On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at expanding access to in vitro fertilization (IVF). “Many hopeful couples dream of starting a family, but one in seven people can't have a child,” the order said, and the administration has more access to IVF treatments. He declares that he will prioritize making it easier and affordable.
Order status,
The struggle for fertility can make concepts difficult and can turn what should be a fun experience into emotional and economic struggles.
Costs per cycle range from $12,000 to $25,000, with IVFs remaining out of reach of many families. It forces them to take on a significant financial burden or to abandon their hopes of having children.
There are directives in the order. Within 90 days, the President's assistant for domestic policy submitted a list of policy recommendations focused on protecting IVF access and actively reducing out-of-pocket and health planning costs for IVF treatment. It must be. The administration is currently committed to reducing costs and removing statutory and regulatory barriers that restrict access.
Framing the initiative as a parent-family policy, the order states: In line with this commitment, the administration has vowed to ease restrictions on the IVF.
However, the order acknowledges that “the implementation of these policies is subject to legislative and budgetary considerations,” but Trump's actions are outside his constitutional boundaries.
Even if they pass properly, the law “makes IVF treatment more accessible” exceeds the power of Congress. The US Constitution does not allow federal authorities to provide medical care and medical care. This includes reproductive techniques such as IVF.
IVF: A technical victory or bioethical minefield?
Beyond important constitutional considerations, the government-stimulated expansion of the IVF raises deep moral and bioethical concerns. In fact, the IVF, behind the deep human promises of long-awaited children, carries a deep dilemma. Society seems too willing to ignore it, hurrying for progress and convenience. These concerns are far from abstract. They are woven into the very mechanisms of IVF itself and amplified by its growing commercialization.
How it works
IVF replaces the concept of nature with a controlled medical process. It requires hormone stimulation, surgical egg collection, and laboratory-based fertilization.
First, women receive excessive stimulation of the ovaries and receive hormone injections to produce 10-15 eggs of one or two eggs that are released during spontaneous ovulation. Once the eggs are mature, the doctor surgically retrieve them with a fine needle from the sedated mother.
Next, fertilization will take place in the lab. This occurs either through traditional insemination or ocular cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), where a single sperm is injected directly into the egg. The embryos are monitored for 3-7 days. Finally, the selected few are transferred to the mother's uterus.
Mass production and the destruction of human life
As you can see, IVF doesn't just make life, it's making it. And in doing so, it treats human embryos as disposable biological materials. The industry is run with brutal calculations. To increase the success rate, much more embryos are created than used. As a result, more than 1 million frozen eggs and embryos are stored in fertility clinics in the United States each year. This is according to TMRW Life Sciences, a biotechnology company specializing in the management of frozen eggs and embryos.
Worse, IVF produces much more embryos than ever before. Only a small percentage is born based on the total number of embryos created through the IVF cycle. In fact, an estimated 93% of all IVF embryos do not give birth. They are discarded, abandoned or used in experiments. Looking back at these numbers, the Catholic News Agency put them from a strict perspective:
(data suggestions) 1.5-1.5 million embryos created through IVF were not born.
Alternatively, the abortion industry claimed about 985,000 lives from July 2022 to June 2023. This suggests that the IVF industry could end up with almost twice as many people each year.
In other words, in the pursuit of life, IVF has created an industry in which most embryos are not born, leaving behind a quiet tragedy measured in losses rather than hope.
Commerce of female bodies
Egg donations in the US have become a highly commercialized and selective industry. First, it targets financially vulnerable women. However, the agency is also looking for highly accomplished students from elite universities with specific ethnic backgrounds, medical trainees and women with specific ethnic backgrounds, according to the Markkura Centre for Applied Ethics .
This market-driven approach prioritizes desired genetic traits. This enhances the bass of eugenicity as the industry assigns higher value than other eggs. Donors, on the other hand, face serious health risks, including ovarian delay syndrome (OHSS), which can lead to severe pain, organ damage and even death.
Despite these risks, long-term research into egg donor health remains insufficient and does not inform women about potential outcomes. Furthermore, although the US fertility industry has no surveillance, it enjoys government support. This allows profit-driven selection criteria to determine the value of human eggs.
Surrogacy
IVF is also the basis for surrogacy, an industry that thrives with economic inequality. Numerous reports (like these and like this) explain how wealthy couples outsource pregnancy and substitute mothers. They usually come from developing countries or low-income communities. These women carry babies who have no biological connections only in exchange for their pay.
Critics argue that this practice will turn pregnancy into a contract and reduce motherhood to commercial services rather than deep human bonds.
“A designer baby”
What began as a medical solution to infertility has caught the eye of Silicon Valley power brokers. Silicon Valley power brokers don't see IVF as merely a means of manufacturing life, but it's curating it.
An increase in pre-transplant genetic testing for polygenic disorders (PGT-P) has forced embryo selection into new areas, according to a November report in the San Francisco standard. Parents are now able to screen intelligence, disease resistance, and even personality traits.
Among these fundings is the new frontier of this selective revitalization, Trump's leading donor and billionaire Peter Thiel. Joining him is Sam Altman from Openai, who recently aligned himself with Trump's camp. Both are putting their money into infertility startups like Orchid Health and Gattaca Genomics. These companies no longer hide behind the language of medical needs. Instead, they openly sell genetic choices as a tool to “maximise human potential.”
Meanwhile, the artificial uterine industry is also expanding. The new niche promises a future in which technology will take over pregnancy and pregnancy forever.
As big money supports the business of genetic optimization, the boundaries that help families become pregnant and imagine the next generation are rapidly disappearing.
Beyond fertility
Public opinion now supports IVF, with 70% of Americans looking at it positively. But how much of that support comes from not knowing its full meaning? Religious groups, bioethicists, and even some feminists are turning alarms. They warn that IVF is no longer about helping couples get pregnant.
The Trump administration is making up a push to expand the IVF as a victory to build families. However, as IVF collides with embryonic choice and the ambitions of eugenicists in Silicon Valley, the conversation must change. Are we really supporting families or are we engineering future generations based on any genetic preference?
History identifies the dangers of pursuing genetic perfection. The real question is, are we pay attention?
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