‘Free IVF” is a strange rallying cry for President Donald Trump’s realignment. The pledge to become a “fertilization president” is not the same thing as a commitment to be pro-family. IVF is premised on the creation and destruction of embryonic children, some thrown out after genetic screening, others simply excess to requirements and left on ice indefinitely. A GOP that embraces IVF is obviously a problem for the pro-life faction of the conservative movement. For social conservatives broadly, IVF’s potential to create three-parent children (whether through surrogacy or mix-and-match gametogenesis) is a different kind of crisis.
To top it off, IVF is a strange fit for the Make America Healthy Again movement. MAHA harbors, in other domains, an intense skepticism of the medical system. It bristles at doctors who set themselves up as technicians of the human body, offering injections, adjusting dosages, trying to impose a chemically induced approximation of “normal” over the existing body. For my part, I’ve seen doctors who embodied the best and the worst of medicine as my husband and I struggled to carry a baby to term.
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