Trump’s Useless ‘Executive Order’ on IVF Could Have Been an Email

There’s a special place in hell for people who waste your time with meetings that could have been an email, and I hope Donald Trump ends up there. (I hope he goes to hell for many reasons, but I digress.) On Tuesday, the president signed a bizarre, so-called executive order on IVF, stating that “Americans need reliable access to IVF and more affordable treatment options, as the cost per cycle can range from $12,000 to $25,000.” True! Now, what does the order do, exactly? Well, nothing. It instructs the assistant to the president on domestic policy to give Trump a list of policy recommendations to shore up access to the fertility treatment and “aggressively [reduce] out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment” within 90 days.

“PROMISES MADE. PROMISES KEPT: President Trump just signed an Executive Order to Expand Access to IVF!” press secretary Karoline Leavitt tweeted on Tuesday, with a siren alert emoji, as if something urgent and imminent happened (it didn’t!) as well as a baby emoji. The rest of her tweet gives away the game that the order does nothing, specifying that all it does is solicit “policy recommendations.” Great!

Not to critique, but couldn’t this “executive order” have just been an email to Trump’s policy adviser…? In practice, it doesn’t change anything. Twenty-four hours after Trump signed it, couples and individuals unable to afford the treatment, or whose insurance plans don’t cover it, are still left in the lurch. It’s a performative gesture and, sadly, multiple single-issue fertility advocacy organizations seemingly took the bait—thanking the president and heaping praise on him without clarifying what this all even means. 

But Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), who used IVF to conceive and has introduced several bills to codify a right to the treatment, excoriated Trump over the uselessness and deceptiveness of the order. “Don’t be fooled. Donald Trump’s executive order does nothing to expand access to IVF. In fact, he’s the reason IVF is at risk in the first place,” she said in a Tuesday statement. Indeed, since the reversal of Roe v. Wade, which Trump takes credit for, IVF has come under threat since abortion bans have helped pave the way for courts or bills to recognize embryos as “children,” or declare that “life begins at conception.” This type of policy jeopardizes the legality of IVF, which requires routine destruction of unused embryos.

Don’t be fooled. Trump’s executive order does nothing to expand access to IVF.

But if he’s actually serious about delivering on his campaign promise, he can prove it by calling on Republicans to back my Right to IVF Act.

Otherwise, it’s all just lip-service from a known liar. https://t.co/4JSBfT3NfW

— Tammy Duckworth (@SenDuckworth) February 19, 2025

“If he is actually serious about taking real action to accomplish his own campaign promise to make IVF free for everyone, there’s a simple way he can prove it: He can call on Senate Republicans to immediately back my Right to IVF Act that would require insurance plans to cover IVF,” Duckworth said. “Otherwise, it’s all just lip-service from a known liar.” Senate Republicans have blocked Duckworth’s bill each time she’s brought it forward since 2022.

On the campaign trail, Trump faced the deep unpopularity of abortion bans and rising threats to IVF, especially after the Alabama Supreme Court last year ruled that frozen embryos are “extrauterine children” whose destruction qualifies for wrongful death suits, temporarily shuttering IVF access across the state. So, last fall, Trump declared himself the “father of IVF” and pledged to make it widely available, which ruffled feathers among fiscal conservatives and anti-abortion leaders who see IVF, like abortion, as murder.

And he really pissed off those same anti-abortion extremists with his latest stunt. “IVF is NOT pro-life,” Live Action’s Lila Rose tweeted after Trump’s order, alongside stats about how few frozen embryos lead to live births. Another anti-abortion activist and writer called the order “horrific” and blamed IVF for “the death of countless unborn children.” I’m tempted to laugh, but it’s genuinely terrifying that a movement as powerful as the anti-abortion movement sees the world this way.

Anti-abortion advocates’ furious reaction to Trump’s IVF order—which does not actually do anything!—is a good reminder of how extreme and bizarre their movement’s ideology truly is. They claim to speak for a majority, but most Americans don’t believe this stuff! It’s total fringe lunacy.

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— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) February 18, 2025 at 5:02 PM

In any case, all of Trump’s campaign trail “advocacy” for IVF was political posturing, and his Tuesday order is just more posturing. When it comes to threats to IVF, the call is coming from inside the house: Trump is literally the leader of a party that’s increasingly attacking access to fertility treatments.

And it’s not just Senate Republicans’ repeated refusal to advance Duckworth’s bill. In 2023, GOP lawmakers in a slew of state legislatures introduced “life begins at conception” bills that jeopardized IVF. The North Carolina Republican Party’s official 2024 platform, adopted in June, opposes the destruction of human embryos—effectively a ban on IVF. In May, the Texas GOP ratified its official 2024 platform, which calls for the criminalization of IVF. Tennessee Republicans last February blocked a bill to enshrine protections for IVF and birth control because they said it would weaken their total abortion ban. And Vice President JD Vance was among the GOP senators who voted against Democrats’ pro-IVF bill last year. In August, reporters resurfaced his foreword endorsing a 2017 essay collection by the Heritage Foundation that expresses reservations about the morality of IVF.

We should all agree that IVF and all fertility and reproductive health care (including abortion!!!!!!!) should be more affordable and accessible to all. Barbara Collura, president of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, told HuffPost that Trump’s order “is a first step.” Trust me, I’ll be following along to see if that “first step” leads to a second one. 

But we definitely don’t have to thank Trump for anything. First, because he hasn’t done anything yet. And second, because even if he did, policies don’t exist in a vacuum. How is this administration pro-family if I have a baby through IVF, and the baby catches measles and dies because Trump’s administration ended vaccine mandates? Or if I can’t afford to feed my baby after Trump and Elon Musk end SNAP? Or if I conceive through IVF, experience pregnancy complications, and die or almost die because Trump, as he so often brags, killed Roe? Or, for immigrant communities, what good are lowered IVF costs for building a family if this administration deports or threatens your family members? This administration has obsessively pushed its birth rate obsession on all of us, from Vance’s creepy speech at the annual March for Life in January, to Trump’s transportation secretary writing in a memo that communities with more married couples with children should be prioritized. But how, exactly, is anyone who isn’t a billionaire supposed to feel safe and supported having kids under the conditions they’re creating?

If Trump really wants to help families and people trying to start families, he can simply resign and fuck off into the sun.