President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that aims to expand access to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, a practice the Catholic Church warns is enormously destructive to embryonic human life.

A form of artificial reproductive technology, IVF unites a woman’s eggs and a man’s sperm outside of their respective bodies in a laboratory setting, with one or more embryonic children selected for implantation in the woman’s uterus, and the remaining embryonic children either destroyed or frozen indefinitely.

Trump’s Feb. 18 executive order “directs policy recommendations to protect IVF access and aggressively reduce out-of-pocket and health plan costs for such treatments,” according to a statement issued that same day by the White House.

Costs for IVF, which are “often not fully covered by health insurance,” can range “from $12,000 to $25,000 per cycle” and “multiple cycles may be needed to get pregnant,” said the White House in its statement.

The executive order delivers on “promises for American families” made by Trump while seeking to address declining fertility rates in the U.S., said the White House.

That drop is part of a global downturn in fertility rates, with 2024 rates at 2.2 births per woman, down from approximately 5 in the 1960s and 3.3 in 1990, according to the United Nations’ World Fertility Report 2024.

The White House statement quoted Trump as saying, “We want more babies, to put it very nicely.”

However, pro-family demographers put cold water on an IVF policy leading to a baby boom when Trump floated the idea on the 2024 campaign trail.

Lyman Stone, senior fellow and director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies, told OSV News in September that people tend to delay fertility with more reproductive technology options. 

“So you freeze your eggs when you’re 31, and you say, ‘Well, I don’t need to be in any particular rush, because at the end of the day, I’ve got all the time in the world,'” he said. But given some of the inherent difficulties in births to older mothers, that’s not always true, meaning “these two factors more or less cancel out.”

“So the net result is that there are no extra babies,” he said.

IVF treatments are opposed by the Catholic Church because they frequently involve the destruction of human embryos, in addition to other ethical and moral issues.

Out of more than 413,000 artificial reproductive technology cycles recorded in 2021, only 112,088 resulted in pregnancy. Of those, only 97,128 babies were successfully born, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Multiple embryos are typically created for use in an IVF cycle, so the number of human embryos currently created each year by IVF in the U.S. runs into the hundreds of thousands — with the majority typically lost through what fertility clinics on their websites explain as “IVF attrition.”

Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of Arlington, Va. — who in November 2024 completed his three-year term as chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities — addressed IVF in his Jan. 22 pastoral letter, “The Christian Family, In Vitro Fertilization and Heroic Witness to True Love.”

Citing the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council, papal writings, Catholic bioethicists and journalistic coverage of the IVF industry, while also providing an array of pastoral resources for couples struggling with infertility, Bishop Burbidge warned that IVF poses both an “obvious” and “subtle” threat to human dignity.

He said those threats include the eugenic destruction of millions of embryonic children and dangers to health, safety and religious liberty.

In a Feb. 19 statement, Bishop Burbidge described Trump’s executive order as a “disappointing and unnecessary action” that is “incompatible with the president’s evident support for the good of human life and his desire to encourage family formation.”

President Donald Trump said in remarks to the National Prayer Breakfast Feb. 6 that he would create a task force, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, to investigate “anti-Christian” bias in the federal government.

In dual remarks at the event, first at the U.S. Capitol and then across town at the Washington Hilton, Trump said he would establish a presidential commission on religious liberty that “will work tirelessly to uphold this most fundamental right.”

The president also said he would sign an executive order to make Bondi head of a task force “to immediately hold all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DOJ  — which was absolutely terrible — the IRS, the FBI and other agencies.”

Trump has long taken aim at some Biden administration policies he argued “weaponized” the Department of Justice, including Trump’s own prosecution on charges related to his alleged conduct surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, and other alleged misconduct.

Among his first actions in office, Trump issued pardons for 23 pro-life activists he said were improperly prosecuted by the Biden administration under the Federal Access to Clinic Entrances Act. The FACE Act prohibits actions including obstructing the entrance to an abortion clinic. Trump cited those convictions as examples of such bias.

