Red Alert: Project 2025 and IVF

Connecting the Right-Wing Dots...Paints a Scary Reality

As part of my latest project, “2025: A Novel,” I will be digging deeply into Project 2025, as well as other Trump promises, to show what is likely to happen as early as 2025 if Trump wins.

Not based on speculation, but their own words and plans. It’s a reality every voter needs to understand.

The topic of IVF has been in the spotlight lately, so let’s examine how this crucial option for so many families would be impacted:

The Heritage Foundation’s “Mandate for Leadership,” also known as Project 2025, calls for widespread and radical change, as many are warning. That includes the politicization of numerous agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The HHS also houses the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Once you bring right-wing, Christian ideology and extremism into the decisions made by HHS and the FDA—and the plan calls for the president to “maintain a biblically based, social science–reinforced definition of marriage and family”—you directly risk the reproductive freedom of American women and the self-determination of families.

And Project 2025’s Chapter dedicated to HHS isn’t subtle about how this will play out…

Project 2025 and Abortion

On page 450, Project 2025 enunciates the top priority of the Department of Health and Human Services:

“The Secretary should pursue a robust agenda to protect the fundamental right to life, protect conscience rights, and uphold bodily integrity rooted in biological realities, not ideology.

From the moment of conception, every human being possesses inherent dignity and worth, and our humanity does not depend on our age, stage of development, race, or abilities. The Secretary must ensure that all HHS programs and activities are rooted in a deep respect for innocent human life from day one until natural death: Abortion and euthanasia are not health care.”

Along those lines, on page 458, the plan calls for the FDA to ban abortion medications: “the FDA is ethically and legally obliged to revisit and withdraw its initial approval [of chemical abortion drugs such as mifepristone]….The FDA is statutorily charged with guaranteeing the safety and efficacy of drugs and therefore should withdraw this drug that is proven to be dangerous to women and by definition fatally unsafe for unborn children.”

This is just one of numerous anti-abortion provisions throughout the HHS section. As one PBS discussion summarized: “some of their abortion policy proposals include scrapping federal funding to Planned Parenthood, undoing the Biden administration rule that shields medical records related to abortion from criminal investigations — that's if a patient crosses state lines — reversing the FDA approval of mifepristone, which is one of the two pills used for medical abortion, and mailing — making mailing abortion pills to patients illegal.”

All right there in the plan.

What Else? Birth Control and IVF

But there’s no reason to think that once the FDA starts banning abortion medications along the lines that they are “dangerous,” and “fatally unsafe to unborn children”—in serving the new top HHS priority of protecting life after conception— that they would stop there.

In fact, a close look at the positions on the far Christian right—which animates much of Project 2025—makes clear that birth control and IVF treatments are also in the cross-hairs.

As Jenny Cohn writes, “If a Republican president gives the Christian Right control of the FDA, we should expect them to use these purported health concerns as a pretext for withdrawing FDA approval” in other cases as well, such as birth control.

But would this go as far as IVF treatment?

You be the judge:

“Conception.” “Day One.”

First, the clear and consistent definition of “conception,” which Project 2025 explicitly sets as the starting point of life (page 450), is the moment an egg is fertilized to become an embryo. Medical News Today adds: “People usually define conception as the moment when a sperm fertilizes an egg. This can happen inside the body or outside of the body when people are using IVF.”

So Project 2025 is declaring right up front that it believes that from “day one,” embryos comprise “innocent human life.” And HHS’s top priority is to protect them.

Once “conception” becomes that starting point, the threat to IVF follows.

For example, you get a ruling such as the recent one from the Alabama Supreme Court, which found that, as Politico summarized, “frozen embryos created during the IVF process should have full personhood rights.”

