Trump’s Losing Issue

Donald Trump called for arguably the worst policy of the 2024 presidential election cycle. In a recent campaign speech, Trump said he supports mandating that private health insurers cover the cost of in-vitro fertilization and having the government cover the cost in other instances. There’s so much wrong with this proposal.

IVF, by definition, isn’t why insurance exists. Health insurance is to hedge against unforeseen circumstances, like sickness and injury, threatening one’s life. IVF is a costly elective procedure for couples who want to make designer babies. IVF costs between $15,000 to $30,000 per round, and women often go through six rounds or more before a pregnancy takes. That adds up to $90,000 to $180,000. Why should anyone other than the couple who wants the baby pay for IVF?

The estimated cost of Trump’s proposal is $7.8 billion per year if the number of IVF cycles and cost remains the same, according to NBC. That’s not what would happen under Trump’s plan. Making IVF free would make it more frequent. The healthcare sector is also often cheaper when people pay cash, so such a proposal emboldens IVF clinics to raise their prices—especially since more insurance means more paperwork and administrative headaches. Higher demand also means higher prices. Those heightened costs would fall on businesses, independent contractors who buy private insurance, and taxpayers supporting those on the government dole. Why not run on policies that reduce healthcare costs instead of providing a handout to the rich while making health insurance more expensive for everyone else?

Making IVF more common would also increase the frequency of commercial surrogacy, another rich people activity. It’s a practice where the wealthy rent a woman’s womb for nine months and occasionally coerce her to abort her children with selective reduction clauses, among other provisions. Republican politicians may tell you otherwise because politicians lie, but IVF is not pro-life. It creates far more human embryos than necessary to implant in the woman, leading to widespread embryo destruction. The pro-life organization LiveAction claims that 93 percent of embryos created via IVF will never result in a live birth. I assume the organization used an inflated number, but the point stands.

Some human embryos remain indefinitely frozen (over 1.5 million, according to Johns Hopkins), while others are discarded because of less desirable genetic traits, including sex, hair color, and eye color. If you want to continue the longstanding tradition of son preference and everything that entails, support IVF.

Forcing health insurers to cover IVF is also a violation of religious liberty—especially since many live in states with individual mandates where people pay a fine for the pleasure of not having health insurance. Catholicism, the largest Christian denomination, opposes in-vitro fertilization because it contributes to what Pope Francis likens to throwaway culture and defies natural law. When we commodify unborn children, we end up with a culture of death where one has no problem destroying unborn human babies and eliminating them because of supposedly undesirable traits. It also separates procreation from a marital act between a loving man and woman (think sperm donors) and sometimes purposely creates fatherless children, undermining the nuclear family.

The Trump proposal undermines infant adoption, an alternative to abortion that allows families to provide a safe home to a baby. The federal government already subsidizes adoption with a tax credit worth nearly $16,000 that families may carry over five years, acknowledging that children need loving homes. Why do something that’ll create fewer opportunities for these kids while further commodifying human beings?

Trump’s trying to win an election and understands that opposition to IVF and abortion are political losers. That doesn’t mean he must run on providing a massive handout to the IVF industry. I want a second Trump presidency, but even his supporters must criticize him when he backs destructive policy. Trump reversed course on his support for the pro-abortion ballot question in Florida after his supporters pushed back. He said he supported a question that would legalize abortion until viability in Florida; now he’s against it. Let’s get him to do the same with this destructive IVF proposal.