Former President Donald Trump reaffirmed his support for in vitro fertilization services after Vice President Kamala Harris rolled out an ad that said he might ban the fertility treatment.
The Trump campaign embraced “universal access” to IVF healthcare and didn’t deny suggestions the policy could include services for LGBT couples, according to an NBC report published Thursday.
“President Trump has long been consistent in supporting the rights of states to make decisions on abortion and has been very clear that he will NOT sign a federal ban when he is back in the White House. President Trump also supports universal access to contraception and IVF,” Trump’s campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
Meanwhile, Harris campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said Trump’s “own platform — listed publicly on his website — could effectively ban IVF” in comments to the outlet. The campaign did not reply to the Washington Examiner’s follow-up for clarification on what policies Munoz referred to.
As Harris stumps on the campaign trail across the country, she has repeatedly alleged Trump and other Republicans will attempt to ban IVF if he wins a second term.
Her campaign released a one-minute ad this week depicting a military family worried about being unable to access IVF services under a Trump presidency.
“Comrade Kamala Harris just put up an Ad saying that I.V.F. was banned in certain areas because of me,” Trump said on Truth Social after the ad began airing on Monday. “That is another LIE, just like her working at McDonald’s was a LIE! I have been totally supportive of I.V.F., right from the beginning, and so has the Republican Party!” he declared.
Trump has pledged to bolster access to fertility treatments, even drawing fire from his right flank for recently promising that the government or health insurance companies would fully fund IVF healthcare if he wins the election.
“We want more babies, to put it very nicely. And for the same reason, we will also allow new parents to deduct major newborn expenses from their taxes,” he said.
IVF policy fueled another debate in the Senate earlier this month as Democrats torched Republican colleagues in the upper chamber for blocking an IVF bill they said was only about protecting “millions of women’s only chance of starting families.”
“On behalf of every woman who has faced the heart-shattering struggle of infertility, all I can say to my Republican colleagues this afternoon is: Shame. On. You,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) said after the GOP stalled her Right to IVF Act.
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However, many members of the Senate GOP said they were against the bill because they believed it went far beyond supporting women’s access to IVF healthcare.
Among their worries were that by removing legal and ethical regulations that oversee the IVF industry, Duckworth’s framework could open the door to embryo cloning, gene editing, and “designer babies.”
