In Oval Office remarks, Trump announced a deal with a major pharmaceutical company aimed at reducing the cost of drugs required for a standard IVF cycle, according to White House officials.
By Catholics for Catholics
Several pro-life activists, Catholic leaders and Bishops denounced the Trump administration’s recent move to expand in vitro fertilization, commonly known as IVF, by lowering its cost and making it more accessible.
One of the critics was Catholics For Catholics President, John C. Yep, who recognizes President Donald Trump’s desire to help families to have more children but categorically denounces the means that are being used to assist in the procreation of new lives. He said the recent move to promote and reduce the cost for in vitro fertilization and infertility treatments for American families is not justifiable.
“As St. John Paul II said, ‘nothing is worth more than the life of a child.’ However, the means cannot justify the end,” Yep said. “In this noble desire is buried a grave evil. IVF is immoral in its separation of the procreative act with the conjugal act which undermines the very nature of sexual relations. The subsequent storing of human embryos in freezers followed by the discarding of ‘leftover’ embryos makes the heart of Christ weep.”
The Trump administration’s announcement on IVF follows months of internal deliberations that exposed tensions within the president’s base. Since taking office, officials have consulted both IVF advocates and Pro-Life groups opposed to the procedure due to embryo discarding concerns.
JUST IN: @USAYep John Yep, Catholics For Catholics President Releases a Clear Statement On President Trump's Efforts to Expand IVF:
— Catholics for Catholics 🇺🇲 (@CforCatholics) October 17, 2025
“I understand and applaud @realDonaldTrump President Trump’s desire to help families have more children. As St. John Paul II said, ‘Nothing is… pic.twitter.com/ws6oL3Meco
According to The Daily Wire, Trump announced that his administration had issued guidance encouraging employers to cover IVF as part of company insurance plans. This is optional for employers, a senior White House official said on a press call with reporters Thursday, relieving some concerns from religious freedom advocates and pro-life groups. These groups find IVF to be an unethical practice, since it involves the creation and destruction of multiple embryos.
“Babies don’t belong in freezers. They belong between the loving arms of a father and mother, fruit of the sacred marital act between them,” Yep said. “This is not merely a ‘Catholic issue,’ as this immoral action is an affront to the Natural Law itself. All men and women of good need to speak up and urgently oppose this action.”
In a statement released Friday, three bishops from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also said they “strongly reject” IVF and other fertility treatments that “freeze or destroy precious human beings and treat them like property.”
“Without diminishing the dignity of people born through IVF, we must recognize that children have a right to be born of a natural and exclusive act of married love, rather than a business’s technological intervention,” the statement said. “And harmful government action to expand access to IVF must not also push people of faith to be complicit in its evils.”
According to The Daily Wire, pro-life advocates who view IVF as unethical had eagerly awaited the president’s actions, expecting a policy analogous to President Barack Obama’s controversial contraception mandate that might force Americans into conscience violations.
President Trump announces lowering the cost and expanding IVF.
— Catholics for Catholics 🇺🇲 (@CforCatholics) October 17, 2025
We are begotten, NOT made. Our faith teaches IVF is immoral and NOT pro-life.
We must provide moral guidance to our president. pic.twitter.com/bAhD2cwC8U
Though they’re not thrilled with the action, some say they are a little relieved. As Ethics and Public Policy Center President Ryan Anderson wrote, Thursday’s news was “the least bad that we could have hoped for.”
“The details are still being promulgated, but, as White House officials explained it, there will be no IVF mandate or direct government subsidies for IVF,” Anderson said. “Those who feared something akin to the Obama contraception mandate or taxpayer funding of abortion can breathe a sigh of relief. There will be no direct religious liberty or conscience violations, nor implications for taxpayer funding.”
More human embryos are lost through IVF than through abortion annually.
In 2021, the CDC estimated over 238,000 IVF attempts in the U.S., potentially creating 1.6 to 1.9 million embryos (assuming 7-8 embryos per patient). Fewer than 100,000 embryos resulted in live births, leaving 1.5 to 1.8 million embryos either intentionally destroyed or lost during the IVF process. Since the 1980s, IVF has been practiced in the U.S., with hundreds of thousands to 1.5 million embryos currently frozen.
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