Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, speaks at a campaign rally at VFW Post 92 in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, on August 15, 2024.
Jeff Swensen | Getty Images
Republican presidential candidate Senator J. require from the government or private insurers to cover the cost of IVF treatments.
“Is this an extension of Obamacare? Is it a mandate?” CNN anchor John Berman asked the Ohio senator.
“Well, look, I think you’ve got insurance companies that are obviously forced to cover a bunch of services,” Vance replied.
“The President has said specifically that he wants insurers to cover additional fertility treatment,” he added, blaming Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris for high consumer costs more broadly.
Trump had revealed the politics of IVF in broad strokes during a campaign event in Michigan a day earlier.
Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump gestures during a visit to the Alro Steel manufacturing plant in Potterville, Michigan on August 29, 2024.
Brian Snyder | Reuters
“I’m announcing today in an important statement that under the Trump administration, your government will pay — or your insurance company will be required to pay — all costs associated with IVF treatment,” he said.
He said later NBC News that a future Trump administration would “pay for this treatment,” while also adding, “We’re going to make the insurance company pay.”
IVF is used in the vast majority of assisted reproduction procedures in cases of infertility. But it might be prohibitively expensiveranging from $15,000 to more than $30,000 for a single IVF cycle, and it takes an average of 2.5 cycles to get pregnant, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services.
The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology said almost 390,000 IVF cycles performed at its 368 member clinics in 2022, marking a 6% increase over the previous year.
Based on one average initial cost of $20,000 per IVF round, either taxpayers or private insurers would be on the hook for an annual bill of nearly $8 billion under Trump’s plan.
In addition, if IVF treatments were offered at no cost, in the same way regular exams and mammograms subject to the Affordable Care Act, there will likely be an increase in the number of patients seeking the treatment.
IVF, Trump and Abortion
Trump’s adoption of IVF as a policy platform is the former president’s latest attempt to appeal to voters concerned about women’s reproductive rights.
Recent polls of presidential race show Harris with a significant lead over Trump among female voters.
The lead reflects a broader shift underway in the electorate since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, which protected federal abortion rights for nearly 50 years.
The majority bloc in the case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, included three conservative justices whom Trump had nominated to the bench.
In the two years since the Dobbs decision, 22 states have enacted either blanket bans on abortion or restrictions that go beyond the previous standards on Roe, according to the New York Times.
Trump has repeatedly taken credit for ending Roe while falsely claiming that experts of all political stripes unanimously wanted the abortion issue to be decided by individual states rather than the federal government.
While he has courted anti-abortion voters and advocacy groups during his third run for the presidency, Trump has also sought to distance himself from states that have subsequently moved to strengthen abortion restrictions in the wake of Dobbs.
He has also come out against proposals by some of his GOP allies, including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, for a federal ban on abortion. The Republican Party adopted a new Trump-backed platform in July that softens its stance on abortion significantly.
But the Harris campaign has repeatedly warned that Trump would impose a nationwide abortion ban if he wins a second term in the White House.
IVF came to the forefront of the reproductive rights conflict in February when an Alabama Supreme Court ruling prompted fertility treatment providers in the state to end their services out of fear legal report.
Democrats quickly linked the development to Trump and Dobbs. Trump, in turn, urged the state to find a solution that would “preserve the availability of IVF in Alabama.”
In Friday’s CNN interview, Vance was asked how Trump’s new federally mandated IVF funding plan would work if a state chose to ban the procedure.
Vance responded, “I think that’s such a ridiculous hypothetical,” adding that Alabama “has actively protected access to fertility and fertility treatment.”
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a state law in early March aimed at protecting IVF and ending controversy over the court’s decision. But multiple IVF clinics in the state are closed in the wake of the controversy.
Florida storm
Vance also faced repeated questions about Trump’s recent remarks about a contested ballot measure that would extend abortion rights in Florida to the point of fetal viability, which is generally around the 24th week of pregnancy.
If passed, the ballot initiative known as Amendment 4 would override a bill signed last year by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis that banned most abortions in Florida after six weeks of pregnancy — a stage at which many women don’t even know they’re pregnant .
“I’m going to vote that we need more than six weeks” of access to legal abortions, Trump told NBC’s Dasha Burns on Thursday.
Trump’s response drew fierce condemnation from high-profile anti-abortion advocates.
“A vote on FL Amendment 4 is a vote for China and abortion policy without borders,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the national anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America, said on social media site X.
“That would leave no contrast” between Trump and Harris, he wrote, tagging Trump’s social media account.
Facing a firestorm of criticism from the anti-abortion right, Trump’s presidential campaign tried to walk back his comments and leave some ambiguity about how he would vote on Amendment 4.
“President Trump has not yet said how he will vote on the Florida ballot initiative, only reiterating that he believes six weeks is too short,” the campaign said in a statement.
On Friday, Vance insisted to CNN that Trump’s position on abortion has been “extremely consistent.” But he also stressed that Trump has not yet decided on Amendment 4.
