Republicans from Donald Trump down have a new answer when they’re asked questions they desperately don’t want to answer about abortion policy: IVF, IVF, IVF.
There’s just not a lot of substance behind the new messaging.
This focus on IVF is “all about elections,” Rep. Mike Kelly, a Trump ally, told NOTUS. “It’s not about being sincere on it, it’s about making statements ahead of time, and then afterwards, you do what you want.”
Kelly, who has introduced a bill to federally ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, said that “the pivot” from talking about banning abortion to supporting IVF “is because of the way people think today.” He added that he is “amazed at how, as a culture, we’ve changed” and “life is being lost.”
Following a February Alabama Supreme Court ruling that restricted IVF based on the state’s abortion ban, the GOP has scrambled to insist they support fertility treatments. Trump went as far as to call himself a “leader” on IVF and last month pledged to offer free IVF treatments to all Americans funded by insurers or the government. (The former president has not offered details on how he would do so.)
Americans overwhelmingly support IVF access, even more than they do abortion, so the switch to fertility treatments is “just sort of a somewhat sincere, but also somewhat desperate, grasp for political safe ground,” Brendan Buck, a GOP strategist and a longtime aide to former House Speaker Paul Ryan, told NOTUS.
When NOTUS reached out to the Trump campaign earlier this month, specifically on the former president’s stance on abortion and the backlash he has received from anti-abortion groups for a different story, a spokesperson reiterated that Trump “will support universal access to IVF for growing families.” NOTUS did not ask about fertility treatments at the time.
“It’s just dramatically safer ground for any Republican,” Buck said, calling Trump’s free IVF proposal a “talking point for him to try to save face on these issues.”
GOP Sen. Cynthia Lummis told NOTUS that “Republicans don’t message well on abortion” and they should focus on supporting IVF instead because it’s a “pro-life” and a “pro-baby” position.
Similarly, Sen. James Lankford, who introduced a bill to promote what anti-abortion groups say is a more “ethical” alternative to IVF, said fertility treatments are “a much easier topic” than abortion because it is about “the value of every single child, that every child is precious.”
However, their messaging does not appear to match their legislative record.
Republican senators in 2022 and 2024 blocked legislation brought by Democrats to guarantee IVF access nationwide. In the House, some have opposed the Department of Veterans Affairs’ decision to expand IVF services to unmarried veterans and those in same-sex marriages, calling the procedure “morally dubious.”
“You have a candidate out there on the stump that says, ‘Well, yeah, I absolutely support IVF.’ And then the legitimate question is, ‘Well, why did you vote against moving to take it up?’” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one of the only two GOP senators to side with Democrats on the IVF votes, told NOTUS in July. “Now, you have … a rationale that just doesn’t make sense.”
Democrats, Murkowski added, “have seized on it.”
“[IVF] is the only thing that they can say sort of in the realm of women’s reproduction that doesn’t make them look ghoulish, that doesn’t make them look completely unfeeling when we have these draconian … anti-abortion laws across the country,” said Rep. Becca Balint, who is leading House Democrats in trying to repeal the Comstock Act.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will bring a vote Tuesday afternoon on the Right to IVF Act, following Trump’s promise to cover IVF costs and daring Republicans to vote against it.
“As our national debate on reproductive rights has continued to unfold, we have seen the Republican Party’s nominee for president claim to be ‘a leader in fertilization’ and come out in support of expanding access to IVF by requiring insurance companies to cover IVF treatment — a key provision included in the Right to IVF Act. So, we are going to give our Republican colleagues another chance to show the American people where they stand,” Schumer said in a “Dear Colleague” letter sent on Sunday.
Former Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones, who is in a tight race against GOP Rep. Mike Lawler, told NOTUS that in the aftermath of the fall of Roe v. Wade, Republicans “never” brought up fertility treatments, even as Democrats introduced bills in 2022 to protect it over concerns that abortion bans could negatively impact access. Lawler is now one of the few House Republicans who signed onto Democrats’ bill to protect IVF.
“It was only in recent months, when the Alabama decision was issued as a direct consequence of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, that they became fearful of their extremism costing them elections, like in districts like mine,” Jones added.
“There is a lot of desperation” for Republicans to keep up with Democrats, who have been successfully campaigning on abortion rights and “reproductive freedom,” said Liz Mair, a Republican strategist and former top RNC staffer.
She added that “if [Trump is] talking about this, he’s losing, and I just don’t think trying to mollify people with IVF” is going to help him gain voters in November and, instead, he could anger part of the conservative base that have moral concerns about IVF.
IVF is a complicated topic for anti-abortion advocates, some of whom see the treatment as unethical for its disposal of embryos because they believe life begins at conception. The Southern Baptist Convention voted this summer to oppose the use of IVF in a resolution affirming the “right to life of every human being, including those in an embryonic stage.” Some anti-abortion leaders have directed their supporters not to vote for Trump in November over his positions on abortion and IVF.
The bill senators will vote on, which mandates insurance coverage for IVF, is likely to fail. Several Republican lawmakers told NOTUS they would not support mandating insurance coverage for IVF. But that doesn’t mean Trump won’t keep trying to campaign on it.
On the campaign trail, Trump has the ability to “come up with all kinds of plans,” including free IVF, to “get people jazzed up,” while being able to hand the responsibility over to Congress and avoid blame for it not getting enacted, said GOP strategist John Feehery.
“When you’re running for president, you propose and the Congress disposes,” Feehery told NOTUS.
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Oriana González is a reporter at NOTUS.