According to a recent story from Newsmax, former President Donald Trump said he would consider making IVF free of cost by providing taxpayer funding or mandating insurance companies to cover this expense, which usually costs around $15-$30k per cycle.
If insurance is like privatized socialism, then having specific elements of coverage mandated by government along with the Obamacare individual mandate is like fascism. Notice I said “like,” meaning this is an analogy, and I’m not calling anyone a Nazi, which has become far too common. Instead, I’m simply pointing out that it would be a small step towards a fascistic style of government if private profit-earning companies were highly controlled and manipulated by politicians, whom they, in turn (s)elect.
So long as IVF requires fertilizing eggs, creating embryos, and then discarding several embryos while keeping the ‘wanted’ ones this is just as morally wrong as abortion. It is morally wrong to abort a child just because they’re male or female, or simply because they’re unwanted. It is also wrong to abort a human embryo created as part of an IVF cycle. While we’ve seen the disastrous consequences of people in various countries throughout history discarding babies simply due to gender, we’ve now come to a point where there can be testing for not only genetic defects, but even character traits. Some couples may soon go from shopping for their perfect toy poodle to getting their ideal designer baby paid for by the taxpayer.
The premeditated, purposeful termination of an innocent human life – in vitro in utero – is murder and is completely wrong in all circumstances. In cases of pregnancies gone wrong, doctors should do their best to save the life of the mother without purposefully harming her unborn baby, and attempt to save the baby’s life if at all possible. Medical advances continue to push the envelope on how early in gestation babies born prematurely can survive using incubators and other techniques. If we can discard embryos whenever convenient, can we also pull the plug on premies at will?
Trump says “we want more babies” but I would disagree. We don’t just want more babies. Plenty of third world countries have millions of babies born into poverty and in dire circumstances. (Their lives are just as valuable as any other human being.) We want more family formation and babies raised by both a father and mother in a nurturing, supportive environment. This is the ideal family unit that our society should strive towards, despite many less-than-ideal circumstances being not uncommon. We already have plenty of children in less-than-ideal households due to welfare programs that incentivize continued single motherhood, as well as no-fault divorce leading to fathers being kicked out of their home, facing a possible reduction of income and/or job loss while continuing to owe child support and facing debtor’s prison if they’re unable to pay.
Universal access to IVF would also open up the floodgates for rampant abuse by LGBTQ couples as well as single individuals who want to have kids solo and can afford to take time off work or send them to daycare. Again, all of these are less-than-ideal environments to raise children – at best.
If we want to ignore the natural order of the universe or God’s law, we can look at outcomes to see the consequences of making babies in vitro and placing them with anyone who can fog a mirror. Lesbians face higher rates of domestic abuse than any other group. Gay men have the highest risk of contracting AIDS or other STDs. Children raised by transgender parents have a high likelihood of identifying as a different gender themselves. So-called gender affirming care, whether through puberty-blocking hormones or genitalia-altering surgeries, is also no solution, as it often leaves those adolescents physically unable to have sex as adults while still having high levels of depression and suicidal ideation.
We have had rampant abortion for 50 years, severely inhibiting traditional family formation and universal IVF would further disincentivize it. With this program there would be no reason for women *not to* abort children well into their thirties. Trump is not even against abortion, as he previously expressed disagreement with Florida’s 6-week ban and supports limits closer to the ‘moment of viability.’ Theoretically, we could soon have a pipeline (read: racket) of taxpayer-funded IVF, followed by convenient changes of heart around the 20-week mark, abortion at taxpayer-supported Planned Parenthood, and finally sale of large, well developed fetal organs and body parts to biomedical groups like StemExpress.
Trump was a lot more careful to cater to Christians in his last term. “As President, he appointed an anti-IVF extremist to the federal bench, proposed a rule to allow health care workers to deny IVF to LGBTQ couples, and hosted the Alabama judge who banned IVF at White House,” Harris campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said. His judicial appointments also allowed for Roe v Wade to be overturned, returning the issue to the states to individually decide on. Issues with IVF should also be allowed to be governed by individual states, as was seen in the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling concluding that frozen embryos were protected by the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.
It’s shameful that not many want to provide the same type of funding and support for making adoption an easy and more viable option, both for the would-be mother who is considering aborting, as well as for the responsible couple that perhaps can’t conceive. The flourishing of America lies in these key issues, so hopefully President Trump can first win the election and then see the truth of the matter and adjust his policies accordingly, campaign promises be damned.
Liberty Republicans 