Former President Donald Trump said Thursday he supports having the government or insurance companies cover the costs of in vitro fertilization, or IVF, and indicated he would vote for a Florida ballot measure to overturn that state’s six-week abortion ban.
“Under the Trump administration, we’re going to pay for this treatment,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with NBC News. “Or we’re going to force the insurance company to pay.”
Trump quickly announced the policy at a rally in Michigan, telling the crowd that “your government will pay or your insurance company will be required to pay all costs associated with IVF treatment.” Health insurance companies are not currently required to cover IVF treatments, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
The issue of access to fertility treatments became a political point of contention in February after the Alabama Supreme Court The Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are considered children under the law. The decision sparked an outcry and opened the door to potential wrongful death lawsuits if an embryo doesn’t survive the process, prompting several providers to suspend IVF treatments.
Shortly after Alabama’s decision, Trump called on the state legislature to “quickly find an immediate solution to preserve the availability of IVF in Alabama.” adopted a law The procedure was protected in March, but the legal battle had already opened a new front in the national fight for reproductive rights.
Democrats have said the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade opens the door to restrictions on IVF and other fertility treatments, and candidates and elected officials have hammered their Republican opponents on the issue ever since.
At the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Kamala Harris said Trump and the GOP would limit access to birth control, ban medication abortion, enact a national ban on the procedure and require states to report women’s miscarriages and abortions.
“To put it simply, they’ve lost their minds,” she said.
In his NBC News interview, Trump also criticized a Florida law that bans abortion after six weeks, with limited exceptions. A proposed constitutional amendment is currently up for a vote in that state, where Trump resides.
“I think the six weeks [ban] “It’s too short. We need more time,” he said. “I’m going to vote that we need more than six weeks.”
Trump had previously suggested he might support a ban on abortion after 15 weeks in an interview with WABC in March.
“People agree on 15 weeks. And I’m thinking along those lines. And it will come to something very reasonable. But people really agree, even the hard-liners agree, 15 weeks seems to be a number that people agree on,” Trump said.
Trump has also previously said he would not sign a federal abortion ban and argued that the issue was up to states to decide.
In a separate interview with NBC News, Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, reiterated that Trump would not sign a federal abortion ban if elected to a second term.
