The Most Pro-Family Thing Trump Can Do Is Ditch His Support For Child-Commodifying IVF
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. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.
Jesus Christ is King
Comments are closed.