President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order that would make in vitro fertilization more accessible to those who need them, however, not all pro-life activists are enthusiastic about the move and have raised concerns around ethics, arguing that IVF treatment destroys some of the embryos during the process.
Live Action founder Lila Rose wrote on X that the executive order doesn’t address the root causes of infertility.
“IVF doesn’t address the root causes of the infertility health crisis in America,” Rose wrote. “It’s a Big Pharma band aid, with major ethical issues, like millions of frozen & destroyed embryos. If we want to Make America Healthy Again, we should invest in addressing and healing the underlying causes of infertility.”
According to Fox News, White House spokesperson Kush Desai told Fox News Digital in a statement that Trump “pledged to expand IVF access for American families, and his executive order yesterday instructs that a plan be drafted to accomplish just that – a plan devised with feedback and input from critical stakeholder groups including Christian and pro-life voices.”
A fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Patrick T. Brown said IVF raises ethical issues within the pro-life movement because the technology has the ability to create new life.
“I think that there are questions about what exactly are we doing with IVF, where we’re creating something that has the potential to become a human person,” Brown said. “All of us were embryos at one stage or another, so they deserve some respect, at the very least, if not legal protection of some form or another. There’s actual guardrails that need to be pursued, rather than just going full speed ahead.”
Brown said the U.S. is the “Wild West” of IVF treatments, and that fact could open a “can of worms.”
“The U.S. allows people to select sex or to screen for different genetic traits in a way that most other countries don’t,” Brown said. “We’re kind of the ‘Wild West’ when it comes to some of this stuff. And it opens the can of worms for eugenics and some of these other things that I don’t think President Trump actually intends. But, you know, it could actually go that way if we’re not careful about it.”
Evangelical Christian Allie Beth Stuckey, host of The Blaze’s podcast “Relatable,” wrote on X that IVF is “anti-MAHA.”
“IVF is anti-MAHA. It’s the perfect example of what’s wrong with much of modern medicine in America,” Stuckey wrote. “Instead of getting to the root cause of infertility, it masks the symptoms with a “solution” that is a threat to women’s health. The process almost always involves the destruction or indefinite freezing of embryos. It is unbelievably unregulated in the United States, and I fear this latest EO will only make it worse.”
