For years, it's been increasingly obvious that the pro-life wing of the conservative movement — a wing that used to be a fundamental pillar of American conservatism — has been pushed aside by the Republican Party under the banner of MAGA. The latest example? The Trump administration's continued embrace of in vitro fertilization, or IVF.

While Trump called for IVF treatments to be free for American women during his presidential campaign, his latest announcement splits the baby, so to speak, looking to reduce the cost of these fertility services. As The National Review put it, this system looks to present IVF benefits in a similar fashion to opting in for dental or vision services in an employer's insurance plan, providing significant discounts for IVF treatments by diluting the cost across health insurance customers.

However, while many — including the president himself — are celebrating this as a pro-life win, the expansion of IVF (let alone government-endorsed expansion) is quite the opposite.

The fundamental problem with the conversation surrounding IVF is that the treatment seems as far from the world of abortion as possible. After all, IVF involves the creation of a fertilized embryo that is then implanted into the mother-to-be. What could be more pro-life than the science-enabled creation of life?!

Well, the problem with IVF lies not in theory but in practice, and the hidden cost of IVF that goes completely unnoticed while we are — understandably — distracted by a real-life flesh-and-blood baby.

Costing tens of thousands of dollars per round of treatment, IVF is a massive investment for families. When we also consider that the success rate of IVF is less than ideal and only decreases as the woman gets older, it's routine for IVF clinics to mitigate these factors by creating more than one embryo, some of which will be implanted. The rest? They are frozen or destroyed.

And for those who correctly believe that life begins at conception, each of these created embryos is a human life, meaning that an overwhelming majority of IVF-created human lives are put on ice or destroyed as a result of the process. What makes matters worse is that — because of a lack of reporting — we don't even know the precise number of embryos that are destroyed, but estimates put the numbers in the millions every year.

Millions of unborn human lives that are (at best) put on ice or (at worst) destroyed, far outpacing the number of abortions performed in the United States every year.

The issue with IVF is not IVF itself, but the embryos that are created and never implanted as a direct consequence of IVF. With the Republican Party forging ahead with fueling this process that kills millions of unborn lives every year, it's time for the pro-life movement to understand that this is a battle we are not only losing but ignoring. And until we formulate a strategy to educate the American people on the reality of IVF (let alone the eugenics-esque underbelly of picking and choosing embryos), millions will continue to die.

Die silently in a test tube, but die nonetheless.

To find out more about Ian Haworth and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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