President Trump’s recent executive order on in vitro fertilization (IVF) is a disappointment for pro-life conservatives. While many on the left criticize it for not going far enough, the real issue is that it shouldn’t have been issued at all.

This order is wrong for three major reasons:

1. It’s an abuse of executive power. Conservatives rightly opposed Obama and Biden’s executive overreach—why should we accept it from Trump?
2. It doesn’t address America’s real fertility crisis. If we want more babies, we need to fix marriage, not fund a morally corrupt industry.
3. It promotes and legitimizes IVF—an industry that destroys human life, commodifies children, and turns the miracle of birth into a commercial transaction.

Rather than expanding access to IVF, a pro-life, pro-family administration should be working to eliminate it entirely.

Executive Orders Aren’t the Way to Make Policy

Let’s start with the most basic problem: this is yet another example of government overreach.

Conservatives spent eight years condemning Obama for governing by executive order, and Biden only made things worse—signing more than 120 executive orders to push through radical policies without congressional approval. Do we really want to follow the same playbook?

If IVF policy is so important, let Congress debate it. Let lawmakers be held accountable for their votes. Major policy changes shouldn’t be dictated by one man in the White House, Republican or Democrat.

But the truth is, IVF shouldn’t be expanded at all—which brings us to the real problem with this order.

IVF Won’t Solve the Fertility Crisis—Marriage Will

America’s birth rate is in free fall, and that’s a problem. But IVF is not the solution.

If anything, Japan’s experience proves that widespread IVF use does nothing to fix declining birth rates. Japan has some of the highest IVF usage in the world, yet its fertility rate continues to plummet. Why? Because the real reason people aren’t having kids isn’t infertility—it’s marriage.

The biggest factor driving birth rate declines is that people are getting married later (or not at all). And that’s no accident—our government actively discourages marriage through tax penalties and social programs that punish couples for tying the knot.

If Trump really wanted to increase fertility, he’d:

• End the marriage penalties in federal welfare and tax programs
• Help young families afford homes (rather than propping up IVF clinics)
• Encourage a pro-family culture instead of normalizing artificial reproduction

Instead of wasting time on IVF, we should be making marriage easier and more attractive. That’s what actually leads to more babies.

But IVF isn’t just a bad policy idea—it’s an outright moral disaster.

IVF Is Anti-Life and Should Be Rejected

Let’s be clear: IVF is not pro-family. It is anti-life.

It creates human life only to destroy it.

Most people don’t realize how IVF really works. Clinics don’t just fertilize one egg—they fertilize multiple. Then they decide which embryos are “worthy” of life. The others? They are:

• Thrown away like trash
• Frozen indefinitely in storage
• Experimented on and then discarded

This is nothing less than the industrial-scale destruction of human life. How can conservatives fight to protect the unborn while turning a blind eye to the mass killing of embryos in IVF clinics?

If we believe life begins at conception, then every embryo is a child. Every discarded embryo is a human being murdered for convenience.

IVF Treats Babies Like Commodities

IVF isn’t just about helping couples have children. It’s a billion-dollar industry that profits off desperate families. Clinics let parents choose their baby’s sex, screen out “undesirable” embryos, and even select for traits like height and intelligence.

This is eugenics, plain and simple.

We rightly condemn Planned Parenthood for treating unborn babies as disposable, but IVF clinics do the exact same thing. The only difference? Instead of killing babies inside the womb, IVF clinics kill them in petri dishes.

We wouldn’t accept this from an abortion provider—why should we accept it from the fertility industry?

There Are Better, Ethical Alternatives

The real tragedy is that IVF isn’t even necessary.

There are ethical fertility treatments that work with a woman’s natural cycle rather than against it. Natural Procreative Technology (NaPro), for example, has helped countless couples conceive without the destruction of human life.

Instead of funding IVF, a truly pro-life administration should be investing in ethical reproductive medicine that respects life from conception.

A True Pro-Life Policy Would Ban IVF, Not Expand It

President Trump’s IVF order is a mistake. It’s not just unnecessary—it’s immoral.

If we truly value life, we cannot support a policy that legitimizes and expands an industry that kills countless unborn children.

A real pro-family, pro-life president would:

• Ban IVF outright or at least heavily restrict it
• Hold the fertility industry accountable for embryo destruction
• Promote ethical fertility treatments like NaProTechnology
• Focus on fixing marriage, not funding artificial reproduction

Instead, Trump has chosen to side with Big Fertility—an industry that treats children as products and human embryos as disposable.

This is not conservative.
This is not pro-life.
And this is not the way to rebuild American families.

We need real leadership—not executive orders that prop up the culture of death.