President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a new plan to lower the costs of in vitro fertilization to create “healthier pregnancies, healthier babies, and many more beautiful American children.”

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“Today, this announcement, we are realigning the industry towards the simple metric of more healthy babies at lower costs,” said Dr. Heidi Overton, deputy assistant to the president at the Domestic Policy Council.

Trump announced the creation of a new benefit option for fertility benefits, under which employers will have a new legal pathway to offer fertility benefits directly to employees, like they do for dental and vision coverage, and life insurance.

When Trump made a campaign promise to make in vitro fertilization accessible to all prospective parents, calling himself the “father of IVF,” he sparked concerns from pro-lifers who say IVF relies on the destruction of embryos.

While Trump’s announcement concerned many pro-lifers by making IVF cheaper and Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., called this “the most pro-IVF thing” a president has done in history, some pro-lifers are relieved that the plan includes coverage for root-cause treatments for infertility and that coverage of IVF remains voluntary for employers.

“I welcome the Admin’s commitment to making groundbreaking advancements in treating root causes of infertility more accessible & available,” March for Life President Jennie Lichter wrote on the social media platform X.

Members of the Make America Healthy Again and pro-life movements have lobbied the Trump administration to prioritize root-cause treatments as an alternative to IVF.

The pro-life group Live Action issued a memo in June urging the Trump administration to focus on treating infertility as a chronic disease. Live Action also met with the administration several times to discuss IVF policy.

Heritage Foundation family policy expert Emma Waters and former Ethics of Public Policy Center researcher Natalie Dodson issued a report highlighting restorative reproductive medicine as a way to treat the underlying causes of infertility, rather than circumventing the causes through IVF.

On Thursday, Health and Human Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the plan is in line with the Make America Healthy Again movement to address root causes of chronic diseases.

“President Trump is stressing the root causes through his MAHA agenda of reducing endocrine disruptors, the exposure chemicals that decrease fertility,” Kennedy said.

The Daily Signal asked Trump if the administration would provide equal access to root-cause treatments as to IVF.

“I think we’re going to be doing that,” the president said.

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said her department is prioritizing delivering all types of health care coverage to Americans.

“The Department of Labor is issuing their intent today to open up the rulemaking process again for more flexibility,” she said in response to The Daily Signal. “Anytime that you have a president who’s leading, when you can offer more access to health care at a lower rate, [it] is a benefit to the American people and to the end user.”

The plan lets employers choose a stand-alone fertility benefit that matches their values.

“This new benefit option simultaneously represents the greatest opportunity to expand coverage of IVF that the federal government has ever taken, while also improving the care delivered,” Overton said. “Additionally and very importantly, it gives employers maximum flexibility to design benefits that are consistent with their values.”

Overton said employers are best situated to know what their employees will want to contribute to in relationship to their benefits.

“Employers are going to be able to decide how to cover the root causes of infertility, things like obesity and metabolic health and other things that are impacting infertility,” she said. “Also, if they want to encourage their employer, their employees, to see certain types of doctors, and they can work with providers that are identifying the highest-quality fertility providers. And so it puts them in the driver’s seat.”

“Our view is that we want employers to be the ones that can make those decisions, not
the government,” she continued.

Still, some, like Live Action President Lila Rose, remain skeptical.

“Trump encourages employers to add insurance coverage for IVF—enabling the commodification of children,” she wrote on X. “Babies won’t be healthier. IVF kids face higher risks of lifelong health issues, & the process itself discards countless embryos—real human lives—deemed ‘unfit.’ Reverse this.”

Lichter, the president of March of Life, said she will continue to call for federal government policymaking on IVF that prioritizes protecting human life in its earliest stages.

But she said she can “appreciate that President Trump hears and is responding to so many Americans who dream of becoming parents.”

Restorative reproductive medicine “aims to resolve, rather than ignore, underlying medical issues, to increase health & wellness while also restoring fertility, and to respond to the beautiful desire for children while avoiding any collateral loss of human life. It’s totally MAHA, and it has a great track record. More babies + healthier mamas = wins all around!”

“I hope this new approach to insurance coverage for fertility treatments results in more women finding healing and having babies through RRM,” Lichter said.

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This article was originally published at The Daily Signal. Photo Credit: Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok.