Trump said he supported IVF after several clinics stopped providing care following the Alabama decision.
Pottertown:
Donald Trump said Thursday he wants the government or insurance companies to cover the cost of in vitro fertilization for “all Americans who need it” during a second term, but he declined to say how he would pay for it.
Reproductive rights have been a major vulnerability for the Republican nominee for the White House since the Supreme Court gutted federal protections for abortion in 2022.
Trump's weakness was further exacerbated after an Alabama court ruled in February that frozen embryos obtained through IVF should be considered children.
Trump said he supported IVF after several clinics stopped providing care following the Alabama decision.
“I am announcing today in an important statement that, under the Trump administration, your government will pay all costs associated with IVF treatments, or your insurance company will be required to pay them,” he said at a rally in Potterville, Michigan.
He didn't provide details about how his proposal would work, including how it would be funded. But when the announcement was made in an interview with NBC ahead of the event, Trump said one option would be to have insurance companies pay “under a mandate.”
Experts say the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling effectively gave states the final say on personhood issues, paving the way for far-reaching implications for other areas of reproductive health, including IVF.
Few Americans have insurance that covers fertility treatments. The cost of $20,000 or more for a single 18-month course of IVF is prohibitive for many.
The former president added that under a second Trump term, new parents would be able to deduct “major expenses for newborns” from their taxes and declared that “we are pro-family.”
Although Trump has supported IVF since his February statement, he has taken different ideological positions on abortion, ultimately settling on his current position: the legal aspects of the procedure are a matter for the states themselves.
In 1999, he told NBC News he was “very pro-abortion,” before declaring in 2011 that he was “pro-life” and that women who seek abortions should face “some form of punishment” in 2016.
Trump has taken credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who struck down federal abortion rights and signaled Thursday how he might vote in a referendum in Florida this fall to overturn his home state's six-week ban.
“I want more than six weeks,” he told the Daily Mail. “I think six weeks is a mistake. And I will express that soon, but I want more than six weeks.”
Trump and his election rival, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, are campaigning in swing states this week, entering the most intense phase of the campaign.
Harris, who ran in Savannah, Georgia, told supporters that Trump would sign a nationwide ban on abortion if he won.
“Our fight is a fight for the future. And it is a fight for freedom. Like the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body, and not have her government tell her what to do,” she said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Our staff and is published via a syndicated feed.)
