The Most Pro-Family Thing Trump Can Do Is Ditch His Support For Child-Commodifying IVF

By: Jordan Boyd, originally published February 19, 2025, The Federalist

The moral pitfalls posed by IVF are not synonymous with the thriving and fruitful family-friendly society the Trump administration desires.

President Donald Trump signed an  executive order  on Tuesday directing his administration to preserve Big Fertility’s increasing stream of customers by making it easier and more affordable for Americans to buy in vitro fertilization.

The White House immediately championed the order as a win for American families and the nation’s lagging fertility rate. An official administration  fact sheet claimed  the directive “recognizes the importance of family formation” and “make[s] it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children.”

The administration intends to execute its family-friendly agenda by doing everything possible to “protect IVF access” and “aggressively reduce out-of-pocket and health plan costs for such treatments.” There’s nothing pro-family, however, about endorsing a practice that  kills more unborn babies than abortion every year.

Fertility Fallacy

Trump’s pledge to “expand IVF” is already ironic considering there are no laws abridging the increasingly popular fertility fix in the United States. Even states like Louisiana, whose law purporting to prohibit the intentional destruction of embryos is often used as an example by lawmakers of  “common-sense” restrictions  on ART, have plenty of loopholes that still accommodate for the unlimited creation and destruction of human life.

While it’s true that tens of thousands of precious babies are born via the procedure each and every year, approximately  93  to  97  percent of the little lives created in labs via IVF won’t ever make it to the womb and certainly not birth.

Trump’s order might bring the administration one step closer to fulfilling his campaign promise for  taxpayer-funded IVF, but it does not actually solve the nation’s fertility woes.

For one, IVF is far from  a foolproof way  to ensure parenthood. Cycling emotionally vulnerable adults who desperately want a child through multiple rounds of IVF, however, is incredibly profitable for the rapidly growing fertility industry.

There’s no doubt that an infertility diagnosis, as the White House notes, turns “what should be a joyful experience into an emotional and financial struggle.” Lowering the cost of egg retrievals, reproduction drugs, and lab conception in light of that fact may seem noble at first glance.

Yet the only thing the IVF sold to the masses can guarantee is that more innocent embryos will be subject to morally objectionable practices like  genetic testing,  premature disposal,  indefinite cryopreservation, and  surrogacy  than the millions that already were.

If Trump is truly invested in promoting “family formation” and even pushing more people to reproduce beyond the replacement rate, further opening the door for children for whoever by whatever means necessary won’t do the trick.

The nuclear family is indispensable, and the consequences of shunning it by allowing anyone, regardless of relationship status or natural ability to reproduce, to commission the creation of children via IVF are irrevocable.

Kids who grow up without their married, biological mother and father have clear  physical, emotional, and educational disadvantages  that do not systematically affect their peers in stable nuclear family situations. More specifically, boys raised in fatherless homes like the  ones IVF enables  are less likely to  graduate and more prone to criminal acts and violence.

Even if the only people employing the use of IVF were couples in traditional marriages, the moral and ethical crises posed by the industry’s standard practice of serially creating and destroying embryos are not synonymous with a healthy, thriving, and fruitful society. The results are the expansion of an industry that prioritizes  profit over people,  adults’ selfish desires  over children’s natural rights,  quick fixes  over long-term women’s health solutions,  desirable traits above all,  forced orphanhood, the  erasure of women  in reproduction,  fertility fraud, and making  human existence transactional.

Embracing the Wild West vs. Forging a New Frontier

Time and time again, Trump has proven himself to be the most  pro-life president in U.S. history.   In recent weeks, his administration has also made headlines for being refreshingly child-focused.

Considering that track record along with his  Make America Healthy Again streak, it would not be out of the president’s wheelhouse to devote time, effort, and money to more family-friendly fertility policies like adoption and  restorative reproductive treatments  that  address the root causes of infertility.

Instead, he’s solidified the U.S. as the Wild West of reproductive technologies by signaling a willingness to befriend and encourage an already unchecked industry.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour.