He also says he didn’t know what it was before February.
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This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.
“I’m the father of IVF.” —Donald Trump, speaking at a women’s issues town hall event on Fox News.
It took some 45 minutes for Donald Trump’s Georgia town hall on women’s issues to turn to reproductive health. The prerecorded event, which aired on Wednesday on Fox News’ The Faulkner Focus with Harris Faulkner, had covered illegal immigration and “migrant crime” in depth, as well as transgender athletes, energy production, inflation, and the government’s hurricane response. When the question of abortion rights finally arose, Trump stuck with his established argument: He was simply supporting what “all” the “great” legal scholars thought was best, which was to leave the decision to the states. In fact, he said, he thought some states’ abortion laws were “too tough” and would need to be “redone.” It was an effort to moderate his party’s weakest issue—and to hopefully erase voters’ memories of him advocating for a national abortion ban and for women who have abortions to be punished. (Trump has more recently said he would veto a national abortion ban.)
The conversation then headed toward in vitro fertilization. As Faulkner indicated that IVF would be the topic of the next question, Trump jumped in: “Ah, I want to talk about IVF.” The crowd laughed politely, and Trump said—three times—“I’m the father of IVF.”
It was an odd claim, given that IVF hasn’t exactly been one of his pet topics. He basically only expressed his support for IVF after the Alabama Supreme Court, citing fetal personhood language in Alabama law, ruled in February that frozen embryos should legally be considered children. When IVF centers then shut down in the state, there was a massive national outcry, and the Republican Party scrambled to recover. Trump declared he supported IVF access; more recently, he has floated the idea of having the government or private insurers cover the cost of the treatments.
After the “father of IVF” remark, an audience member asked for Trump’s stance on IVF and what he would say to women concerned that abortion bans could threaten their access to fertility treatments. In response, Trump said that “we really are the party for IVF” and that “the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and we’re out there on IVF, even more than them.” It’s possible that this reference is to his dubious claim that he would be able to make IVF free.
It’s obvious to anyone who can remember anything before this election cycle that his claim is absurd: Overturning Roe v. Wade—something Trump long campaigned on and has frequently taken credit for—is what put IVF in danger in the first place. His whole party is implicated in the threat to IVF. Twice this year, Senate Republicans blocked Democrats’ efforts to enshrine a right to IVF, criticizing the bills as unnecessary grandstanding.
But there’s another reason to question his new self-given title: He seems, by his own admission, not to have known what IVF was before the Alabama Supreme Court ruling. This is how he began his answer to the IVF question:
So, I got a call from Katie Britt, a young, just a fantastically attractive person from Alabama. She’s a senator. And she called me up like, “Emergency, emergency!” because an Alabama judge had ruled that the IVF clinics were illegal and they have to be closed down—a judge ruled. And she said, “Friends of mine came up to me, and they were, oh, they were so angry. I didn’t even know they were going.” You know, they were—it’s fertilization. I didn’t know they were even involved in—nobody talks about that. They don’t talk about it. But now that they can’t do it, she said, “I was attacked.” In a certain way, “I was attacked.” And I said, “Explain IVF very quickly.” And within about two minutes, I understood it. I said, “No, no, we’re totally in favor of IVF.” I came out with a statement within an hour, a really powerful statement with some experts, really powerful.
It is a bold strategy to answer a question about reproductive health care access by first describing a female senator as “fantastically attractive” and then admitting to a lack of previous knowledge of the issue’s very existence. (He’s at least doing better than some other members of his party; last week, Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake repeatedly called the treatment “UVF.”) But history shows that bold often works for him. We’ll have to wait and see if he trots out any fun new nicknames at the town hall for Latino voters that airs Wednesday night.
