Former President Donald J. Trump declared himself the “father of I.V.F.” in a town-hall event Tuesday focused on women’s issues, an eyebrow-raising nickname that was his latest attempt to claim an advantage on a matter that has become a political liability.
The Supreme Court justices Mr. Trump appointed enabled the overturning of Roe v. Wade, a ruling that he has praised and that opened the door to possible restrictions on in vitro fertilization.
“We really are the party for I.V.F.,” Mr. Trump said in the town hall, which was hosted by Fox News and aired on Wednesday. He has expressed support for I.V.F. in recent months, but he did not discuss or promote it before this year.
“We want fertilization, and it’s all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and we’re out there on I.V.F., even more than them,” he said.
Congressional Republicans have voted twice in the past four months to block bills that would protect the legality of I.V.F., including one that would also guarantee insurance coverage of it, which Mr. Trump has said he wants to do.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, said the “father of I.V.F.” remark was “a joke President Trump made in jest when he was enthusiastically answering a question about I.V.F.” She did not respond when asked twice whether Mr. Trump supported the bill that Republicans had blocked.
The availability of in vitro fertilization has been at issue in the 2024 campaigns for the presidency and Congress since the Alabama Supreme Court ruled this year that it was illegal because embryos were children under the state’s constitution. (I.V.F., a common fertility procedure, typically involves creating multiple embryos and either discarding or indefinitely freezing unused ones.) The state legislature then passed a law that shielded I.V.F. providers from liability but did not address the legal status of embryos.
The near-total abortion bans passed in some states since 2022 — when a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, three members of which Mr. Trump appointed, overturned Roe v. Wade — have opened the door to potential bans or restrictions on I.V.F., but so far no other state has followed Alabama’s lead.
In the hourlong town-hall event, Mr. Trump also doubled down on his description of his political opponents as an “enemy from within” that poses a greater threat than foreign adversaries. His Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, has called those statements “unhinged.”
Ms. Harris responded to his I.V.F. comments before leaving Detroit on Wednesday.
“He should take responsibility for the fact that one in three women in America lives in a Trump abortion ban state,” she said. “What he should take responsibility for is that couples who are praying and hoping and working toward growing a family have been so disappointed and harmed by the fact that I.V.F. treatments have now been put at risk.”
She added: “Let’s not be distracted by his choice of words. The reality is, his actions have been very harmful to women and families in America on this issue.”
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