Trump’s IVF Mandate Threatens Life and Religious Liberty

The Story: Last week, Donald Trump announced a new proposal on IVF that would be a significant threat to both unborn life and religious liberty.

The Background: In an interview with NBC News, former President Trump said his administration would not only protect access to in-vitro fertilization (IVF) but also would have either the government or insurance companies cover the cost for such treatments.

“We are going to be, under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for that treatment,” Trump said. “We’re going to be mandating that the insurance company pay.”

Asked by NBC News to clarify whether the government would pay for IVF services or whether insurance companies would do so, Trump reiterated that one option would be to have insurance companies pay “under a mandate, yes.”

What It Means: Even in 2024, a year when political parties have abandoned long-held beliefs and policy radicalism has become the norm, Trump’s proposal is shocking. Had President Obama suggested that policy in 2010, it would’ve been denounced as too radical a left-wing shift.

Even if we set aside the extraordinary cost to taxpayers (nearly $8 billion a year), Trump’s plan is to have the government subsidize the killing of hundreds of thousands of humans at the earliest stage of development. The willingness to support the destruction of children and force citizens to violate their consciences by paying for it shows that the GOP has quickly shifted from being a pro-life party to being one that mirrors the anti-life policies of the Democrats.

In many ways, Trump’s proposed IVF mandate is an even more far-reaching and anti-life version of a mandate issued by former president Obama.

In 2010, as part of the universal health insurance reform (often referred to as “Obamacare”), all group health insurance plans were required to include coverage of sterilization, contraceptives, and abortifacient drugs. (“Abortifacient” refers to any drug or chemical preparation that induces abortion. The law requires coverage of ulipristal acetate, which is chemically similar to the abortion drug RU-486 (mifepristone) and has the same effect. In 2023, approximately 646,821 abortions—63 percent of all abortions—were the result of abortifacient drugs.)

Two years after issuing the mandate, the Obama administration declared religious schools, colleges, hospitals, and charitable service organizations weren’t allowed an exemption from such coverage. Many organizations were forced to choose between covering drugs and services contrary to their religious beliefs and not offering health plans to their employees (which would incur substantial fines). The exemptions from the mandate were also extremely limited. As the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty noted, at the time, “Not even Jesus’ ministry would qualify for this exemption because He fed, healed, served, and taught non-Christians.”

Because of the Supreme Court’s decision in Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania, the contraception mandate no longer applies to nongovernmental employers who have sincere religious objections to providing coverage for contraceptives and related services. This exemption is broad, encompassing churches, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit companies of all sizes, including publicly traded corporations. Employers with sincere nonreligious, moral objections to such coverage are also exempt from the mandate, though it doesn’t extend to publicly traded companies.

Presumably, Trump’s mandate would automatically include such exemptions for employers. But, like the abortifacient mandate, it’d still mean millions of pro-life Christians forced to subsidize the killing of innocent human life.

A fundamental moral issue pro-life Christians have with IVF is the common practice of creating more embryos than will be implanted in a woman’s womb. Because the IVF process is expensive and intrusive, numerous eggs are often fertilized to increase the chances of a successful pregnancy. However, not all of these human embryos will be implanted. Many will be discarded, while others are frozen for future use or left indefinitely in storage. This raises a significant moral problem.

Embryos that are not implanted can be thrown away or frozen (in a state of cryopreservation) with the intention of implantation. While some that are frozen will be implanted, the vast majority will be discarded when the parents stop paying the storage fees, which can typically run from $500 to $1,000 a year. A minuscule number are put up for adoption. From 2004 to 2019, there were 21,060 frozen donated embryo transfers in the United States, resulting in 8457 live births. This is out of the millions of embryos that have been abandoned,

By subsidizing the process, the demand for IVF will increase and even more humans will be left to die at the embryonic stage of life. As Ronald Reagan once said, “Government does not solve problems. It subsidizes them.” That appears to be an approach taken by Trump. Despite once being hailed as the “most pro-life president,” Trump proposes using government power to increase the destruction of human life. Based on current estimates, the IVF industry already leads to more deaths of humans than abortion, with some calculations putting the figure somewhere between 600,000 to 900,000 more deaths annually.

Unfortunately, no matter who wins the presidential election, Americans are likely to face a mandate to subsidize IVF. Having proposed the policy position, Trump has given cover for Vice President Harris to do the same. She can easily dismiss claims that this idea is too radically left-wing by pointing out it has already been embraced by so-called conservatives.

Those of us who embrace the truly socially conservative position—which includes defending life from the moment of conception—cannot be silent about this advancement of injustice. We must speak out now and gird ourselves for the fight for life that’s coming next year.

We must also be aware we’ll fight with fewer allies by our side. Since the fall of Roe, those committed to the pro-life cause have been steadily losing ground. We’ve seen our ranks shrink and the issue all but abandoned even by some national “pro-life” organizations. Both political parties have become officially “pro-choice,” and neither is likely to lose many votes because of it.

Yet we’re in the same position today regarding IVF that evangelicals were on abortion in the early 1970s. For instance, before the 1970s, many Southern Baptists either took no position on abortion or accepted legal abortion under certain conditions. The same was true for many other Protestant groups. It was only after years of education by pro-life advocates that abortion’s true nature began to be recognized. Similarly, too many Christians—even those who oppose abortion—turn a blind eye to the destruction of unborn life outside the womb.

We have encourage other Christians not to compromise on this cause. We have to be steadfast, even if we lose in the short term. And we have to do all we can to defend our unborn brothers and sisters because they cannot defend themselves. The fight for life in the age of IVF isn’t just about policy or politics—it’s about our fundamental values as a society. The choices we make today will echo through generations, shaping not only our laws but even our very understanding of human dignity and worth.