No, Trump Is Not The ‘Father Of IVF’

 

NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - OCTOBER 12: Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump smiles during a Hispanic roundtable at Beauty Society on October 12, 2024 in North Las Vegas, Nevada. 

By Nicole Lafond
October 16, 2024 .
This is your TPM evening briefing.

Papa fertilization really stepped in it Wednesday when trying to convince a group of women that his supposed ardent support for in-vitro fertilization is a genuine, long-held political position — and not a bandwagon he hopped on when it became a convenient middle ground for damage control on his abortion record this campaign cycle.

During a town hall event hosted and moderated by Fox News’ Harris Faulkner in the battleground state of Georgia on Tuesday, Donald Trump faced questions from an all-female audience, which reportedly consisted of women associated with local Republican groups, hand-picked by Fox News. Despite the friendly audience, Trump fumbled around as he answered their questions in weird and sexists ways — at one point painting himself as the “father of IVF” while admitting he just learned what the procedure was this year when the “fantastically attractive” Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) explained it to him.

Here’s what the former president said in response to a question about his support for the procedure:


[Britt] called me up like, “Emergency! Emergency!” Because an Alabama judge had ruled that the IVF clinics were illegal and they have to be closed down. A judge ruled. And she said, “Friends of mine came up to me, and they were — oh, they were so angry!”

I didn’t even know they were going, you know, they were — it’s fertilization. I didn’t know they were even involved in, nobody talks about — they don’t talk about it. But now that they can’t do it — she said, “I was attacked. In a certain way, I was attacked.”

And I said, “Explain IVF very quickly.” And within about two minutes, I understood it. I said, “No, no. We’re totally in favor of IVF.”

Trump introduced his new moniker for himself in response to a question about restrictive abortion bans in red states and how the bans might impact access to the popular and commonly used fertility treatment.

“I want to talk about IVF. I’m the father of IVF!” he exclaimed, before assuring audience members that the extreme bans that have been passed in states across the nation in the wake of Roe’s overturning — a legacy that he picks and chooses when to take credit for — are “going to be redone.”

“It’s going to be redone, it’s going to be redone, they’re going to — you end up with the vote of the people. And some of them, I agree, they’re too tough, too tough. And those are going to be redone,” he said.

“We really are the party for IVF. We want fertilization and it is all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it and we are out there on IVF even more than them. We are totally in favor of it,” he continued.

This, of course, all flies in the face of recent history: Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have spent recent months espousing their undying support for the fertility treatment, though it was put in harms way in the first place through the legal reasoning of their religious right allies, who contend that personhood begins at or even before conception. That ideology paved the way for the conservative Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling.

It was not until the Alabama Supreme Court handed down a decision that made that reasoning explicit, declaring embryos to be “babies” and putting IVF in the crosshairs, that Republicans spoke out about their supposed deep and undying love for the procedure. That rhetoric has been rolled out in split screen, as Republicans fight Democrats’ attempts to pass federal IVF protections in Congress, and continue to push for laws that would enshrine fetal personhood at the state level.


Nicole Lafond (@Nicole_Lafond) is TPM’s deputy editor, based in New York. She has also worked as the special projects editor and as a senior newswriter for TPM. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and previously covered education in central Illinois.