Trump declares himself the “father of IVF” in front of an exclusively female audience at the town hall.

CNN
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Donald Trump on Tuesday declared himself the “father of IVF,” a fertility treatment that has come under threat following the Supreme Court's 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

It's unclear what exactly the former president meant when he made that comment at a Fox News town hall in battleground Georgia that was reportedly focused on women's issues and had an all-female audience. However, he repeatedly returned to the issue during the election campaign and expressed his support for IVF. He has given a long series of confusing or contradictory answers about his stance on abortion.

“We really are the party of IVF,” Trump told host and Fox News host Harris Faulkner on “The Faulkner Focus.” “We want fertilization and that's all, and the Democrats have tried to attack us for that, and we're even more pro-IVF than they are. So we're all for it.”

In vitro fertilization, an expensive, decades-old treatment used by millions of parents, became a flashpoint in the nationwide conflict over abortion and reproductive rights earlier this year when the Alabama Supreme Court declared that frozen embryos were children and those those who destroy them could be held liable for unjustified killing.

The Alabama ruling angered reproductive rights advocates, who argued that it would have a chilling effect on IVF, scaring off doctors who perform the procedure and driving up prices even further. It also set off a political firestorm that ultimately led to the state's Republican-led Legislature scrambling to pass a bill granting civil and criminal immunity to providers and patients.

Trump and Republicans quickly distanced themselves from the Alabama case, but Democrats, led by Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign, argued that the ruling offered a glimpse of the policies Trump would implement upon his return to the White House.

“Donald Trump called himself the 'Father of IVF.' What is he talking about?” the vice president posted on social media late Tuesday. “His abortion bans have already threatened access to it in states across the country — and his own platform could end IVF altogether.”

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Harris said she found Trump's comments “bizarre” and said he should instead take responsibility for the climate surrounding abortion rights in the United States.

“I will say what I have said publicly and what I have said many times based on my observations. … Donald Trump is becoming increasingly unstable, and as people who have worked closely with him as president have said, he is unfit to be president of the United States,” she said.

After the Alabama decision, Trump claimed he would issue a federal directive providing free in vitro fertilization. He did not say how he would go about it or whether the state or insurers would foot the bill.

Senate Democrats, eager to highlight the issue before the election, have introduced a bill twice this year that would guarantee access to IVF nationwide – with Republicans voting to block the measure each time. Many of these GOP opponents have said they support IVF but criticized the legislation as unnecessary overreach and political showmanship.

During the town hall, Trump also criticized some states for adopting abortion restrictions that he called “too strict” and said, without elaborating, that those laws would be “renewed.”

“The states are voting now (on abortion rights), and frankly some of them are taking a much more liberal approach, like Ohio,” Trump said.

Faulkner then noted that “some (of the states) are not doing this,” referring to the states that enacted or activated bans or restrictions on the procedure after Roe was repealed in 2022 and where those restrictions continue remain in place.

“And some of them aren’t, but it’s being renewed,” Trump replied. “It is being renewed. They will ultimately receive a referendum. And some of them, I agree, are too hard, too harsh.”

Still, Trump re-emphasized his role in appointing Supreme Court justices who struck down Roe vs. Wade, arguing that lawmaking on the matter should be left to the states. He also spoke out in favor of exceptions to the ban on abortion in cases of rape, incest and when the mother's life is in danger.

After previously refusing to commit one way or the other, Trump said earlier this month he would veto a federal abortion ban. His vice presidential candidate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, acknowledged the GOP's difficulty in addressing the issue during his vice presidential debate with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — and suggested his party would push forward new legislation to help parents in need to help.

“We need to do a much better job of regaining the trust of the American people on this issue, when frankly they just don’t trust us,” Vance said.

According to a Marquette Law School poll conducted this summer, two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the Supreme Court's decision.