Vice President Kamala Harris‘s campaign is forcefully rebuking former President Donald Trump‘s newest call for the government or health insurance companies to fully fund in vitro fertilization treatments under a hypothetical second administration.
Her campaign announced the launch of a 50-stop “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” bus tour beginning Tuesday in Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort is located, and held a press call Friday morning to slam the former president’s more moderate stance on reproductive rights.
At a campaign stop Thursday in Potterville, Michigan, Trump told attendees that “under the Trump administration, your government will pay for, or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for, all costs associated with IVF treatment, fertilization for women.”
The measure is meant to lead to “more babies, to put it very nicely” Trump explained to the crowd. But Kevin Munoz, a senior spokesman for the Harris campaign disagreed with Trump’s assessment in a press call with reporters Friday morning.
“In case anybody has forgotten, Trump and Vance’s official platform promises to effectively ban IVF and abortion,” Munoz said. “Trump continues to refuse to veto extreme legislation that would threaten access to IVF for families across the country.”
The Republican National Committee’s platform, which was adopted in July, softened the GOP’s stance on abortion due to pressure from the Trump campaign but also called for members to “oppose Late Term Abortion while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF (fertility treatments).”
The former president has alternated between bragging that he helped overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022 by appointing three Supreme Court justices who helped strike down the case, while also cautioning his party members that moderation on abortion will stem electoral losses for the GOP.
But Democrats have slammed Trump’s efforts and claimed that voters will reject these efforts to move away from the most restrictive abortion limits.
“American women are not stupid, and we know the only guaranteed protection for IVF is a new national law, which Kamala Harris supports and Donald Trump opposes,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a top Harris surrogate. “When a law to protect IVF nationwide was put up for a vote in the Senate, J.D. Vance voted against it and four weeks later, Trump picked Vance to be his running mate.
“Making vague promises about insurance coverage does not stop a single one of the 131 Republicans in Congress from advancing their fetal personhood bill that would ban IVF despite what Trump seems to think,” Warren added. “American women are smart and we aren’t falling for his gaslighting.”
Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic-led bill in June that would guarantee a woman’s right to IVF and instead proposed a different bill discouraging states from explicitly banning IVF, but Democrats blocked that legislation as well.
The battle over IVF came to a head earlier this year when an Alabama Supreme Court ruling gave embryos personhood status, resulting in state IVF clinics temporarily shutting down to comply with the decision.
The GOP largely disavowed the IVF ruling, with Trump telling the crowd at the Michigan rally, “In Alabama, where the judge ruled against it, and I countered the judge and came out with a very strong statement for it.”
Latorya Beasley, a resident of Birmingham, Alabama, however, blamed Trump for the ruling during the Harris campaign press call.
“I was actually sitting in my doctor’s office one week away from my embryo transfer when I learned that clinics were halting fertility services,” Beasley told journalists. “It felt like my whole future was taken away from me in just an instant. It was a devastating moment for our family, financially, physically and emotionally. It took months before we could start IVF again. Donald Trump is directly responsible for what happened to me.”
Reproductive Freedom for All President and CEO Mini Timmaraju claimed that Trump’s anti-IVF efforts have spread across the nation, harming more women than those in Alabama.
“Alabama is not alone,” Timmaraju said. “Because of Donald Trump, laws are now in effect in states across the country that contain language that could endanger fertility treatment and even contraception. And what does Trump do about these extreme laws that threaten IVF? He’s not trying to repeal them. In fact, he calls these bans a ‘beautiful thing to watch.’”
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Although a federal abortion ban is among one of the top priorities for conservative and evangelical voters, Trump does not appear willing to publicly embrace that stance. Democrats are hoping that calling Trump out for “flip-flopping” on reproductive rights can help galvanize voters to deliver the White House to Harris.
“Elections are about choices, and the contrast between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on the issues of abortion and IVF could not be sharper,” Warren said. “They are in exactly opposite directions.”
