Trump calls himself the “father of IVF” on Fox News’ women’s forum

“We’re going to put an end to all the sanctuary cities in the United States, and we’re going to get back to normalcy, and we’re going to have law and order,” Trump said at a forum broadcast Wednesday on how to stop violent crime, such as the murder of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student who was killed while jogging in Athens, Georgia.

The outreach comes three weeks before Election Day as polls show a “historic” gender gap of about 30 points, with Vice President Kamala Harris doing well with women while Trump has strong support among men.

The crowd selected to attend the town hall supported the former president, often clapping and cheering. When Fox News host Harris Faulkner asked Trump what he could realistically accomplish with Congress on immigration, he did not answer the question directly but condemned President Joe Biden and Harris for their border record.

“There is no country that can sustain this,” he said. “We are a laughing stock around the world. They make fun of our president and our vice president.”

Abortion came up in the last 10 minutes of the town hall. Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022 after Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court, ending federal protections for abortion access and motivating women to go to the polls in the midterm elections.

One woman asked the former president, “Why is the government concerned with women’s basic rights?”

Trump said abortion should be decided by the states and implied he supports states that choose to enact less restrictive abortion laws.

“The states are voting for it now,” Trump said. “And honestly, some of them are taking a much more liberal approach, like in Ohio, than I thought.”

Trump later added that some state laws are “too strict.”

The former president called himself the “father of IVF,” or in vitro fertilization, a fertility treatment that has been compromised in the wake of the fall of the US. Roe v. Wade.

“I want to talk about IVF. I’m the father of IVF, so I want to hear this question,” Trump said ahead of a voter’s question about whether her friends will still have access to the treatment after the abortion restrictions.

Earlier this year, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos used in IVF should be considered children, jeopardizing access to the treatment. Although state legislatures passed bills in the wake of the ruling to provide legal protections for IVF, Democrats argue that access to reproductive care across the country is in jeopardy.

“We are truly the party for IVF,” Trump told Faulkner. “We want conception, and it is totally, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and we are there on IVF, even more than them. So we are fully in favor of it.”

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Harris’ campaign argues that the Alabama ruling offers a preview of what Trump’s policies would look like if he were re-elected.

“Donald Trump called himself ‘the father of IVF.’ What is he talking about?” the vice president posted on social media. “His abortion bans have already threatened access to them in states across the country — and his own platform could end IVF altogether.”