Donald Trump's new executive order seeks recommendations on lowering IVF cost
Trump’s order, however, does not do anything immediately to lower those costs or expand access to such reproductive treatments.
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday, directing his team to produce policy recommendations to lower health plans and out-of-pocket costs for in vitro fertilization (IVF), amid criticism that his abortion policies would reduce access to the treatment.
Trump’s order, however, does not do anything immediately to lower those costs or expand access to such reproductive treatments.
The order is a directive "to the Domestic Policy Council to examine ways to make IVF and other fertility treatments more affordable for more Americans," Reuters quoted White House staff secretary Will Scharf as saying alongside Trump as the president delivered remarks at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also explained that the order was for producing recommendations.
"The Order directs policy recommendations to protect IVF access and aggressively reduce out-of-pocket and health plan costs for such treatments," Leavitt said in a post on X.
IVF treatment: A political flash point for Donald Trump and the Republicans
IVF treatments became a political flashpoint during the 2024 US presidential election, after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos could be considered children. That led clinics in the state to suspend the procedure until Alabama’s Republican governor signed legislation protecting health-care providers from liability.
Donald Trump moved to distance himself from that court ruling and sought to rebrand himself as a protector of reproductive rights, including calling himself the “father of IVF” at a town hall. He said during the campaign that under his administration the government or insurance companies would be mandated to pay for all costs associated with IVF treatment, but did not detail how he would achieve that goal.
Trump nominated three of the US Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade’s nationwide protections for abortion rights and struggled to articulate his views on reproductive care as he sought to appeal to his conservative base and women angered by the high court’s ruling.
