Trump’s Executive Order on IVF is Full of Red Flags

The administration’s latest statement on reproductive rights is a Trojan horse for future harm

By Jennifer Weiss-Wolf

As last week’s inaugural gender and democracy round up went to press at The Contrarian, the White House issued an executive order entitled “Expanding Access To In Vitro Fertilization.” The language it employs, and the sheer folly of what it promises, mark it as a double affront to democracy.

Starting with why Trump purports to care about IVF at all. Not long after the Supreme Court’s newly-installed supermajority overturned Roe v. Wade—for which Trump (rightly) claims and deserves all credit—attacks on IVF began to garner media attention. In 2024, Alabama’s highest court ruled that IVF embryos are considered children for purposes of wrongful death lawsuits. The stakes went beyond the impact on IVF (despite ensuing legislative attempts to course correct); the Alabama Supreme Court’s overt embrace of “fetal personhood” also implicates a central legal strategy that could eventually support a federal abortion ban.

Even as the White House has taken predictable swipes at abortion access at home and abroad, and Trump has filled his Cabinet with those who will toe the anti-abortion line, especially in top health and law enforcement positions, he has not (yet) gone full “shock and awe” given popular support for IVF and abortion. He has also leaned into a creepy self-designated savior role—"the father of IVF,” as he dubbed himself on the campaign trail, pledging to ensure that fertility treatments are affordable and available.

So what to make of this executive order—a promise fulfilled? From the National Review to MSNBC, few are convinced. I turned to Rutgers Law Professor Kimberly Mutcherson, expert in bioethics and reproductive health, law, and technology, to unpack exactly what is at stake for both reproductive health and democracy. Here are four red flags she raised:

First, the utility of the order itself. Says Professor Mutcherson, “It is useless and achieves absolutely nothing.” It merely calls for a set of recommendations within 90 days “on protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment.” Until we see proposed reforms and correlating budgetary commitments, the best we can be is wary.

When it comes to successful fertility treatment, Professor Mutcherson notes that insurance-based recommendations have significant limitations. Many states already have insurance mandates, yet research shows that not only are they insufficient for many patients, they also do not close the racial gap between white women and Black women when it comes to the accessibility of IVF treatment. Some mandates also limit who can access care (i.e., upper age limits, the requirement that people use their own gametes, excluding people on Medicaid). The devil will very be much in the details as to who and how many will benefit.

Second, the language the order employs is telling: “My Administration recognizes the importance of family formation, and as a Nation, our public policy must make it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children.” Many families may not fit into the administration’s vision of ideal family formations. Does this include single people? Same-sex couples? People with disabilities? People who are trans? Or will the policy recommendations reinforce hierarchies in keeping with Project 2025’s mandate of “[p]romoting [s]table and [f]lourishing [m]arried families” and the Heritage Foundation’s proclamation that a family “comprised of a married mother, father, and their children [is] the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society.”

To the extent that any new policy emerges from the executive order, limitations on which families, which couples, which parents will benefit are likely to vilify those already under attack by the administration—LGBTQ people, single parents, and low-income people, among others.

Third, an avalanche of potential conflict abounds. DOGE’s chainsaw approach to budgeting is anathema to expanding IVF access and bringing down its exorbitant cost. There is also likely to be interagency chaos over who gets to regulate what in a substantially changed and charged landscape. And between state and federal governments, Professor Mutcherson predicts conflicts over the regulation of medical practice (what happens if the federal government mandates how many embryos can be created in an IVF cycle or how many can be transferred?), rules of family formation (can donor gametes be used to make embryos?), and patient’s rights (who gets to decide which embryos to use?).

Fourth, as noted above regarding the Alabama case, the treatment of embryos could be the Trojan horse that leads to even more sweeping abortion restrictions. We should absolutely be concerned about how any reforms from the order will incorporate personhood for embryos, especially given strong religion-based concerns about practices that are part and parcel of IVF such as destruction of embryos and donating embryos for research. The opportunity to further an anti-abortion agenda while pursuing a discriminatory natalist project is glaring.

It is worth noting that well before Trump made a move, the Right to IVF Act was introduced by Sen. Tammy Duckworth. It would require employer-sponsored health plans and public health insurance, including Medicaid and military plans, to cover treatments; the bill also addresses discrimination and forbids the restriction of access to IVF based on marital status or sexual orientation. Partisan gridlock has kept it from advancing; not only have Republicans voted it down twice, they are now angling to cut billions in healthcare spending, including Medicaid.

Duckworth recently reminded voters that Trump is the reason IVF is at risk in the first place: “If he is actually serious about taking real action to accomplish his own campaign promise to make IVF free for everyone, he can call on Senate Republicans to immediately back [my legislation] that would require insurance plans to cover IVF.”

Of course he is not serious. Nothing about the executive order indicates as much. What it does indicate, like everything else we’ve seen from this administration, is a set-up for future harm.

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Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU School of Law.