The Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, attends a Fox News town hall with women voters hosted by Harris Faulkner and taped on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024 in Cumming, Georgia. (Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images)
Former President Donald Trump fielded questions from women voters during a Fox News town hall in Georgia that aired Wednesday, and dubbed himself “the father of IVF” while discussing the fertility treatment that grabbed the spotlight after an Alabama court’s ruling earlier this year.
The GOP presidential nominee — who’s also called himself a “protector” of women — has sought to win over the critical voting bloc as he and Vice President Kamala Harris poll neck and neck in a race that’s largely been marked by a gender gap.
Trump faced a friendly crowd in Cumming, Georgia, an exurb of Atlanta, during the event that Fox News billed as centered on “women’s issues.”
The former president made multiple false claims throughout the town hall hosted by Fox News’ Harris Faulkner and often responded with long-winded answers to questions surrounding the economy, immigration and abortion.
Trump has walked a fine line on abortion in recent months, often zigzagging on his positions, though he currently maintains he would veto a federal abortion ban.
During his administration, Trump nominated three U.S. Supreme Court justices who all voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending nearly half a century of the constitutional right to an abortion.
Asked by an audience member why the government is “involved in women’s basic rights,” Trump said that abortion is now “back in the states.” The conservative justices actually wrote that ending Roe v. Wade meant the “authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives,” which includes Congress and the president.
Trump noted that some states’ abortion restrictions are “too tough” and predicted that those measures “are going to be redone because already there’s a movement in those states.”
He said he believes in “exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.”
Trump, in claiming his leadership on IVF, also said “we really are the party for IVF.” Republicans in Congress, however, have prevented the advancement of legislation on in vitro fertilization, including an attempt by U.S. Senate Democrats in March to expand access for military service members and veterans.
In September, Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic bill that could have prevented states from enacting “harmful or unwarranted limitations” on the fertility procedure and bolstered access for military members and veterans.
But Trump insisted at the town hall his party backs IVF. “We want fertilization, and it’s all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and we’re out there on IVF, even more than them, so we’re totally in favor,” he said.
Contrary to Trump’s assertion he is the “father of IVF,” it was pioneered in 1978 by a gynecologist and scientist, one of whom who received the Nobel Prize.
The debate over IVF erupted in Alabama earlier this year after the Alabama state Supreme Court issued an opinion in February that frozen embryos constitute children under state law.
That ruling forced the state’s IVF clinics to halt their work until the state legislature passed a bill providing criminal and civil protections for those clinics.
Trump, a few days after the ruling, called on Alabama lawmakers to “find an immediate solution,” and national Republicans running for Congress sought to distance themselves from the controversial Alabama decision as well.
Trump, replaying the timeline of events at the town hall, said: “So I got a call from Katie Britt, a young, just a fantastically attractive person from Alabama. She’s a senator, and she called me up like ‘emergency, emergency’ because an Alabama judge had ruled that the IVF clinics were illegal and they have to be closed.” Britt, a Republican and member of the U.S. Senate from Alabama, was also picked to deliver the State of the Union response to President Joe Biden.
Trump continued, “And I said, ‘explain IVF very quickly,’ and within about two minutes, I understood it. I said, ‘No, no, we’re totally in favor of IVF.’ I came out with a statement within an hour, a really powerful statement, with some experts, really powerful. And we went totally in favor, the Republican Party, the whole party. (The) Alabama Legislature, a day later, overturned, meaning approved it … the judge essentially approved it.”
Harris clapped back at Trump’s description of himself as the “father of IVF” later Wednesday, saying she found it “quite bizarre.”
“And if what he meant is taking responsibility, well then, yeah, he should take responsibility for the fact that 1 in 3 women in America lives in a Trump abortion ban state,” she said.
Immigration was a central topic during the town hall, and Trump repeated several false claims on the issue, including that Harris was made “border czar.”
Though President Joe Biden tasked Harris with addressing the “root causes” of migration in Central America in 2021, he did not give her the title of “border czar.” The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is in charge of border security.
Trump also reiterated his promise to ban all sanctuary cities, saying they’re “really meant for one thing: to protect criminals” and “that’s what they’ve become.” Such cities have declared their resistance to cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
“We’re going to end all sanctuary cities in the United States, and we’re going to go back to normalcy, and we’re going to have law and order … we have to reinvigorate our police,” he said.
Trump also said that under his administration, the U.S. had “the greatest economy in the history of our country.”
This claim has been proven false when evaluating factors such as the unemployment rate, annual gross domestic product increases and wage growth during his presidency compared to other administrations, per PolitiFact.
He also reiterated his plans to end taxes on Social Security benefits and to cut energy costs in half if reelected.
Ahead of Trump’s town hall, the Harris campaign hosted a press call Tuesday that featured Georgia’s Democratic Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, and the family members of Amber Thurman. A ProPublica investigation linked Georgia’s restrictive abortion law to Thurman’s death.
Ossoff said that in Trump, “you have the architect of the nationwide campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade and end decades of protection for the privacy of women’s health care and the ability of doctors to provide necessary care — and in Vice President Harris, you have a clear and leading commitment to stand up for the health of pregnant women and to empower physicians to provide necessary care.”
Harris was set to deliver remarks at a campaign event Wednesday in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. She was also set to appear in a sit-down interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, airing Wednesday.
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