Pro-Lifers: IVF Mandate Threatens Religious Freedom and Human Dignity
A proposed bill would mandate coverage of in vitro fertilization—with no opt-out for moral objections.
Prominent pro-life voices are sounding the alarm about a proposed bill to mandate health insurance coverage of in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Introduced on March 26 by Reps. Zach Nunn (R-IA) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), the Helping to Optimize Patients' Experience (HOPE) with Fertility Services Act would require health insurers and plans that cover pregnancy care to also cover IVF and related procedures.
Nunn touted the bill as a measure that "makes sure that fertility care is within reach for every family—not just those who can afford it or happen to have the right insurance plan."
The bill does not include exceptions for those with religious or conscience objections to IVF—a procedure that the Catholic Church and many other Christians deem immoral.
"The Catholic Church’s views on IVF are well-known and longstanding," noted Tom McClusky, government affairs director for CatholicVote, one of several pro-life organizations speaking out against the bill.
The IVF process not only circumvents God's design for procreation, replacing an intimate act of love with a science experiment conducted by strangers, but it also destroys more life than it births while promoting the buying and selling of children.
“We should show deep compassion for those struggling with infertility and encourage ethical research to treat its causes—not encourage them to treat human life as a commodity, which is what the Wasserman Shultz/Nunn bill does,” McClusky said, holding that the bill should be renamed "the 'False HOPE Act.'"
Unlike other Western countries, the United States does not regulate IVF at the federal level, making the statistics difficult to verify. But the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology reports that in 2024, its member clinics recorded 449,772 IVF treatment cycles and just 100,158 live births.
With an average of about eight embryos created per cycle, that means roughly 3.49 million human embryos (97 percent) perished, were cryogenically frozen, or were discarded in 2024.
And that's just among the reporting clinics.
It is, in effect, a modern Trolley Problem. To produce one living child, several others must die. Do the ends justify the means?
The Pro-Life View
IVF's high costs and low per-cycle success rate (which federal data show ranges from about 50 percent for women under 35 down to less than 8 percent for those over 40) have made preimplantation genetic testing a popular choice among prospective parents looking to limit costs and speed up the process. This practice often leads to the discarding of embryos deemed nonviable or otherwise undesirable due to genetic disorders, risk for certain diseases, or even for being the "wrong" sex.
Wasserman Schultz heralded IVF's capability for such unnatural selection as a "godsend." Citing her own battles with infertility and breast cancer, she noted that embryo selection through IVF may "prevent cancer from being genetically passed on" by those with gene mutations that heighten cancer risk.
There's a word for the selective breeding of human beings to eliminate perceived defects: eugenics.
That's just one of the reasons subsidizing IVF is incompatible with the pro-life movement, according to Noah Brandt, vice president of communications and government affairs at Live Action.
"Being pro-life means affirming the dignity of the preborn child and the right to life from the moment of conception," Brandt told Restoration News. "Simply put, IVF is not pro-life, and instead is inherently anti-life for the countless embryos who never make it to birth."
Heritage Foundation Senior Policy Analyst Emma Waters agreed, noting that the proposed legislation was introduced without the backing of any pro-life or Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) groups. "Instead, it was primarily industry organizations who profit from an IVF-first approach to infertility," she said.
Waters has become a vocal advocate for an alternative approach to infertility treatment that comes with none of IVF's ethical baggage: restorative reproductive medicine (RRM). The goal of RRM is to resolve reproductive dysfunction by diagnosing and treating its underlying causes.
"Sadly, Rep. Nunn’s approach fails on this front, and instead pushes patients toward IVF, a procedure that bypasses the man and woman’s body rather than aiming to heal the root causes of infertility and optimize the woman and man’s health," Waters said.
IVF is also notoriously expensive, with costs ranging from $15,000 to $30,000 dollars.
"If every U.S. woman with impaired fertility underwent one IVF cycle, the total direct cost would be $146 billion to $291 billion," yet most women would remain childless after one cycle, Waters said.
And the corresponding increase in insurance premiums would be shouldered not just by health insurers and employers, but by every American worker on one of these health plans.
"If Rep. Nunn wants to help couples who are struggling with infertility and prioritize an ethical and cost-effective approach, he should begin with a bill that prioritizes treatments that address the underlying causes of infertility instead of jumping straight to IVF.”
Nunn promoted his bill as the "next step" building on President Donald Trump's executive actions to "lower costs and expand access" to IVF. But the president himself seems to have backed away from his campaign pledge of universal IVF coverage in favor of a more practical approach.
That's a good thing—and Republicans on Capitol Hill should follow his lead.
Before issuing mandates, lawmakers should ask a critical question: Should American workers be forced to underwrite the financial, moral, and human costs of expanding IVF access?
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