And you get hard-right groups such as the Southern Baptist Convention, “the nation’s largest and most politically powerful Protestant denomination,” opposing IVF treatment because (as its resolution declared) IVF “most often participates in the destruction of embryonic human life.” As Politico wrote: “The [SBC] move may signal the beginning of a broad turn on the right against IVF, an issue that many evangelicals, anti-abortion advocates and other social conservatives see as the “pro-life” movement’s next frontier — one they hope will eventually lead to restrictions, or outright bans, on IVF at the state and federal levels.”

Yes, these are the very people at the base of Trump’s movement. His most active backers. If he wins, it will be because of them. And their position is now clear.

But let’s dig even deeper.

What animates this deeper opposition to IVF, such as that Southern Baptist position?

Digging Deeper

I found one particular article that walked through it in helpful detail. And it brought (Biblical) receipts.

Here’s some of what that article said:

“It is past time for Protestant denominations to carefully examine the use of assisted reproductive technologies, namely in vitro fertilization (IVF) and surrogate motherhood.”

The article then used the Bible as its guide through this examination (remember, as Project 2025 suggests the president must do in health decisions): “Protestants affirm that life begins at conception, not merely at the implantation of a fertilized egg. Even at their most vulnerable stage, these undeveloped human beings are created in the image of God (Job 10:9–11; Ps. 41:5; 139:13–17; Jer. 1:5; Luke 1:41–44). Because of this, any procedure or treatment that destroys or violates the dignity and life of an embryo is morally and theologically abhorrent; such things should not be found among Christians (Deuteronomy 18:10-14, Ephesians 5:3). 

…IVF and surrogate motherhood pose much larger moral quandaries beyond whether doctors destroy or preserve nascent human life. Indeed, these technologies reshape our moral imagination in ways that must be accounted for in our theology and biblical counseling….

IVF and surrogate motherhood…routinely destroy or violate embryonic human life.”

The article also explores the cause of infertility—and according to this expert, it ain’t biology: “infertility is a byproduct of sin entering the world and does not redefine God’s vision for the package deal of marriage, sex, and procreation. Indeed, it was only when reproductive technologies such as the Pill, IVF, and surrogate motherhood entered the picture that it became normal or understandable for marriage, sex, and procreation to be severed from one another. We shape our tools, and our tools, in turn, shape us. 

The very use of reproductive technologies such as IVF and surrogate motherhood, which circumvent and reinvent natural fertility, disrupt this “package deal” of marriage, sex, and procreation.”

And still more: “Children are not an act of the will, nor is reproductive technology a means of wish fulfillment. A culture that values and protects life is one where parents submit their own wishes to the wellbeing of children. That includes children who do not exist yet. Parents must faithfully steward all the good gifts God gives them, including children.”

There’s more.

But I know what you’re thinking:

This one article may espouse strong religious opposition to IVF treatment, just like the Southern Baptist Convention did, but is it fair for me to overlay these views onto the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—the plan for the whole country?

“Isn’t that kind of a stretch?” you may be wondering.

Well, no. Unfortunately, it’s not a stretch at all.

Because the article I am quoting is FROM the Heritage Foundation (published on Feb. 1 2024), written by one of their own (Richard and Helen DeVos Center) scholars! Here, you can see the logo at the top:

And that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to IVF and the Heritage Foundation—again, the group leading the Project 2025 effort.

Here’s another article from Heritage, expounding more on the Biblical treatment of infertility. Just a few more quotes to give you a sense of it:

“Infertility, then, is a result of the fall. To experience infertility is not a sin in and of itself, but it is the consequence of sin entering the world.”

“Men and women cannot ‘create’ another person any more than we create ourselves. God gives humans the blessing of begetting, discipling, disciplining, and stewarding children as the gift from God that they are. It is nothing short of idolatry—attributing our blindness to God and God’s all-knowing wisdom to our own actions—to act as creators of another person.”

“[T]he use of many reproductive technologies may violate God’s vision for marriage, sex, and procreation (Malachi 2:15).”

