Donald Trump appointed an anti-IVF judge. Now he claims he supports IVF.

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump was quick to respond to the Alabama Supreme Court’s anti-IVF ruling last week by saying that he supports the fertility treatment, but he did appoint a judge in 2019 who openly opposed the procedure, as well as a Supreme Court justice who refused to say whether she supported the right to IVF.

“Under my leadership, the Republican Party will always support the creation of strong, thriving, healthy American families,” Trump posted to his social media platform Truth Social last Friday, a response to the Alabama Supreme Court declaring fertilized embryos produced for IVF to be legal children. “We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder!”

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IVF is a procedure that involves the fertilization of eggs outside of the human body and is used to increase the chance of a pregnancy. Pregnancy rates are higher when more embryos are created and transferred, and embryos can be frozen for later use.

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The Alabama ruling declared that state laws protecting “unborn children” also apply to those “located outside of a biological uterus,” which includes un-implanted embryos. This means that doctors who mishandle embryos or make a mistake that leads one to be destroyed could be charged with murder. Several clinics have already stopped performing IVF in the state.

Now critics are pointing to Trump’s 2019 nomination of Sarah E. Pitlyk to federal court in the Eastern District of Missouri. In a 2017 amicus brief, Pitlyk argued that fertility treatments, including IVF and surrogacy, have “grave effects on society,” including “diminished respect for motherhood and the unique mother-child bond; exploitation of women; commodification of gestation and of children themselves; and weakening of appropriate social mores against eugenic abortion.”

Pitlyk also filed legal briefs with anti-IVF claims, including that children conceived via IVF have “higher rates of birth defects, genetic disorders and other anomalies.”

“As a mother who struggled with infertility for years and required IVF to start my family, I would be one of the many Americans who could never enter Ms. Pitlyk’s courtroom with any reasonable expectation that my case would be adjudicated in a fair and impartial manner,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) wrote in a letter to her Senate colleagues opposing Pitlyk’s confirmation.

“I think it is disqualifying for any judicial nominee to make unfounded and unsupported claims, especially in a court of law,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said at the time.

The American Bar Association deemed Pitlyk “not qualified” for a position as a federal judge, saying she lacked experience in trial and litigation and the “temperament or integrity” necessary to be a judge. She was confirmed by the Senate with 49 Republicans voting to confirm, one Republican and 43 Democrats voting against her confirmation, and seven senators of both parties not voting.

Video of part of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s 2020 confirmation hearing has also resurfaced online, showing her unwilling to rule out criminalizing IVF.

“Criminalizing [IVF], would it be constitutional?” asked Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT). “I think there’s a clear answer.”

“Senator, I have repeatedly said, as has every other nominee who sat in this seat, that we can’t answer questions in the abstract,” Barrett responded.