ArcaMax

PARIS — U.S. President Donald Trump just wrapped up Women’s History Month by crowning himself the “Fertilization President.”

The claim is almost as unsettling as the time a guy at a soirée here in France casually mentioned that under Vichy France's Nazi rule, I would have been forced to reproduce — with him.

Both of these comments are creepy for the same reason: they imply that a woman’s body is some kind of national asset – like an oil reserve. Women’s parents never handed them over to the state at birth. Nor did we slide down some kind of government managed toll-road and out into the world, although some government officials insist on acting like that’s the case.

“We’re gonna have tremendous goodies in the bag for women,” Trump said while promoting his executive order to expand access to artificial fertilization, also known as in vitro fertilization, or IVF. It sounds like Trump thinks that reproductive decisions are like trick-or-treating at Grandpa’s house. “I’ll be known as the Fertilization President, and that’s okay,” he added.

Is it, though? Did Trump run that line by Melania or Ivanka first? Or did he just assume that it would be a winner?

If Trump had taken even a cursory glance at history, he might realize that he’s wading into dangerous territory. Nazi Germany had its Lebensborn program, which forced women to reproduce with SS officers. Stalin’s Soviet Union and Ceausescu’s Romania also wielded state power to manipulate population growth. When governments start getting involved in reproduction, it never ends well. Just ask China, now struggling with the results of its one-child policy that has created a gender imbalance.

Trump’s executive order, signed on February 18, gives his policy team 90 days to figure out how to “protect IVF access” and “aggressively reduce out-of-pocket costs” for fertility treatments. But here’s the million — or perhaps multi-billion — dollar question: Who’s paying for this? Will the same lawmakers who decry subsidized school lunches suddenly be OK with socializing the cost of fertility treatments? And if so, why would they support or turn a blind eye to that double-standard?

Trump is the same guy who, when it came to abortion, practically handed pro-life activists a golden sledgehammer to smash Roe v. Wade. Trump’s Supreme Court Justice picks — Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh — ensured that abortion rights went from being a federal guarantee to a state-level free-for-all. “It’s out of federal hands,” Trump bragged in 2024.

“And into the hearts, minds and votes of the people in each state.” Translation: What a win for small government! Also, not my problem, ladies!

But now, suddenly, he’s turned into a Mrs. Doubtfire busybody for the nanny state that he claims to abhor. Because when it comes to forcing women to have babies, the government apparently needs in on the action. Trump says America’s birth rate is too low, so there have to be more babies. “We want more babies,” he said in an official statement.

Define “we”. Unless you’re personally volunteering for 3 a.m. diaper duty, your views about reproductive choices are irrelevant.

Trump has also taken to calling himself the "father of IVF." (Presumably "führer" was already taken.) During his last presidential campaign, he took to social media to demand that Alabama lawmakers protect IVF access after a court ruling put it in jeopardy. Sounds like stomping on states' rights to me.

If the government starts nudging people to have more kids, what’s stopping it from going further and enacting a birth control policy? Oh wait, Trump already floated that idea before walking it back.

Or how about forcing women to carry pregnancies against their will? Oh right, that’s already happening in states with strict abortion bans.

And will government intrusion into private intimacy really end with Trump's IVF push? Once politicians get comfortable meddling in reproductive choices, why not just have Elon Musk make a national dating app where the government picks your match based on its “national interest”?

Women who voted for Trump did so because he promised to get the government out of their lives. Not because they wanted him to play national OB-GYN. Maybe instead of being the “Fertilization President,” he should go back to being the “Golf President." After all, if there’s one thing we don’t need, it’s government officials barging into our bedrooms and talking exactly like an overbearing dad with a dodgy concept of personal boundaries.

If Trump really wants to help women, then he can start by ensuring that women, not politicians, are making the decisions about whether to have children, how to finance that choice and who gets to weigh in on that decision. Maybe their doctor does? Maybe their family? But definitely not Donald Trump.

The idea of having Big Government meddle in personal reproductive decisions should raise a red flag for anyone who cares about personal freedoms. The government’s role should not be to decide how many babies need to be born. Trump should be protecting the sovereignty of the smallest and most vulnerable minority – that of one — rather than turning women into government-sponsored baby-making machines.

Women are not incubators for the state. At least not yet, anyway. Is it really too much to ask to try to keep it that way?