This has been a hot topic in the final months of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. If re-elected, Republican leaders have promised to make in vitro fertilization (IVF) free for people who want to get pregnant.
“Under the Trump administration, we’re going to pay for that treatment,” Trump told NBC News last year. “Or they could force insurance companies to pay.”
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That campaign promise remains unfulfilled, but the Trump administration took steps Thursday to make the process more accessible.
Speaking in the Oval Office, President Trump announced a partnership with EMD Serono, a subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant Merck, to offer low-cost fertility drugs on the upcoming TrumpRx prescription market.
“EMD Serono, the world’s largest manufacturer of fertility drugs, has agreed to deep discounts on all fertility drugs it sells in the United States, including the most popular IVF drug, Gonal F,” President Trump told reporters.
Expanding the TrumpRx project
The announcement marks the third major pharmaceutical company to agree to offer discounted products on TrumpRx, a direct-to-consumer website scheduled to launch in 2026.
In September, President Trump threatened drug companies with 100% tariffs on their products unless they began building manufacturing facilities in the United States.
However, the tariffs were postponed after drugmaker Pfizer announced an agreement with TrumpRx on September 30, the day before the tax hike was scheduled. Another industry heavyweight, AstraZeneca, followed suit last week.
At a press conference Thursday, President Trump once again acknowledged that the threat of tariffs has put businesses in a bind.
“They’re going to bring a significant portion of their drug manufacturing back to the United States,” President Trump said of EMD Serono. “There are many reasons for that, but primarily because of the November 5 election results, and perhaps most importantly because of the tariffs.”
In addition to EMD Serono’s upcoming discounts, President Trump has said he will encourage insurance companies to expand coverage of IVF treatments.
In the United States, laws vary by state regarding whether health insurance must cover infertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization. President Trump touted the administration’s guidance as a breakthrough in making reproductive health care more accessible and affordable.
“For the first time, we will make it legal for companies to offer supplemental insurance plans specifically for infertility treatment,” President Trump said.
“Americans will be able to opt-in and purchase professional insurance in the same way they purchase vision and dental insurance.”
These plans typically have additional fees on top of your regular health insurance premium. This raises questions about how effective the new insurance guidelines will be.
According to U.S. Census data, more than 26 million Americans (about 8 percent of the population) are uninsured. Additionally, many people do not have access to supplemental policies for dental and vision care.
The American Dental Association, an industry professional association, estimates that more than 22% of U.S. adults do not have dental insurance in 2021.
President Trump appeared to acknowledge this gap in coverage in his remarks, but argued that the government’s new guidelines will give some adults a path to parenthood.
“For the first time, they are getting fertility insurance,” he continued. “So, I don’t know. I don’t know how well these things are covered.”
Election campaign controversy
The Republican president also credited the 2024 court ruling with prompting him to focus on IVF treatment.
In vitro fertilization involves removing eggs from a patient’s ovaries and fertilizing them in a laboratory setting. These eggs are inserted into the patient’s uterus or frozen for future use.
Such treatments are on the rise in the United States, with the American Society of Reproductive Medicine revealing that in 2023, 95,860 babies were born as a result of IVF.
But the following February, the Alabama Supreme Court raised concerns about whether IVF would remain widely available.
In a novel decision, a court in a deeply conservative state has ruled that embryos created through in vitro fertilization can be considered children under state law, making the destruction of such embryos potentially a criminal offense.
The decision sent shock waves throughout the IVF industry, and the Alabama clinic temporarily suspended its services. In vitro fertilization, the standard method is to discard the embryo. Generally, more eggs are collected than are ultimately used, and not all fertilized eggs are suitable for starting a pregnancy.
Within weeks of the court’s decision, the Alabama Legislature intervened to protect IVF providers from prosecution. But the ruling lingered concerns that IVF could become a target for anti-abortion rights advocates.
On Thursday, President Trump revisited the controversy, which came as he was seeking re-election. He called the court’s decision a “bad decision” and acknowledged that it helped raise awareness about IVF.
“I didn’t know much about that,” Trump said. “Now I feel like a father myself.”
Sen. Katie Britt, who represents Alabama, echoed that assessment, praising President Trump for taking steps to protect IVF.
Thursday is not the first time President Trump has suggested cutting costs for infertility treatment. In February, he also issued an executive order calling on his administration to begin “protecting access to IVF and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health insurance costs.”
“Mr. President, this is the most pro-IVF action in the history of the United States,” Britt told Trump on Thursday. “You are the reason the Republican Party is now the party of parents.”
Addressing the U.S. birth rate
Trump, who previously referred to himself as the “fertilizing president” at a Women’s History Month event, also cast the new measures as a step toward increasing the U.S. birth rate.
In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that birth rates remain at historic lows and will increase slightly to 1.6 births per woman by 2024.
Those numbers have spurred calls for a new baby boom within the Republican Party, with right-wingers like tech billionaire Elon Musk even calling the declining birth rate “the greatest crisis facing civilization.”
At Thursday’s meeting, Trump administration leaders echoed those concerns, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“We’re currently below replacement,” he said, referring to the number of births needed to exceed deaths in the United States. “It is a national security threat to our country.”
Mehmet Oz, administrator of Medicaid Services under Kennedy, took a more aggressive approach. He framed the new IVF guidelines as a reversal of the trend toward declining births.
“There’s going to be a lot of Trump babies,” Oz joked. “I think that’s probably a good thing, but it turns out that the fundamental creative force in society is to have children.”
But it remains to be seen whether insurance companies and employers will follow President Trump’s lead to provide additional fertility benefits to adults who want to conceive.
Most Americans receive health insurance as part of their workplace benefits. Sen. Britt argued that the guidelines put employers in the “driver’s seat” and allow them to decide which benefits to provide to their workers.
“Employers will be able to decide how to cover the root causes of infertility and other things that impact infertility, such as obesity and metabolic health,” she says. “We want employers to be able to make these decisions, not the government.”
But for Democrats, the guidelines fell far short of what President Trump promised during his campaign.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren later posted on social media: “Donald Trump lied when he promised to make IVF free and available to all families.” “That’s an insult, a broken promise.”
