Donald Trump has shown repeatedly that he doesn’t know much about reproductive-health issues, from fumbling a question about restricting abortion pills to flat-out lying about abortions later in pregnancy. This lack of knowledge didn’t stop him from proclaiming that he is “the father of IVF” at an all-women town hall hosted by Fox News on Wednesday. The remarks were Trump’s latest effort to position himself as a champion of fertility treatments, which more than 86 percent of Americans support but which have been at risk since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Before one of the town-hall attendees could even ask about fertility treatments, Trump said he was “the father of IVF.” He followed up by explaining that he had no idea what IVF even involved until February, when Republican Senator Katie Britt called him after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled against a fertility clinic and said that frozen embryos are children under state law.
“I got a call from Katie Britt, a young, just a fantastically attractive person from Alabama, she’s a senator, and she called me up like, ‘Emergency, emergency,’ because an Alabama judge had ruled that the IVF clinics were illegal and had to be closed down,” Trump said at the town hall. He rambled on: “I didn’t know they were even involved in; nobody talks about that, they don’t talk about it, but now that they can’t do it. She said I was attacked in a certain way, I was attacked. And I said, ‘Explain IVF very quickly,’ and within about two minutes I understood it. I said, ‘No no, we’re totally in favor of IVF.’”
Trump has tried to lean into the idea that he supports fertility treatments in order to win over women voters, who are furious at him for his role in the overturn of Roe. In late August, he claimed that he would make IVF free for everyone. Fertility treatments are very expensive: A single IVF cycle costs on average between $12,000 and $14,000 and is rarely covered by private health insurance. So how would a second Trump administration foot the bill? It’s unclear, as no policy proposal followed the announcement.
At the town hall, Trump also told attendees that the GOP is “the party for IVF,” despite the fact that twice this year alone, Senate Republicans — including Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance — voted against a bill that would codify the right to IVF and help lower the cost of fertility treatments for all Americans. Additionally, the current Republican platform supports states’ rights to enforce the 14th Amendment, which legal experts and anti-abortion advocates believe is an explicit endorsement of fetal personhood. Applying the 14th Amendment in this way would threaten the legality of IVF, as well as certain types of contraception, because it would give embryos and fetuses the same rights as people from the moment of fertilization.
Vice-President Kamala Harris called Trump’s remarks “quite bizarre” and said he should take responsibility for depriving one in three American women of their right to an abortion. “What he should take responsibility for is that couples who are praying and hoping and working toward growing a family have been so disappointed and harmed by the fact that IVF treatments have now been put at risk,” she said before she departed Detroit following several events. “Let’s not be distracted by his choice of words. The reality is his actions have been very harmful to women and families in America on this issue.”