The president previously declared himself the “Father of IVF” after asking a female senator what it meant
President Donald Trump nicknamed himself the “fertilization president” at a Women’s History Month event held at the White House on Wednesday, March 26.
During the gathering, the president announced the formation of the Republican Women’s Caucus in Congress — led by Alabama Sen. Katie Britt and Florida Rep. Kat Cammack.
“We’re gonna have tremendous goodies in the bag for women too,” he promised the crowd. “The women, between the fertilization and all the other things we’re talking about, it’s gonna be great.”
“Fertilization. I’m still very proud of it, I don’t care,” he added. “I’ll be known as the fertilization president and that’s okay.”
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Trump’s digression on Wednesday was not the first time Trump gave himself a fertility-themed nickname.
While campaigning for his second presidential term in October 2024, the 78-year-old father of five dubbed himself the “father of IVF” when he received a question about in vitro fertilization during a Fox News town hall.
“Oh, I want to talk about IVF. I’m the father of IVF, so I want to hear this question,” Trump responded.
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In response to one attendee’s concern at the time that abortion bans could affect access to fertility treatments, Trump recalled how he had recently learned about IVF.
“So I got a call from Katie Britt, a young, just a fantastically attractive person from Alabama,” he told the crowd. “She’s a senator, and she called me up like ’emergency, emergency’ because an Alabama judge had ruled that the IVF clinics were illegal and they have to be closed down.”
“And I said, explain IVF, very IVF, very quickly. And within about two minutes, I understood it,” Trump added. “We’re totally in favor of IVF.”
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The “emergency” that the president mischaracterized at the October town hall was a ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court on Feb. 16, 2024, which stated that frozen embryos at IVF clinics were protected under Alabama’s civil Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.
Due to concerns that they could be sued for destroying frozen embryos, several fertility clinics in the state paused some of their services, though the clinics themselves were not outlawed.
In response, Trump’s then-opponent Kamala Harris labeled his comments defending IVF as “quite bizarre.”
“What is he talking about?” she wrote in a post on X. “His abortion bans have already jeopardized access to it in states across the country — and his own platform could end IVF altogether.”
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On Feb. 18, 2025, Trump signed an executive order aimed at “expanding access” to IVF.
“President Trump promised to advance IVF and help American families with the associated costs so American families can have more babies, building on his record of supporting family formation and stability,” the order reads.
However, while it declares that the Trump administration recognizes “the importance of family formation and that our Nation’s public policy must make it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children,” it doesn’t include specifics about how the administration would alleviate costs.
Instead, the order merely “directs policy recommendations to protect IVF access and aggressively reduce out-of-pocket and health plan costs for such treatments.”
