President Donald Trump says he wants Americans to have more babies, and his administration is willing to try almost anything, from cash bonuses to transportation grants.

Key takeaways

• A law called the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act helps protect people who need time off work to pursue IVF treatment.

• The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is likely to reinterpret the law so it no longer covers people undergoing IVF.

• Debate over the law highlights a bigger schism on the right, between those who oppose IVF on religious grounds and those who support it as a way to boost birth rates.

However, there is one method for conceiving children that thousands of people use every year, but that has divided the Trump White House and the larger MAGA coalition: in vitro fertilization (IVF).

Trump has repeatedly emphasized his support for IVF, even going so far as to call himself “the fertilization president” and “the father of IVF.” But some social conservatives, including high-profile groups that have been critical to the MAGA coalition and Trump’s unlikely alliance with evangelical Christians, oppose IVF on religious grounds. They have backed restrictions on the procedure as well as unproven alternatives like “restorative reproductive medicine.”

Now the two camps are headed for a showdown over the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which President Joe Biden signed in 2023. The law requires most employers to offer reasonable accommodations for workers’ needs arising from pregnancy, childbirth, or related conditions. A regulation implementing the law, issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2024, clarifies that those related conditions include miscarriage, abortion, lactation, and fertility treatments.

Andrea Lucas, the Trump-appointed chair of the EEOC, has signaled that she wants to revisit the Biden-era regulation. Workers’ rights advocates fear the EEOC could revise the rule to exclude accommodations related to IVF, like being allowed to take time off for appointments, potentially forcing people to choose between keeping their jobs and getting pregnant.

“Employers frequently balk at IVF appointments, seeing them as elective and not as necessary,” Inimai Chettiar, president of the workplace justice nonprofit A Better Balance, told me. The protections of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act “are really critical........

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