The president’s comments came as his administration has openly feuded with the Catholic Church’s bishops and ministries, as well as other Christian groups, over immigration policy and the Church’s ministry to unauthorized immigrants, and U.S. foreign aid work.

World Relief, an evangelical charity organization, called itself “heartbroken” by stop-work orders on its federally-funded partnerships with the U.S. government, including one it received following the potential closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development or USAID.

Other faith-based groups impacted by a freeze on foreign assistance funding include Samaritan’s Purse and Catholic Relief Services, the overseas charitable arm of the Catholic Church in the U.S.

At the prayer breakfast, Trump shared that his own views on religion had changed in the wake of the July assassination attempt against him.

“It changed something in me, I feel,” Trump said of the nearly fatal incident on the campaign trail in Butler, Pa.

“I feel even stronger,” he said. “I believed in God, but I feel, I feel much more strongly about it. Something happened.”

President Donald Trump was sworn in for a second, nonconsecutive term in the White House Jan. 20, becoming the nation’s 47th president four years after he left office as its 45th.

In his inaugural address, Trump pledged to reverse what he called “America’s decline.”

“My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place, and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy. And, indeed, their freedom,” Trump said.

Trump also addressed his own assassination attempt while campaigning in Butler, Pa., last July, arguing, “I felt then and believe even more so now that my life was saved for a reason — I was saved by God to make America great again.”

In his address, Trump confirmed his plans to sign a series of executive orders on Day One, including declaring a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, shutting down “illegal entry” and beginning “the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.”

While Trump has not yet offered specifics on how he would carry out such a program, mass deportations more broadly run contrary to the Second Vatican Council’s teaching in “Gaudium et Spes” condemning “deportation” among other actions, such as abortion, that “poison human society” and give “supreme dishonor to the Creator,” a teaching St. John Paul II affirmed in two encyclicals on moral truth and life issues.

Executive orders are legally binding directives from the president and are published in the Federal Register. Conversely, the term “executive actions” is broader and may include informal proposals for policy the president would like to see enacted. While it is typical for new presidents to issue some executive orders on their first day to signal certain priorities, Trump signaled plans that were broader in scope. Some of his planned orders are expected to face legal challenges.

JD Vance, previously Ohio’s senator, also took the oath of office, becoming the nation’s second Catholic vice president. Justice Brett Kavanaugh administered his oath.

The inauguration ceremony was moved indoors amid frigid temperatures in the nation’s capital, taking place in the Capitol Rotunda rather than the exterior West Front of the Capitol Building.

An opening prayer was delivered by Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York. He cited the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, whose federal holiday was also observed Jan. 20, “who warned without God our efforts turned to ashes.”

The cardinal prayed that Trump “may know your designs,” and also wished God’s blessings on President Joe Biden in the final moments of his term.

In a message to Trump, Pope Francis expressed “the assurance of my prayers that Almighty God will grant you wisdom, strength, and protection in the exercise of your high duties.”

“Inspired by your nation’s ideals of being a land of opportunity and welcome for all, it is my hope that under your leadership the American people will prosper and always strive to build a more just society, where there is no room for hatred, discrimination or exclusion,” Pope Francis said, adding, “I also ask God to guide your efforts in promoting peace and reconciliation among peoples.”

But in a Jan. 19 interview with an Italian television program, Pope Francis said Trump’s mass deportation plans would be a “disgrace” if they materialized.

“That’s not right. That’s not how you solve problems,” the pontiff said.

At the ceremony’s conclusion, interfaith clergy members, including Father Frank Mann of Brooklyn, N.Y., delivered a blessing. The retired Brooklyn priest developed an unlikely friendship with Trump after taking an interest in the Trump family’s gravesite. While visiting a cemetery in Queens, Father Mann discovered that the gravesite of Trump’s parents and grandparents was overgrown.