Former President Donald Trump said on Thursday that his administration plans to make in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment more accessible to Americans by funding it and mandating insurance companies to cover it.
“Under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for that treatment,” Trump told NBC News ahead of a campaign rally in Potterville, Michigan.
He added that the coverage would be for “all Americans who need it.”
“So, we’re going to be paying for that treatment, or we’re going to be mandating that the insurance companies pay,” he said.
Trump said that he “was always for IVF.”
“It’s fertilization and it’s helping women and men and families,” he said. “But it’s helping women able to have a baby. Some have great difficulty. And a lot of them have been very happy with the results [of IVF].”
“We’re doing this because we just think it’s great,” he added. “And we need great children, beautiful children, in our country. We actually need them.”
IVF became a political issue this year after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that human embryos and fertilized eggs kept outside the uterus are children under state law—and are thus covered under wrongful death laws should anyone destroy them.
Clinics halted their IVF treatments in the state in the wake of the ruling. Alabama lawmakers moved quickly to pass legislation to shield IVF doctors from lawsuits over damaged or destroyed embryos, which satisfied some clinics enough to allow services to resume.
Responding to the pledge, the Harris-Walz campaign blamed Trump for the Supreme Court’s 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, which they said means that IVF has come under attack across the country.
“Donald Trump’s own platform could effectively ban IVF and abortion nationwide,” Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement to media outlets.
Democrats have made reproductive issues, including IVF and abortion, a key part of their platform during this election cycle. U.S. Senate Democratic lawmakers tried to legislate IVF as a statutory right federally in June, but it was blocked by Republicans.
In the same interview on Thursday, Trump, who appointed three of the five Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade., took credit for their decision.
“Our country has been torn apart by Roe v. Wade for years. For years,” Trump said.
The high court’s decision ended the nationwide right to abortion and returned the power to make laws on it to the states.
“If you go back 10 years, 15 years, all they wanted to do is they wanted it back in the states,” he said. “They didn’t want it to be in the federal government. I was able to do that.”