WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday calling for policy recommendations to expand “access” to and affordability of in vitro fertilization (IVF), White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has announced.
The text of the order has not yet been publicly released, but it “directs policy recommendations to protect IVF access and aggressively reduce out-of-pocket and health plan costs for such [so-called] treatments,” Leavitt said on X. From the press secretary’s description, it appears the order does not yet make actual policy changes, but tasks administration officials (presumably at the Department of Health & Human Services) with brainstorming actions to pursue.
And here is the Trump IVF EO announcement… pic.twitter.com/gvlCoKfl5m
— John-Henry Westen (@JhWesten) February 18, 2025
PROMISES MADE. PROMISES KEPT: President Trump just signed an Executive Order to Expand Access to IVF!
The Order directs policy recommendations to protect IVF access and aggressively reduce out-of-pocket and health plan costs for such treatments.
— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) February 18, 2025
The order follows up on Trump’s campaign promise to establish a new federal entitlement to IVF if elected, whether through direct subsidy or insurance mandate. That promise was part of declaring himself a “leader on fertilization” and even the “father of IVF” in the wake of a February 2024 Alabama Supreme Court ruling affirming that frozen embryos qualified as children under state law, thrusting the issue into the national spotlight and intensifying establishment Republicans’ fears that voters would punish a firm, consistent pro-life stance.
Yet the IVF process is gravely unethical, as it entails the conscious creation of scores of “excess” human embryos only to be killed and unborn children being treated like commodities to be bartered over, in addition to separating sexuality from procreation.
It has been estimated that more than one million embryos are frozen in storage in the United States following IVF and that as many as 93 percent of all embryos created through IVF are eventually destroyed. A 2019 NBC News profile of Florida IVF practitioner Craig Sweet acknowledged that his practice has discarded or abandoned approximately a third of the embryos it places in cold storage.
Last week, Kaylen Silverberg of the activism group Americans for IVF said she would be meeting with policymakers, including members of the president’s team, on February 23 and 24 to discuss further action on the issue.
“It’s a priority,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) told NOTUS. “I know he made it a priority.”
Prominent pro-lifers, including Bishop Joseph Strickland, were quick to lament the move by Trump, pointing out the aforementioned immorality of IVF.
President Trump definitely needs to be informed of the dark truth about IVF, every child who survives represents many who died. IVF in anti-life, it is yet another attempt to play god. https://t.co/xfu6CR2n3G
— Bishop J. Strickland (@BishStrickland) February 18, 2025
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