Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Well, last week, President Trump issued yet another executive order, this one endorsing in vitro fertilization,

calling for lower and subsidized costs, expanded access, and protection of the practice nationwide.

On one hand, the executive order is fully consistent with all the others,

following up on something Trump promised during his campaign.

However, endorsing IVF during the campaign was more of a tactic to mitigate critiques from the left

on his role in the undoing of Roe v. Wade.

Kamala Harris' running mate Tim Walts, after repeatedly and falsely claiming to

have pursued children through IVF himself, claim that Trump would ban the practice as part of his

plan to restrict reproductive health care and exert control over women. His counterpart, J.D. Vance,

pushed back on that claim during the debate, saying that banning IVF was not even a legal

possibility,

though he did talk about the technology in far less glowing terms than Trump did, as one might

expect from a Roman Catholic. At the time, the Colson Center joined a chorus, numerous pro-life

and pro-family leaders who argued that open-ended support of IVF is not a pro-life position. Through a series of videos on the topic

in our What Would You Say series, we argued that if life begins at conception, which has been a central pro-life talking point for decades, then IVF, especially as currently practiced, needs far more examination and regulation, not less.

Claiming IVF to be pro-life, as some do, simply does not make it so.

In fact, the evidence belies that claim.

Even more, despite just how the recent executive order was worded, IVF should not even be considered a pro-fertility position.

Though born children do result, the way that IVF is

overwhelmingly, almost universally practiced today, means that far more lives are taken by the

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