Creepy Donald Trump has tried to have it both ways on abortion, claiming credit for appointing Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade while trying to wash his hands of the extreme anti-abortion measures that some states have imposed in the wake of that overthrow. That attempt to walk a fine line got destroyed when he was forced to say how he would vote on the Amendment 4, referendum measure that seeks to overturn Florida’s extreme law that bans abortion after six weeks and, after trying to waffle on the issue and getting pushback from conservatives, he said that he would oppose the Amendment.
He will face a similar dilemma with IVF treatments. These are very popular and the decision by the Alabama supreme court that said that frozen embryos are children under state law effectively banned the practice since IVF clinics feared prosecution if unused embryos get discarded. That decision sent shock waves across the country and resulted in Republican politicians trying to find ways to dance around the issue without alienating their base.
But there is going to be a reckoning for him here too. Abortion opponents start from the premise that life begins at conception and believe that anything that stops a fertilized egg from developing is an abortion. IVF treatments create many fertilized eggs since the success rate is not high. Those eggs that are not used are eventually destroyed and for anti-abortion extremists, this is killing life and so they oppose IVF treatments as well. This overrides their desire to have women produce more babies, which IVF enables.
Creepy Trump has tried to appeal to those upset by his hardline anti-abortion stance by saying that he supports IVF treatments and even suggested that the government should pay for them. That is creating some pushback. Back in June senate Republicans opposed a measure that would make it a right nationwide for women to access in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments. Arwa Mahdavi writes that creepy Trump’s moves on IVF reek of desperation.
Last week the former president announced that he would support free in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatments if elected again. “We wanna produce babies in this country, right?” Trump said during a town hall campaign event in Wisconsin. He didn’t provide many details about how this would work other than saying that either the government or insurance companies would pay for everything.
Another fuzzy detail? How government-sponsored IVF would coexist with the Republican party’s 2024 platform, which supports states’ rights to pass foetal personhood laws. It is impossible to support widespread access to IVF while also supporting the idea of foetal personhood, which holds that an embryo is a person and destroying one is homicide. I am fairly sure that Trump has no idea how IVF actually works, so here is a little explainer: you typically fertilise multiple eggs because you have no idea how many of them will develop into viable embryos. You could fertilise 20 eggs and end up with no viable embryos or end up with 20. The only way to control how many embryos you create is to harvest a single egg at a time, which is hugely expensive, inefficient and emotionally exhausting. In short: Trump seems to be running on a platform where IVF would be free but also effectively illegal.
…Free IVF may sound like a progressive policy on the surface but, for many on the right, it is linked to a belief that women are nothing more than baby-making machines designed to pass on the legacy of men.
Creepy Trump is not being helped by the fact that that back in 2017, his running mate weird JD Vance endorsed a book that had sweeping restrictions to abortions and fertility treatments.
In 2017, months into Trump’s presidency, Vance wrote the foreword to the Index of Culture and Opportunity, a collection of essays by conservative authors for the Heritage Foundation that included ideas for encouraging women to have children earlier and promoting a resurgence of “traditional” family structure.
The essays lauded the increase in state laws restricting abortion rights and included arguments that the practice should become “unthinkable” in the US, a hardline posture the Democrats now say is the agenda of Trump and Vance, who they accuse of harbouring the intent to impose a national ban following a 2022 supreme court ruling overturning Roe V Wade and annulling the federal right to abort a pregnancy.
The report also includes an essay lamenting the spread of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and other fertility treatments, with the author attributing them as reasons for women delaying having children and prioritising higher education rather than starting families.
IVF has emerged as an issue in November’s presidential race after Trump said last week that he favoured it being covered by government funding or private health insurance companies – a stance seeming at odds with many Republicans, including Vance, who was one of 47 GOP senators to vote against a bill in June intended to expand access to the treatment.
Creepy Trump, weird Vance, and the GOP are finding that women’s reproductive rights issues are front and center in this election and given their long history of attempts to control the lives of women, they have very little wiggle room, having to choose between alienating their anti-abortion base and the majority of women.
Not only is IVF very expensive (most insurance doesn’t cover it), it requires the woman undergoing it to be able to take lots of time off work. In other words, it’s something upper-middle-class white people and upper-class can manage. That’s a large part of Trump’s base.
The big GOP irony of paying for this but not for prenatal care or school lunch for children already here.
Katydid @1: The big GOP irony of paying for this but not for prenatal care or school lunch for children already here.
The GOP’s “pro-life” stance ends at birth.
The GOP doesnt have any actual pro life stance. What they have is a pro birth stance. They dont give a fuck what happens after the kid is born.
@2 and 3; they also don’t care the physical or mental cost to the mother to bring a child to birth.
But rich white people who can’t have children by any other means care very much about IVF. As do people whose health insurance does cover IVF--people with premium health insurance like police and firefighters.
So Trump (or his advisors) have made a logical decision. They need to win over wealthy and upper-middle class people while the more typical MAGA demographic (or ‘white trash’ as they probably call them in private) are expected to vote for him anyway.
@2,3,4:
Really, what the GOP has isn’t a ‘pro-life’ stance, or even a ‘pro-birth’ stance (though some definitely have a ‘pro-white-birth’ stance); it’s mostly a ‘pro-control-(other)-women’ stance. Keeping women barefoot and pregnant is just one way to enforce that.
@StonedRanger @3
@jenorafeuer @6
yes exactly . Its not like they advocate for things that would make births easier , safer (like you know great healthcare!). Its not like they push for funding for medical research related to pregnancies. For our first child, we were prescribed quite a few medicines for which no research existed for pregnant women (small market) and were mostly marked “neutral” as in upto you if you want to risk it or not.
Long story short: this is all about Trump’s own cowardice. He’s brave enough to fight for something ONLY if he doesn’t see anyone looking like they might fight back. Now he’s seeing lots of people fighting back, on both abortion and IVF, and at least a few of his supporters starting to waver, and suddenly he’s wavering and waffling and trying to have it both ways.
Trump is a stupid shortsighted bully, and like most such bullies, he’s a coward. That’s why he and his party have been picking fights with young women and girls for so many decades now. Let’s hope we see more young girls (and, yes, older women who already have enough kids) fighting back and showing him up for the fraud and loser he really is.
The “bravery” of a schoolyard bully.
And +1 to Jenora Feuer’s observation. When it’s not about white supremacy it’s about male supremacy with them — and oftentimes both.
The Democrats should talk non-stop about reproductive rights (and I’m glad to see the reporductive rights bus tour starting), because that’s an issue where they have clear majority support -- and this close to an election, it’s almost the case that only salience matters in campaigning -- trying to change what issues voters are thinking about, rather than trying to change what they think on those issues, which is a much slower process.