The White House is now determining how best to fulfill President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to ensure in vitro fertilization treatments would be paid for, after Trump repeatedly branded himself the “father of IVF” over the last year, NOTUS has learned.
There are signs that the White House is moving to address the issue sooner rather than later, after IVF has gone virtually unmentioned publicly in Trump’s first weeks. His promise drew splashy headlines during the campaign, as Trump and the Republican Party overall wrestled with how to talk about fertility, abortion and women’s rights. Some GOP lawmakers had previously indicated to NOTUS that the focus on IVF in 2024 was just to campaign, not necessarily to pursue after the election.
Americans for IVF, an advocacy group focused on increasing access to fertility treatments, has been in touch with the White House, said Kaylen Silverberg, chair of the group’s advisory board.
Silverberg didn’t have updates on specific policy but said, “I know that I’m going to Washington Feb. 23, 24, to go, hopefully, be involved in conversations around these things.”
His Americans for IVF team made clear, he said, that late February is when “something’s going to happen and I need to be available.”
“What’s been implied to me is that we are going to have meetings with the president’s team,” he added.
A senior White House official declined to preview specific actions or a timeline but said that ways to fulfill the president’s campaign promise are “being worked through.”
And even though Trump has been quiet on the issue since taking office, some of his allies in Congress have faith that the president will address IVF accessibility.
“I actually spoke directly to President Trump about that before he was elected, and obviously he’s been supportive of that, same with JD Vance. And so, I’m thinking that they might do something via executive order,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna told NOTUS.
Sen. Eric Schmitt told NOTUS he has not seen any proposals on IVF from the White House, but added that “it’s a priority.”
“I know he made it a priority. I think right now, the focus has obviously been on [confirmations] and reconciliation,” the senator said.
One House Republican, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told NOTUS that at least in some of the meetings the president has had with lawmakers during his first month back in office, Trump has not mentioned in vitro fertilization at all.
“I was at the White House for like five hours the other day” and Trump didn’t bring it up, the House Republican said, referring to a meeting at the White House on Feb. 6.
The meeting focused on budget cuts and the plan for reconciliation, but the House Republican said that they wouldn’t have been surprised to see Trump bring up IVF because “he tends to kind of talk about a lot of things.”
A senior Republican Senate staffer said they’re trying to get more details “but we haven’t been told by the White House that anything is coming.”
“We do not expect something imminently,” they said, with the caveat that things are moving fast and often changing.
Sean Tipton, chief advocacy and policy officer for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, told NOTUS the president could issue an executive order saying “we’re going to provide coverage for every employee of the federal government, both civilian and military.”
The lack of action coming from Trump so far is “disappointing,” Tipton added. He suggested that with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now officially sworn in as health secretary, some action would hopefully take place.
“The president made a very big deal about IVF for the campaign,” Tipton said. “As long as the president is asserting all kinds of power to do all kinds of things that he may or may not actually have the power to do, why not do something positive like provide IVF for everybody?”
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Oriana González and Jasmine Wright are reporters at NOTUS. Ben T.N. Mause contributed reporting.