Episode #17 Deep Dive – The Deadbeat Dad of IVF
A deep dive into this week's episode of Paging America
This week’s Podcast Guest:
Dr. Jill Gibson, independent OB/GYN provider and former Chief Medical Officer for Planned Parenthood Arizona where she oversaw the medical practice of the affiliate's seven health centers in the state for many years, including navigating the health care staff and patients through the turmoil following the US Supreme Court's Dobbs decision which immediately forced PPAZ to initially stop all abortion care. Over the past three years since the Supreme Court's decision, Dr. Gibson was responsible for navigating the chaos and confusion surrounding the state's antiquated near-total abortion ban and 15-week abortion ban. Today, after a successful fight from advocates and doctors like Dr. Gibson, abortion is legal in Arizona beyond 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Trump: The Deadbeat Dad of IVF
(Photo Credit: AP Photo)
In October 2024, Trump called himself “the father of IVF” during a Fox News town hall. Now that he’s in office, he appears to have no further interest in helping future parents get IVF treatments:
Last year, Trump said that if he returned to office, the government would either pay for IVF services or issue rules requiring insurance companies to cover treatment for it. The pledge came as Trump faced political blowback over abortion rights after his appointees to the Supreme Court helped overturn Roe v. Wade.
“The government is going to pay for it, or we’re going to get — we’ll mandate your insurance company to pay for it, which is going to be great. We’re going to do that,” Trump said in August 2024. “We want to produce babies in this country, right?”
More than six months into his second term, however, the Trump administration has not publicly proposed new federal subsidies to make IVF free or more affordable. In addition, White House officials are backing away from proposals discussed internally to mandate IVF coverage for the roughly 50 million people on the Obamacare exchanges.
RFK, Jr. is already a threat to the health of Americans
Dr. Caitlin A. Smith, a surgeon, wrote a powerful op-ed in Slate where she shows how RFK, Jr. has already created an atmosphere of distrust of the medical community:
It’s a pattern I’ve seen explode in recent months: When it comes to parents and recommendations for treating their sick children, they, with much greater frequency, regurgitate pseudoscientific claims about vaccine safety, reiterate warnings about food quality causing all chronic disease, and try to discredit scientific research by way of Google Scholar. At an alarming rate, patients seem to understand medical treatments as a matter of opinion, rather than a thoughtful evaluation of a patient’s health informed by years of learned clinical judgment.
The end result? Parents turn away from the medical care their children need and toward remedies that won’t help—or could even do more harm.
But why? Who’s convincing all these well-meaning parents that doctors’ judgments aren’t to be trusted?
It’s the Make America Healthy Again movement, a network of online influencers, government pundits, and (a few) fringe doctors working to redefine the public’s view of health. [...]
The result is that MAHA adherents view doctors as, at best, just another voice in a chorus of health influencers—and at worst as self-interested profiteers pushing unneeded treatments.
The time for doctors to resist is NOW
In an op-ed for The Nation, political anthropologist, social psychiatrist, and psychoanalytic clinician Eric Reinhart points toward historical examples of physicians and other health care practitioners standing up against authoritarian governments and fascist attempts to incarcerate, institutionalize, or even kill marginalized groups of people and says the time for that to happen in America is now:
Building on a term coined by physician and bioethicist Robert Macauley in 2005, we might call this tradition “the Hippocratic underground.” It is an unsung practice grounded in a recognition that our responsibility to care does not end where legal and professional risks begin.
In most cases, participation in the Hippocratic underground consists of everyday acts of bureaucratic subversion and ethical disobedience in which professional risk is negligible. [...]
In the United States today, learning from—and building upon—these historical precedents is becoming more urgent. Over the last six months, the Trump administration’s policies have been transforming medicine into a tool of authoritarian repression… Trump officials have sent ICE into hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes. They have launched a war on any medical science that does not fit their political and cultural ideology, threatening medical journals, universities, medical schools, hospitals, and individual doctors if they don’t fall in line. And they have dismantled federal health programs upon which US residents in greatest need rely. [...]
And this violence is set to get much worse: The Trump administration has announced plans to expand its draconian police-state functions beyond ICE and immigrant communities. On July 24, Trump signed an executive order aimed at “reopening asylums” by using police to arrest and then forcibly institutionalize for prolonged periods—otherwise known as incarcerating—poor Americans who are unhoused, judged to be mentally ill, or struggling with addiction… This includes groups upon which the administration has demonstrated a eugenicist fixation: transgender individuals, people living with autism, and others with disabilities that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Trump have characterized as either a threat to or burden upon society.
RELATED: Trump’s Executive Order criminalizing mental illness and homelessness
The attacks on reproductive rights continue
Despite a federal judge’s ruling that temporarily halts the defunding of all Planned Parenthood clinics, some clinics are closing anyway:
Two clinics in Springfield and Hamilton were among those citing the Medicaid cuts as the reason they would be closing their doors. Those clinics did not provide abortion services, focusing instead on primary care services and screenings for cancer and sexually transmitted infections. [...]
While the Southwest Ohio affiliate expressed relief at the court decision, a spokesperson told the Capital Journal on Monday it would not impact the closure decision.
“From the Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio perspective, unfortunately for many smaller affiliates, the risk of the federal government requesting back pay if the injunction expires is still too great,” said Maya McKenzie, communications manager for the Southwest Ohio clinics.
The Guardian reports that the Trump administration has decided to destroy $9.7 million worth of contraceptives rather than send them abroad to women in need. This is despite efforts to stop it by other governments and groups. AXIOS reports that the decision to incinerate the contraceptives came despite offers from the United Nations and reproductive organizations to buy or ship the supplies instead.
Trump administration launching private health tracking system with Big Tech's help
As the Trump administration has begun breaking down the silos between Medicaid and ICE with its immigration/deportation efforts, it is now moving forward with a plan aimed at making electronic patient records more accessible across the health care system. The move has some observers very concerned. “There are enormous ethical and legal concerns,” Georgetown University law professor and public health specialist Lawrence Gostin told ABC News. “Patients across America should be very worried that their medical records are going to be used in ways that harm them and their families.”
Simone Gold of America’s Frontline Doctors gets a pass
MedPage Today: Simone Gold's Disciplinary Action Erased by California Medical Board:
The Medical Board of California last week vacated its disciplinary action against America's Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) founder Simone Gold, MD, JD, attributing its apparent reversal to "good cause having been shown."
In early 2023, the board had accused Gold of unprofessional conduct related to her actions during the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Gold served 2 months in a Miami prison on a federal trespassing charge related to those actions.
The board eventually finalized its disciplinary action with a public reprimand… [T]he board confirmed to MedPage Today that the decision was vacated and removed from Gold's profile following a court ruling to do so that had come in response to a lawsuit filed by Gold.