Leaders within the pro-life community are voicing concern over President Trump’s executive order expanding access to in vitro fertilization, arguing that the procedure raises significant ethical issues and often results in surplus embryos that are ultimately destroyed.
Albert Mohler, Lila Rose, Allie Beth Stuckey, and Kristan Hawkins were among the dozens of pro-life leaders who spoke out on social media opposing the executive order, which directs his staff to develop a “list of policy recommendations on protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt celebrated the executive order on X, asserting that Trump had kept a promise he made during the election.
🚨PROMISES MADE. PROMISES KEPT: President Trump just signed an Executive Order to Expand Access to IVF! 👶
The Order directs policy recommendations to protect IVF access and aggressively reduce out-of-pocket and health plan costs for such treatments.
— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) February 18, 2025
Pro-life leaders, while appreciative of Trump’s partnership with them on other issues, spoke out against the order.
IVF is a fertility treatment that involves retrieving eggs from a woman’s ovaries, fertilizing them with a man’s sperm in a laboratory, and then transferring one or more resulting embryos into the woman’s uterus in hopes of achieving a successful pregnancy. Typically, multiple embryos are created during the process, with the extra embryos often discarded.
Hawkins, president of Students for Life, called the executive order “tragic.”
“IVF kills children in the embryonic stage, and 93% of the children conceived in IVF will be killed or frozen, never born,“ Hawkins wrote.
Rose, president of Live Action, cited similar stats.
“1,000,000 embryos are frozen in the U.S. IVF is NOT pro-life,“ Rose wrote.
In IVF, Rose added, “15 children on average are created per 1 live birth.”
BREAKING:
President Trump just signed an order expanding IVF
Only 7% of human embryos created via IVF will result in a live birth
93% of these lives are frozen indefinitely, miscarried, or aborted
Over 1,000,000 embryos are frozen in the U.S.
IVF is NOT pro-life
— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) February 18, 2025
Stuckey, the host of the Relatable podcast, said the government should not promote IVF.
“We don’t need to incentivize IVF, which kills more innocent humans than abortion each year,“ Stuckey wrote. “America is already the wild, Wild West of reproductive technology. Europe & Canada have much better protections for the little lives created through in vitro. Here, eugenics and embryonic destruction & cryopreservation is rampant. No one is entitled to a baby. How we create new life matters.”
We don’t need to incentivize IVF, which kills more innocent humans that abortion each year. America is already the wild, Wild West of reproductive technology. Europe & Canada have much better protections for the little lives created through in vitro. Here, eugenics and embryonic…
— Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) February 18, 2025
Too many individuals within the pro-life community, Hawkins wrote, lack a consistent pro-life ethic on IVF.
“I continue to be amazed at the number of Christians who will agree with me that killing an innocent child in the womb is wrong as life begins at conception … but then will argue that IVF is a ‘blessing,‘” Hawkins wrote. “The pain of infertility and desire to have children is real but these Christians need to understand they are commodifying children the same way the abortion industry does.”
I continue to be amazed at the number of Christians who will agree with me that killing an innocent child in the womb is wrong as life begins at conception…but then will argue that IVF is a “blessing.”
The pain of infertility and desire to have children is real but these…
— Kristan Hawkins (@KristanHawkins) February 19, 2025
Last June, messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting passed a resolution calling on lawmakers to restrict IVF and urging couples to exercise caution considering IVF because the process involves “frozen embryonic human beings.“
“The In Vitro Fertilization process routinely generates more embryos than can be safely implanted, thus resulting in the continued freezing, stockpiling, and ultimate destruction of human embryos, some of whom may also be subjected to medical experimentation,“ the resolution said.
Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, spoke out against the Trump executive order.
“You have a situation in which now millions of human embryos, every single one of those embryos — a human being made in the image of God — are destroyed in a process that no one really wants to acknowledge,“ Mohler said on his podcast, The Briefing.
“As an evangelical Christian deeply committed to the biblical worldview, and as someone who seeks consistently to contend for the sanctity and dignity of human life … I just have to say that I lament this announcement by the White House,“ Mohler said. “I don’t lament its goal in terms of having more babies. That’s to be celebrated, and there’s courage in establishing that goal and doing so from the White House. But the means as well as the ends are important in the Christian worldview. And in this case, it is the means at stake that represents the problem.”
Pro-life speaker and podcaster Christine Yeargin also criticized the order.
“IVF is a topic that often elicits a lot of emotions, but we need to discuss it anyway because IVF destroys more embryonic life than Planned Parenthood does,“ Yeargin said.
IVF is a topic that often elicits a lot of emotions, but we need to discuss it anyway because IVF destroys more embryonic life than Planned Parenthood does.
I had an in-depth conversation with @Advo_Katy on this issue and I haven’t looked at IVF the same since. pic.twitter.com/Zo0JDGaOtp
— Christine Yeargin (@christineyeargs) February 18, 2025
Pastor Jared Cornutt of North Shelby Baptist Church in Alabama urged the Trump administration to focus on adoption, not IVF.
“Instead of expanding IVF,“ Cornutt wrote, “I wish this administration would prioritize making adoption more affordable and addressing the urgent need for orphans to find loving homes.”
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Michael B. Thomas/Stringer
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
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Originally published February 19, 2025.
