While discussing one of the most anticipated topics of the first (and possibly only) 2024 presidential debate, former President Donald Trump boldly claimed to be “a leader on IVF” (in-vitro fertilization) after moderators asked whether Americans should trust him on the issue of abortion—and more specifically, whether he would veto a nationwide ban on the medical procedure, a question he did not clearly answer.
“I’ve been a leader on IVF,” Trump said during the debate, which took place in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center on September 10. (IVF is a common and effective fertility treatment in which eggs are retrieved from a person’s ovaries and then combined with sperm outside of a person’s body in a lab; the fertilized egg is then planted inside the person’s uterus.) He was specifically responding to statements made by Vice President Kamala Harris, who called on the public to “understand what has been happening under Donald Trump’s abortion bans. Couples who pray and dream of having a family are being denied IVF treatments.”
Trump’s past remarks on assisted reproductive technology like IVF are confusing at best, even leaving Republicans scratching their heads on what exactly he plans to support if re-elected. He wasn’t exactly lying when he attempted to explain that he called on state lawmakers to protect access to IVF after a controversial Alabama Supreme Court court ruling, which deemed that frozen embryos can be considered children under the law, led multiple clinics and providers to pause treatments. In a February 23 post on social media platform Truth Social, Trump said, “Under my leadership, the Republican Party will always support the creation of strong, thriving, healthy American families. We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder!”
And he has even gone as far as to suggest that the government or health insurance companies should financially back IVF. “We are going to be, under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for that treatment,” Trump told NBC News in August. “We’re going to be mandating that the insurance company pay.” His statement apparently came as a surprise to those working on his campaign.
But as promising as his support of IVF seems, it sure feels like a ruse at best. When NBC News asked for more details on his comments earlier this month, his campaign told the outlet it’s not clear whether there actually is a plan.
After all, Trump’s critical role in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which erased the constitutional right to abortion care—notably a move he has proudly taken credit for, as it was made possible by the Supreme Court justices he appointed—paved the way for the Alabama ruling that threatened the use of embryos for IVF in the first place.
That’s why it’s worth looking at Trump’s track record on abortion, in particular; he used a similar flip-floppy strategy around the issue to appease his base while attempting to lure in more moderate voters. In 2018, he endorsed a 20-week national abortion ban and promised to sign it if it passed the Senate (it did not). In 2019, he passed a rule allowing health care providers to deny offering services like abortion on the basis of their religious beliefs. Then, in 2022, Trump seemed to backtrack on his stricter stances on abortion and criticized “Republicans, particularly those that fought against exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother, that lost large numbers of voters.” This year, however, he reportedly favored a 16-week (and then a 15-week) national abortion ban, before ultimately saying that the issue should be left to the states, a point he also mentioned several times during the debate.
What is clear is that Trump’s contradictory statements on reproductive health care are and always have been last-ditch efforts to hold onto any bit of support he can, which Harris directly called out during the debate tonight, stating, “The majority of Americans believe in a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body. And that is why in every state where this issue has been on the ballot, in red and blue states both, the people of America have voted for freedom.”
Your health is always on the ballot—and your vote is more powerful than you realize! Follow SELF’s coverage of the 2024 election here.
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