Donald Trump, IVF, and Billionaires’ Babies

President Trump scored a bunch of generally favorable mainstream headlines recently by announcing that he was ordering expanded access to in vitro fertilization (IVF). He had announced in October that he was “the father of IVF” although he also said he had only just learned what it was from Senator Katie Britt (R-AL), who explained it to him over the phone. “And within about two minutes, I understood it.” 

The executive order, as reporter Susan Rinkunas wryly noted at MSNBC.com, “seeks to create the illusion of an accomplishment that’s popular with the electorate.” A flunky has been tasked with providing “a list of policy recommendations” within 90 days:

In short, Trump is asking for concepts of a plan to be delivered at a later date. 

The biggest single difficulty people have in accessing IVF is generally paying for the procedure. Trump’s executive order itself suggests that “the cost per cycle can range from $12,000 to $25,000.” This may seem trivial to someone who has spent more than $10 million of taxpayers’ money on golf in his first month in office. It is, however more than most people can afford, especially if several cycles are required, which is frequently the case. That’s why fertility clinics often have a “preferred financing partner” to help recruit clients. When and if the President finalizes his plan, he still has to persuade Congress to pay for it.

Some people do have money for IVF. Journalist and commentator Taylor Lorenz recently posted a half-hour interview on YouTube with Julia Black titled “Elon Musk and the Billionaire Baby Boom.” Black wrote the first feature about Simone and Malcolm Collins, in 2022, for Business Insider, headlined:

Billionaires like Elon Musk want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids. Inside the movement to take ‘control of human evolution.’

The Collinses, who are pronatalists and “hipster eugenicists,” have since been profiled in numerous media outlets. Black’s current advice to journalists is to ignore the Collins family: “We’re done, they’ve said their piece, I don’t think we need to hear from them again.” 

Others with similar ideas deserve far more attention. Pronatalist billionaires among the techno-elite – most famously Elon Musk, but also including Silicon Valley true believers who are investing in ethically sketchy repro-genetic technologies – are increasingly influential and close to the seat of power. 

And then there’s the guy in the seat of power. At a pre-inauguration rally on January 19, Trump called out Musk’s four-year-old child X, saying “If you believe in the racehorse theory, he’s got a nice, smart son.” 

The eugenic commitments at play are blatant. As Black says (about 11:10):

Is picking one embryo over the other a problem when one of those is more likely to die of a really horrific disease? Probably not, but what happens when you start picking the one with the preferable eye color? What happens when companies (which they have started doing) start promising to detect IQ in an embryo? Should you be able to pick for that? I think that the questions get progressively slipperier.

Yes, she cites GATTACA, and why not. The movie depicts a regime in which “in-valids” are banned from certain careers, while the selected “valids” get the good jobs.

With Silicon Valley moguls pushing ahead on designer-baby technologies, while eugenic logics are on open display across the new Administration, a GATTACA-style future is yet one more danger ahead.