Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth for the Colson Center. I'm John Stone Street. According to Ryan Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, quote, the Trump administration's IVF policy unveiled on Thursday. is perhaps the least bad that we could have hoped for, but least bad is still bad. ⁇ With his long-awaited or dreaded follow-up to his earlier executive order, the President announced a plan to dramatically reduce the cost of in vitro fertilization, provide insurance coverage for fertility treatments including in vitro fertilization, and increase access to it.
According to the president, quote, you can't get more pro-life than this. But IVF is not pro-life. Despite what was said during the President's press conference on Thursday, IVF is not even pro-fertility. Yes, born children do result from IVF, but the way it's overwhelmingly and almost universally practiced means that far more lives are lost in the process than survive. As Students for Life President Kristen Hawkins posted on X in response to the announcement, quote, the IVF industry kills more preborn babies than the abortion industry, doesn't cure infertility, and practices eugenics, end quote.
The embryos that are produced by IVF are subjected to screening prior to implantation. which checks for everything from the desired sex of the embryo to potential genetic and health conditions. Any embryo that's deemed not viable is destroyed.
Now advocates of IVF can call this widely accepted and practice step in the process whatever they want. The best word for it is eugenics. After the screening process, the viable embryos are then prioritized for implantation. If pregnancy is achieved, the remaining embryos are considered to be excess, a population that numbers in the millions and exceeds the number of embryos that are born. Most of these are stored and frozen, literally suspended in time.
Many are just destroyed.
Some are donated to medical research. A small number of these little image bearers might be given up. For adoption, something known as snowflake adoption. And the ethical problems with IVF do not end there. Legally, embryos created through IVF are considered property and therefore without rights.
They're frequently fought over in custody battles. Even more significant is the dramatic lack of oversight and regulation of the industry. During IVF, embryos are thoroughly screened, but the adults involved are not.
So virtually anyone can choose to participate in creating more embryonic image bearers for any reason.
Now many, of course, operate from the good God given desire to have children, but some are more nefarious. Also, any individual or relational arrangement can choose to participate in IVF, which will rob a child of his or her own mother or father. As Ryan Anderson summarized in an article at First Things, Quote, the bulk of the Trump IVF policy entails two main features. Lowering the prices on IVF and other fertility treatments by lowering the cost of key drugs through most favored nation pricing. and creating a new optional employer fertility insurance benefit.
In other words, the goal is to make IVF cheaper and more accessible. But making IVF cheaper and more accessible while expanding insurance coverage for the practice only will increase the number of children that are discarded or frozen or orphaned from their mother or father. IVF in America is not, in fact, about fertility. It's an industry, a radically underregulated selling of goods and services, and in the vast majority of cases, what's being sold as goods and services are people. The good intentions of some who participate cannot change what this underregulated, unethical, and dehumanizing industry.
has truly become.
Now to be fair, there are four positive aspects to the President's plan that was announced on Thursday. First, there is no IVF mandate for employers or insurance policies to cover IVF. Nothing like what President Obama attempted to do with contraception and his contraceptive mandate. Second, nothing in the plan is to be paid for by taxes. Each of these first two things protect conscience rights.
Third, there was no aspersion cast on people of conscience who oppose IVF on ethical grounds. Too often, that's how these kinds of things go forward, by ridiculing, mocking, or dismissing the real concerns that American citizens have. Fourth, the new employer fertility benefit can be customized to not include IVF. but to instead include ethical fertility treatments like restorative reproductive medicine. That's good news.
Still, at heart, the President's plan is really about making this industry cheaper and more efficient. And that demonstrates that this administration did not listen to the critics of IBF. It is far more efficient to collect as many eggs and create as many embryos as possible. But that's led to more lives lost annually through IVF. than in all the Planned Parenthood abortion clinics combined.
A far more ethical approach would be to create an implant one embryo at a time, but that would not be efficient, nor would it be cost-effective. But whenever that kind of language is applied to a person to begin with, Something has gone seriously wrong. A former professor of mine would often say that whenever you put a price tag on something that's priced less, you immediately cheapen it. Every single human life is priceless, including every single life that's created through IVF. Every human being is made in the image and likeness of God.
As one couple who've allowed two children a chance to live and thrive through snowflake adoption told me. children should never be made and then sacrificed so adults can just get what they want. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, please leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And for a version of this commentary that you can download and share with others, go to breakpoint.org.
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