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(LifeSiteNews) — Embryo-destroying in-vitro fertilization (IVF) costs will be covered by the government or insurance if President Donald Trump is elected, the Republican candidate announced yesterday.
“I’m announcing today in a major statement that under the Trump Administration, your government will pay for, or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for, all costs associated with IVF treatment (sic), fertilization for women,” Trump said at a speech in Potterville, Michigan. “Because we want more babies, to put it very nicely,” Trump added.
He also said parents will be able to deduct “major newborn expenses from their taxes.”
He announced both proposals as a “pro-family” view and in support of “working families.” “The IVF treatments (sic) are expensive, it’s very hard for many people to do it, and to get it, but I’ve been in favor of IVF right from the beginning.”
The same day he made his “pro-family” statements, Trump said he believes babies should not be protected from abortion at six weeks.
Trump, a resident of Florida, was asked how he would vote on a ballot measure to legalize abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. Florida law currently protects babies when a heartbeat can be detected, which is around six weeks. “Well, I think the six week is too short, it has to be more time, and so that’s I’ve told them I want more weeks,” he said. Pressed on his position, he said, “I am going to be voting we need more than six weeks.”
Trump made a similar statement in support of IVF later that day at a townhall event in La Crosse, Wisconsin, with former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who said she and her husband tried IVF, though unsuccessfully. The former Hawaii Congresswoman recently endorsed Trump and will be part of his transition team if elected.
— Matt Lamb (@MattLamb22) August 30, 2024
Conservatives were quick to denounce Trump’s statements.
LifeSiteNews Editor-in-Chief John-Henry Westen called the announcement “heartbreaking.”
Westen noted that the insurance mandate will raise religious liberty concerns, as Christians oppose it. He compared it to President Barack Obama’s birth control mandate, which led to several Supreme Court cases.
“IVF is a measure which costs the lives of millions of children, yes it kills them,” Westen said. “It’s horrific. We’re killing kids again.”
“This is against the law of God,” Westen continued, comparing it to Obama’s contraception mandate. “He instituted the sexual act so that each child could be conceived in the loving union of a husband and wife. This ends that.”
A chorus of other conservative voices also criticized the anti-life plan.
“The two largest religious groups in the U.S., Catholics and Southern Baptists, both formally oppose IVF,” Catholic Daily Wire commentator Michael Knowles wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Many other Americans also reject it as immoral. It seems ill-advised for a political campaign to mandate that so many likely voters support something they consider gravely evil.”
“As a practical matter, most persons created through IVF are destroyed or frozen indefinitely,” he also wrote last night. “Additionally, IVF establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of human life, asserts a perverse ‘right’ to a child, and severs the unitive from the procreative,” Knowles said.
As a practical matter, most persons created through IVF are destroyed or frozen indefinitely. Additionally, IVF establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of human life, asserts a perverse “right” to a child, and severs the unitive from the procreative. https://t.co/h0b2ZQ2fAF
— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) August 30, 2024
“We Catholics are 100% against Trump taking our taxpayer money to fund IVF procedures!” Catholic podcaster Taylor Marshall wrote on X. “Somebody tell Trump that this is wrong. Catholics (and many Protestants) will not support this. Extremely disappointing,” the commentator and member of Catholics for Trump during the 2020 presidential election said.
Live Action founder Lila Rose also compared the IVF mandate with Obama’s birth control mandate. “Only 7% of embryos created via IVF will result in a live birth, the remaining 93% are frozen indefinitely, miscarried, or aborted,” she wrote on X. “Over 1 million human embryos are already frozen from these IVF procedures. How is this morally different than the contraceptive mandate under Obama?”
While IVF may appear to be pro-family because it can end with a baby, it also separates sex from procreation and leads to the death of millions of human embryonic children.
“The IVF industry is just as deadly as that other industry known to surgically and chemically kill preborn children,” an American Life League analysis concluded. Dwain Currier concluded in his report that two million human embryonic children are killed through IVF each year in the U.S., compared to about one million babies killed through abortion.
Pray for an end to IVF and the protection of human embryos: Join our prayer pledge