Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign event in Potterville, Mich., on Thursday.
Alex Brandon/AP
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Alex Brandon/AP
Former President Trump says if he’s elected again, his administration would fund the fertility procedure known as IVF.
“I was always for IVF. Right from the beginning, as soon as we heard about it,” the Republican nominee said in an interview with NBC News on Thursday.
Trump told NBC he’d support public funding for in vitro fertilization, or a mandate requiring insurance companies to cover it. The procedure to treat infertility can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
“We’re doing this because we just think it’s great. And we need great children, beautiful children in our country, we actually need them,” Trump said in the interview.
Some anti-abortion activists want to restrict or ban IVF because the process typically involves discarding excess embryos. But most voters, including many Republicans, support access to the procedure.
An Alabama Supreme Court decision earlier this year temporarily cut off access to IVF until state lawmakers intervened, forcing many high-profile Republicans to weigh in on the issue.
Trump’s comments come as he appears to be trying to soften his image on reproductive rights ahead of the November election over concerns about voter backlash. Earlier on the campaign trail, he proudly took credit for overturning Roe v. Wade, by appointing three conservative Supreme Court justices.
Last week, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he would be “great for women and their reproductive rights.” That statement drew criticism from some abortion rights opponents including his former vice president, Mike Pence. Trump also recently indicated in a CBS News interview that he would not use a 19th-century anti-obscenity law, the Comstock Act, to restrict abortion pills. That statement also drew pushback from some activists.
In the same NBC News interview, Trump indicated he would vote in favor of abortion rights in his home state of Florida, where it is on the ballot. Saying he thinks the “six week [ban] is too short,” he said he favored “more time.”
“I’m going to be voting that we need more than six weeks,” he told NBC News in the interview, before saying he favored exceptions in abortion law for the life of the mother, rape and incest.
Abortion is a key issue in this election, with Democrats warning voters that Republicans would further restrict access to reproductive healthcare if former Trump is elected.