On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at expanding access to in vitro fertilization (IVF). Recognizing that “many hopeful couples dream of starting a family, but as many as one in seven are unable to conceive a child,” the order declares that the administration will prioritize making IVF treatment more accessible and affordable.
The order states,
Infertility struggles can make conception difficult, turning what should be a joyful experience into an emotional and financial struggle.
With costs per cycle ranging from $12,000 to $25,000, IVF remains out of reach for many families. That forces them to either take on significant financial burdens or abandon their hopes of having children.
The order lays out a directive: Within 90 days, the assistant to the president for domestic policy must submit a list of policy recommendations focused on “protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment.” The administration commits to removing statutory and regulatory barriers that currently drive up costs and limit access.
Framing the initiative as a pro-family policy, the order states: “As a Nation, our public policy must make it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children.” In line with this commitment, the administration has vowed to ease restrictions on IVF.
However, while the order acknowledges that “implementation of these policies remains subject to legislative and budgetary considerations,” Trump’s actions are far outside his constitutional bounds.
Even if properly passed, legislation “making IVF treatment more accessible” would go beyond Congress’ powers as well. The U.S. Constitution does not grant the federal government authority over healthcare and medical treatments. This includes reproductive technologies like IVF.
IVF: Technological Triumph or Bioethical Minefield?
Beyond crucial constitutional considerations, the government-promoted expansion of IVF raises profound moral and bioethical concerns. Indeed, behind the deeply human promise of long-awaited children, IVF carries deep dilemmas — questions that society, in its rush for progress and convenience, seems all too willing to ignore. These concerns are far from abstract; they are woven into the very mechanics of IVF itself and amplified by its growing commercialization.
How It Works
IVF replaces natural conception with a controlled medical process. That requires hormonal stimulation, surgical egg retrieval, and lab-based fertilization.
First, women undergo ovarian hyperstimulation, receiving hormone injections to produce 10 to 15 eggs eggs instead of the one or two released during natural ovulation. Once eggs mature, doctors surgically retrieve them from the sedated mother with a fine needle.
Then, fertilization occurs in a lab. That happens either through conventional insemination or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), where a single sperm is injected directly into an egg. Embryos are monitored for 3 to 7 days. Finally, a select few are transferred to the mother’s uterus.
Mass Production and Destruction of Human Life
As one can see, IVF doesn’t just create life — it manufactures it. And in doing so, it treats human embryos as disposable biological material. The industry operates on a brutal calculus: to increase success rates, far more embryos are created than will ever be used. As a result, more than one million frozen eggs and embryos are stored in U.S. fertility clinics each year. That is according to TMRW Life Sciences, a biotech company specializing in the management of frozen eggs and embryos.
Worse yet, IVF produces far more embryos than will ever be born. Based on the total number of embryos created through IVF cycles, only a small fraction result in live births. In fact, an estimated 93 percent of all IVF embryos will never make it to birth. They will be discarded, abandoned, or used for experimentation. Reflecting on these numbers, Catholic News Agency put them in grim perspective:
[Data suggest] that somewhere between 1.5 million and 1.8 million embryos created through IVF were never born.
Alternatively, the abortion industry claimed about 985,000 lives from July 2022 through June 2023 — suggesting that the IVF industry could be ending nearly twice as many human lives every year.
In other words, in the pursuit of life, IVF has created an industry where the vast majority of embryos are never born, leaving behind a silent tragedy measured not in hope, but in loss.
Commodification of Women’s Bodies
Egg donation in the U.S. has become a highly commercialized, selective industry. First, it targets financially vulnerable women. But agencies also seek high-achieving students from elite universities, medical trainees, and women with specific ethnic backgrounds, offering “hundreds of thousands of dollars per donation cycle,” per the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.
This market-driven approach prioritizes desirable genetic traits. That reinforces eugenic undertones as the industry assigns higher value to certain eggs over others. Meanwhile, donors face significant health risks, including ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), which can cause severe pain, organ damage, and even death.
Despite these risks, long-term research on egg-donor health remains inadequate, leaving women uninformed about potential consequences. Additionally, the U.S. fertility industry lacks oversight but enjoys government support. This allows profit-driven selection criteria to determine the value of human eggs.
Surrogacy
IVF is also the cornerstone of surrogacy, an industry that thrives on economic inequality. Numerous reports (such as this and this) describe how wealthy couples outsource pregnancy to surrogate mothers. Those usually come from developing countries or lower-income communities. These women carry babies they have no biological connection to, solely in exchange for a paycheck.
Critics argue that this practice turns pregnancy into a contract, reducing motherhood to a commercial service rather than a deep, human bond.
“Designer Babies”
What began as a medical solution for infertility has now caught the eye of Silicon Valley’s power brokers, who no longer see IVF as a means to simply manufacture life — but to curate it.
According to a November report from the San Francisco Standard, the rise of preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic disorders (PGT-P) has pushed embryo selection into new territory. Parents can now screen for intelligence, disease resistance, and even personality traits.
Among those funding this new frontier of selective reproduction is Trump’s major donor and ally, billionaire Peter Thiel. Joining him is OpenAI’s Sam Altman, who has recently aligned himself with Trump’s camp. Both are pouring money into fertility startups like Orchid Health and Gattaca Genomics. These companies no longer hide behind the language of medical necessity. Instead, they openly market genetic selection as a tool for “maximizing human potential.”
Meanwhile, in parallel, the industry of artificial wombs is also expanding. The new niche promises a future where technology takes over gestation and pregnancy altogether.
With big money backing the business of genetic optimization, the line between helping families conceive and engineering the next generation is rapidly disappearing.
Beyond Fertility
Public opinion currently favors IVF, with 70 percent of Americans viewing it positively. But how much of that support stems from a failure to grasp its full implications? Religious groups, bioethicists, and even some feminists have sounded the alarm. They warn that IVF is no longer just about helping couples conceive.
The Trump administration frames its push to expand IVF as a victory for family-building. But as IVF collides with embryo selection and Silicon Valley’s eugenicist ambitions, the conversation must shift. Are we truly supporting families, or are we engineering future generations based on arbitrary genetic preferences?
History has shown us the dangers of pursuing genetic perfection. The real question is: Are we paying attention?
