the problem. The leading causes of infertility are reproductive health conditions, such as endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome. Assisted reproductive technology does not treat these conditions but rather attempts to circumvent them entirely.
Republicans have an opportunity to be a champion for women’s reproductive health and fertility by supporting a healthcare system that takes women’s reproductive health conditions seriously, not one that diagnoses them with infertility, a symptom of a condition, only to pawn them off to Big Fertility.
If President Trump really wants to help women and their babies, he should promote policies, like the recently introduced Reproductive Empowerment and Support through Optimal Restoration (RESTORE) Act, sponsored by Sen. Hyde-Smith and Sen. Lankford, that gives women and medical professionals the tools to treat health conditions causing infertility. President Trump’s support of “reproductive rights,” a pseudonym for abortion and assisted reproductive technology, not only threatens to alienate his pro-life base but also fails to hold an industry responsible for the mass destruction of human life accountable.
Natalie Dodson is a policy analyst at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
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Image by Jason Pratt, via Creative Commons. Image cropped.