“It is God who opens and closes the womb. He is the only one with power to open ours today. Infertility is not always resolved or explained, even in the Bible, but we can be certain that God is active and able, even in the most painful situations. God does not promise that every person will bear biological children, but He does promise that all who ask for wisdom will receive it freely (James 1:5). As such, Christians should ask for wisdom as they seek to restore the physical causes of infertility.”

And apparently the long human quest to overcome infertility has not been a good one: “Throughout the history of Israel, the fear of infertility and the desire to control or overcome it directed their attention to idol worship…Let that sink in: the false and idolatrous worship that plagued Israel most directly corresponds with their desire to overcome infertility (be it of the land or their bodies).”

“When people try to produce children in their own power and control, Scripture calls such work vain. (This mindset can permeate both natural and mediated procreation.) It is the Lord that builds the house. If or when a couple bears children is wholly in God’s control, not ours.”

Again, this is all from the Heritage Foundation. It’s on their website, just a few clicks away from Project 2025:

But maybe you’re still asking: “OK. This may be their deeper philosophy about religion and fertility. But does it really have real-world implications?”

Oh yes!

Remember that Alabama decision? That outrages so many? The same Heritage/Devos scholar who wrote the words above appeared on C-SPAN following that decision to say that that the Alabama Court was “on the right track.”

You can watch the clip yourself HERE. Here’s how she answered a question as to whether she agrees with the decision that “embryos” and “children”—and harm done to either—are “the same thing”:

“I think that [the decision] is on the right track…[W]ith the pro-life movement and certainly those who hold a consistent view of human life from the moment of conception—be it an embryo, an unborn child in the womb, or a child that is born—we hold that that is human life regardless of its stage of development, and that that embryo deserves the same protection as everyone else’s children.”

That statement alone spells the end of IVF treatments.

Dots Connected: “Subdue” Reproductive Technology

So yes.

The organization leading the charge on Project 2025 is pretty crystal clear about IVF.

And they’re not just sharing a philosophy—they’re preparing to act.

Back to that first Heritage article, which declares at the end: “It is time for Protestant denominations to pay serious attention to reproductive technology and invest in the hard work of subduing and taking dominion over it.”

“Subduing” and “taking dominion” over it.

Got it! Points for clarity.

Along the same lines, the part of Project 2025’s HHS section that covers the National Institutes of Health (Page 461) spells out one such pathway to “subdue”: “the Administration should reconvene a new National Council on Bioethics (NCB) to discuss new and emerging areas of ethical concern, to assess whether the ends justify the means when it comes to the promise of therapies and cures…”

Therapies and cures. More points for clarity.

Folks, they’re not hiding any of this. On line, on TV, in the plan—it’s all pretty clear.

Bottom line: Are these the people you want in a U.S. President’s ear, running our nation?

Do you want people leading the federal agency that oversees all Americans’ health pursuing a top priority of protecting embryos, from Day One of “conception”—when they themselves explain that that means the end of IVF?

Do you want people running the FDA to decide which drugs they think are “dangerous” —“and by definition fatally unsafe for unborn children”—when they clearly define those “children” to include embryos?

I know my answer.

So how we do stop this?

Win at all levels this year.

And one way to do that is to wake people up.

Be sure people know about Project 2025, and its direct risk to such intimate family decisions as IVF treatment. And its broader risk to reproductive freedom, and personal freedom in other ways.

Because if people do know it, Trump and the Heritage Foundation will never get their chance to do it. It turns out, policies like banning and stopping IVF are deeply unpopular. Toxic, politically. (Just ask Ohio voters, or Kansas voters, or Michigan voters. Or ask the Alabama Republican who lost in a Republican district to a Democratic candidate, after that Alabama Court decision).

Do whatever you can to spread the word.

Make sure people know.

And make it REAL for people. Not just about policy, but as real as you can make it.

Along these lines, look for Chapter 2 of “2025: A Novel” on Saturday.

And you haven’t read the opening Chapter, now’s a good time. Go HERE.