Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is vowing to force health insurance companies or the federal government to pay for IVF treatments, a proposal at odds with the actions of much of his own party
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s vow to promote in vitro fertilization by forcing health insurance companies or the federal government to pay for the treatments is at odds with the actions of much of his own party.
Yet his surprising announcement Thursday reveals the former president’s realization that GOP stances on abortion and reproductive rights could be huge liabilities for his chances of returning to the White House. Trump has quickly tried to reframe the narrative around those issues after Vice President Kamala Harris entered the presidential race.
Even before he made his coverage proposal, Trump had been promoting the idea that the Republican Party is a “leader” on IVF. That characterization is rejected by Democrats, who have seized on the common but expensive fertility treatment as another dimension of reproductive rights threatened by Republicans and a second Trump presidency.
It’s not just political partisans.
“Republicans are not leaders on IVF,” said Katie Watson, a medical ethics professor at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “Some of them have posed a threat to IVF, and they’re currently trying to figure out how to be anti-abortion and pro-IVF, and there are internal inconsistencies and struggles there. It appears that the Republicans are careening to remedy the political damage that resulted from their own choices.”
Trump’s proposal, which he announced without providing details, illustrates how reproductive rights have become central in this year’s presidential race. It’s also the latest example of the former president attempting to appear moderate on the issue, despite repeatedly boasting about appointing the three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion.
Even as the Republican Party has attempted to create a national narrative that it’s receptive of in vitro fertilization, many Republicans have been left grappling with the innate tension between support for the procedure and for laws passed by their own party that grant legal personhood not only to fetuses but to any embryos that are destroyed in the IVF process.
The messaging efforts also have been undercut by state lawmakers, Republican-dominated courts and anti-abortion leaders within the party’s ranks, as well as opposition to legislative attempts to protect IVF access.
Ahead of the Republican National Convention in July, the Republican Party adopted a policy platform that supports states establishing fetal personhood through the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which grants equal protection under the law to all American citizens.
