On February 18, President Trump signed an executive order titled, “EXPANDING ACCESS TO IN VITRO FERTILIZATION.” Noting “the importance of family formation,” the prevalence of infertility (“as many as one in seven”), and the high cost of IVF ($12,000 to $25,000 per cycle), the administration committed itself to a policy which would “ensure reliable access to IVF treatment” by “Lowering Costs and Reducing Barriers to IVF.”[1] The accompanying White House Fact Sheet on the executive order noted U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) data reporting more than “85,000 infants were born as a result of IVF in 2021” alone.[2] Both the executive order and fact sheet specify mothers and fathers, which is reassuring, as children need both. The fact sheet further asserts, tellingly, “The general U.S. fertility rate is at another historic low” and dropping annually 2 percent from 2014 to 2020, then 3 percent in 2023. Understand that no industrialized nation maintains replacement levels of fertility[3] (2.1 children per woman).[4][5] The world has never been overpopulated, is not now and never looks to be—we’re in a demographic death spiral upon which governments are beginning to act.

 

The desire for children is a good and God-breathed thing. Infertility can be a crushing state, and in several cultures it can be a source of deep shame. Proverbs 13:12 reminds us, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick…” (NIV). As healthcare professionals, we can understand how motivational infertility can be, especially if we experience it ourselves. However, one must look beyond the overarching promise and sales pitch of IVF to its reality and shortcomings, which are numerous.

 

Depending on the manner of employment, IVF may involve and is not limited to:

• Sperm or egg donation from outside the married couple. Thus, whose baby?
• If ova are donated, there is what has been called the “eggsploitation” of the donor, usually lower income women, who receive high doses of fertility drugs followed by mass harvesting of ova/eggs. It is complication prone, and those complications are the donor woman’s problem.
• Eugenics, as all embryos get screened for the perceived best players.
• Mass sacrifice of embryonic human beings—science has long shown that life begins at fertilization—the vast majority of IVF embryos don’t produce babies.
• Side vending embryos to scientific experimentation, or even less worthy industrial ends, resulting in the creation of life to be killed.
• Possible further human trafficking (European nations increasingly view it this way) in the form of surrogacy, almost always poorer women who sign contracts surrendering many of their own rights to the paying person/couple through highly invasive contracts, often with abortion clauses for certain outcomes or whims; and incurring more risks for the surrogate mother than a usual pregnancy by its nature, among other issues.
• Big money changes hands, thus big corruption abounds.
• “Big Fertility” and IVF clinics are not ethical powerhouses.
• Like making insurers pay for gender experimentation procedures (so-called gender-affirming healthcare), requiring that insurers cover IVF drives up the cost of insurance for all with yet another mandate, and it sets the insurers up for malpractice suits and eventual possible lifetime coverage of the people they harm.
• None of this helps adoption, let alone embryo adoption (adoption from the earliest stage of life), at least not as currently stated.

 

I suspect the Trump Administration wishes to address America’s demographic down trending, and that of the world by our example, but by doing it this way rather than strongly encouraging marriage and that fathers raise the children they sire, they are encouraging singles and couples that perhaps shouldn’t be having children to step up to the marketplace of human commodification, reducing children from subjects of human rights to objects of human rights. There is no better family structure for a child than a married biological mother and biological father.[6] Accelerating and subsidizing IVF reduces the nuclear family to one option among many less helpful and some harmful ones. That may not end well for the child.

 

Again, as science has long shown, human life begins at conception/fertilization, a fact pointedly specified HHS’ February 19 guidance document “Defining Sex.”[7] Certainly the fertility clinics understand this. The time has come for a national council and legislation on the rights of a human life at its earliest stages.

 

Pro-life ethics is a bigger tent than some presume, and views regarding IVF vary within it. CMDA is currently drafting its position statement on IVF, which is expected to be released in a few months. The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) 2024 Committee Opinion on the Ethical Treatment of Embryos touches on the subject, and the Summary of Recommendations and Conclusion (p.19) cuts to the chase in a paper that is otherwise a bit technical for lay readers.[8] Neither document is prohibitionist on the topic of IVF, and my opinions on the subject expressed herein are not necessarily those of either CMDA or AAPLOG.

 

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[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/expanding-access-to-in-vitro-fertilization/

[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-expands-access-to-in-vitro-fertilization-ivf/

[3] https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries

[4]https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199976720.001.0001/acref-9780199976720-e-1633

[5] https://library.fiveable.me/key-terms/ap-hug/replacement-level-fertility

[6] Sullins, D. Paul, The Case for Mom and Dad, The Linacre Quarterly, March 8, 2021. doi: 10.1177/0024363921989491

[7]https://womenshealth.gov/sites/default/files/_images/2025/2.19.25%20Defining%20Sex%20Guidance%20for%20Federal%20Agencies%2C%20External%20Partners%2C%20and%20the%20Public%20FINAL.pdf

[8] https://members.aaplog.site/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/2024.11.19-WEBSITE-CO-12-Ethical-Treatment-of-Human-Embryos-final.pdf