President Donald Trump called himself the “father of [in-vitro fertilization]” during an all-female Fox News town hall that aired on Wednesday in a bid to sway female voters.
After Senator Katie Britt (R., Ala.), whom Trump described as a “fantastically attractive person from Alabama,” notified the former president about an Alabama court decision that might shut down IVF clinics in her state earlier this year, Trump asked her to “explain IVF very quickly.”
“And within about two minutes, I understood it,” Trump said. “I said, ‘No, no. We’re totally in favor of IVF.’ I came out with a statement within an hour. A really powerful statement . . . and we went totally in favor. The Republican Party, the whole party.”
Trump also said, before being asked a question about IVF, that he was “the father of IVF” and announced that “we are totally in favor of it.”
“We want fertilization and it’s all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and we’re out there on IVF even more than them,” Trump said.
When asked about Trump’s comments on Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris ignored Trump’s embrace of IVF, and instead criticized his role in overturning Roe v. Wade, which returned the responsibility of regulating abortion to individual states.
“If what he meant is taking responsibility, well, then yeah, he should take responsibility for the fact that one in three women in America lives in a Trump abortion ban state,” Harris said. “What he should take responsibility for is that couples who are praying and hoping and working toward growing a family have been so disappointed and harmed by the fact that IVF treatments have now been put at risk.”
“So let’s not be distracted by his choice of words,” she added. “The reality is, his actions have been very harmful to women and families in America on this issue.”
Both Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator J. D. Vance, have announced their respective support for IVF treatments. Trump went so far as to endorse government-subsidized IVF, although the president has yet to say which taxpayer program would foot the bill.
Some Republican lawmakers have advocated for stricter guidelines surrounding IVF, guidelines that would ensure fertilized embryos produced in the treatment would not be destroyed. Others call IVF treatments “pro-family,” and support Trump’s advocacy for broad access to fertility treatments as a policy area that could win over young female voters.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio has called the issue a complex one for Republicans.
“The ethical dilemma that this poses is, in order to create life, you have to destroy life because you’ll create embryos that are not going to be used,” Rubio said. “And it’s a very difficult bioethical issue, and it’s one that the practitioners themselves confront.”
“That’s what makes it complex,” Rubio said. “And it’s a balancing act that, as a society, we’re going to have to make.”
Also during the town hall, Trump said that some state abortion laws are “too tough” and added that laws harshly restricting abortion would “be redone.”
“The states are now voting [on abortion rights], and honestly, some of them are going much more liberal, like in Ohio,” he said. “You have to follow your heart; you need the exceptions of rape, incest, and the life of the mother.”