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(LifeSiteNews) — President Donald Trump’s plan to make in-vitro fertilization (IVF) freely available could lead to the intentional killing of more than two million human embryonic children.
By comparison, there are roughly one million abortions per year in the United States.
Currently, about two percent of births come from IVF.
President Trump recently pledged to make embryo-destroying IVF “mandated” through government programs or private insurance. But this could lead to more deaths than legalized abortion every year, a LifeSiteNews analysis found.
Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, supports a federal law to protect IVF, according to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Harris surrogate.
“In general, an average of 8 to 14 eggs are typically retrieved from a woman’s ovaries with IVF,” the Reproductive Health and Wellness Center, an IVF facility, states. However, it says the “optimal number” is 15. EuroCare IVF calls the collection of 15 eggs “not uncommon.”
If insurance is paying for it, we can assume patients would use the highest reasonable number. American Life League used 19 eggs in its analysis, based on an example provided by Reproductive Medicine Associates.
The exact number does not necessarily matter, because if a woman retrieves fewer eggs because they are of a higher quality, this could lead to more embryos being discarded down the road.
Furthermore, there might be more total cycles of IVF per woman if insurance covers it. A couple that has to pay out of pocket for IVF may only do two cycles. If insurance covers four cycles, as it does in some countries, we can expect some couples will try for more.
Based on available data, about two to three human embryonic children are intentionally discarded during the IVF process. This does not count the abortion of human embryos when they develop into twins. IVF has a higher rate of twins than natural conception. It also does not count the embryos who do not continue to develop and expire on their own.
President Trump’s plan will likely double the amount of annual IVF cycles from 400,000 to 800,000 by making it more available.
This estimate is based on other countries that have made IVF available through their taxpayer-funded health plans. For example, France’s national health plan covers IVF, and it is used for about four percent of births, double the United States.
“In France, IVF is paid for by the French national health plan, and each woman is entitled to four cycles of IVF per child,” Roll Call reported in April of this year. “About 4 percent of French births are a result of IVF, and in the process the country discards roughly 150,0000 embryos per year.”
An academic paper from Stanford University researchers also backs up the estimate that the use of IVF will double.
“The rate of IVF initiations drops by half when [IVF] is not covered by health insurance,” the June 2024 paper found. This means, in theory, the use of IVF doubles when it is covered by health insurance. If two percent of births now come from IVF, we can expect the amount would roughly double if private insurance covered it or a government scheme paid for it.
Other researchers have reached similar conclusions.
“While IVF access and utilization vary widely globally, the practice now accounts for the conception of over 5% of all newborns in some European countries where IVF is more affordable and/or is covered by insurance,” a 2022 paper in Reproductive Sciences concluded.
Some states require IVF coverage, which allows researchers to test its usage versus other states. “IVF utilization appears to be higher in states with mandated IVF coverage,” the Kaiser Family Foundation found in 2020.
It is also possible more than 2.4 million human embryonic children will be intentionally killed, as free IVF may incentivize women to wait longer to start trying to have kids, which means they will need to use more cycles.
“The promise of a government-funded fertility insurance policy could lead would-be parents to put childbearing off, only to realize childbearing is impossible later, even with reproductive technology’s help,” Vanessa Calder wrote in an article for the libertarian (and pro-IVF) Cato Institute.
Fertility problems are a real burden for many couples. President Trump is right on the basic level to be concerned about married couples who want to have children but are unable to.
However, IVF, which separates sexuality from procreation and leads to the direct killing of innocent human life, is not an acceptable alternative.
Pro-lifers who are rightly concerned about the direct killing of innocent human beings at a Planned Parenthood facility should share the same concern about the 2,400,000 children who could be intentionally killed through free IVF.
RELATED: Bishop Strickland laments Trump’s IVF support
Pray for an end to IVF and the protection of human embryos: Join our prayer pledge