Should taxpayers be forced to pay for IVF?

Last week, former President Donald Trump sent shockwaves through the pro-life movement when he indicated that he would vote for Florida’s Amendment 4, which would not only overturn Florida’s ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy but would also legalize abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy. The reaction from pro-life leaders was swift, and by the next day, Trump had walked back (or clarified) that he would not vote for Amendment 4.

But there was another statement that Trump made that also made waves in the pro-life movement that he has not walked back—nor has he shown any sign that he would. On Thursday, Trump told NBC News that if elected he will have the government fund in vitro fertilization treatments or that he will mandate that insurance companies fund them.

He made this promise amid a presidential campaign in which he found himself on the defensive concerning “reproductive rights.” As the Democratic nominee is campaigning on a promise to reinstate Roe v. Wade through federal law, Trump has been running from the issue and arguing that it is a matter best left to the states with the federal government not weighing in one way or the other.

He appears to have calculated that this strategy alone isn’t working, so he has been making statements to counteract his Democratic opponent, who falsely claims that Trump wants to ban all abortion and that he wishes to ban IVF as well. What better way for Trump to put that false claim to the lie than to announce not only that he is for IVF but also for forcing taxpayers or insurance companies to pay for it?

The reactions to the former president’s new policy proposal have been mixed even among Republicans. While Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., told NBC News’ Meet the Press that he supports the president’s proposal, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., threw cold water on the idea, saying that the federal government didn’t need to be involved in mandating citizens to pay for IVF treatments. But neither Cotton nor Graham opposed IVF on moral grounds. Their only disagreement related to the propriety of requiring taxpayers or insurance companies to pay for it.

Sadly, neither Trump nor these senators have given very much consideration to the moral dimensions of IVF. Neither has media coverage. On the contrary, the focus for commentators, reporters, and politicos has been on how the issue affects the race for president. Who’s up, who’s down, and how might the race be affected by candidates’ views on IVF?

I am concerned that many pro-lifers and Christians may also be tempted to view the matter solely through the lens of politics without giving due consideration to first principles. The fundamental question is not about who pays for IVF but about whether IVF is a morally licit procedure to begin with. It seems that far too few Republican voters have considered this more basic question and for that reason are not faithfully evaluating policy proposals like the former president’s concerning IVF.

From start to finish, IVF is a morally fraught procedure. It unnaturally divides the procreative act from marriage. It involves harvesting eggs and sperm and putting them together for fertilization in a lab. Once fertilization occurs, a new human being is formed—one at the earliest stage of development but a human being nonetheless. Everyone sympathizes with the anguish of infertility, but basic human compassion should never be manipulated to produce an “ends justifies the means” approach to fertility treatments.

Ryan Anderson has written that doctors often fail to impress on couples the human costs of IVF. “Doctors might create ten to twenty embryos, transfer several of the ‘most promising,’ freeze the rest, and if more than one implants, abort the others,” he writes. “So the typical IVF cycle results in multiple dead and frozen embryos. And unlike in European nations, there are almost no laws in America regulating how many embryos can be created or destroyed, or how frozen embryonic human beings can be treated.”

The excess human embryos are either destroyed or frozen indefinitely. By some estimates, there are more than 1 million unborn human beings in their earliest stage of development being stored in freezers across the country. IVF is morally fraught for the same reasons abortion is morally fraught. Human lives are at stake in both procedures and together they have destroyed countless millions of human beings.

This routine destruction of human life is the primary moral problem with IVF, although many people do not realize it. It is past time for Christians to get up to speed on what IVF involves. While we must have compassion for those suffering because of infertility and truly want to help them realize alternative ways of starting a family, we dare not let compassion be an excuse to turn a blind eye to the moral problems with IVF. We must not do evil so that good may come (Romans 3:8), much less require taxpayers or insurance companies to pay for it. This is the moral reality Christians must come to terms with no matter the consequences, political or otherwise.