Elizabeth Warren condemns Trump for ‘changing his tune’ on IVF

The US senator Elizabeth Warren has accused Donald Trump of trying to have it "both ways" with in vitro fertilization (IVF), two days after the former president vowed to force health insurance companies or the federal government to pay for the treatments if he is elected in November.

Speaking on MSNBC, Warren said Trump was simply adapting his positions according to what he perceived his audience's preference to be.

"So when he thinks he's talking to his radical base, he says: how radical do you need for me to be?" Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said Saturday.

"Donald Trump will go there and go further. But when he's talking to the overwhelming majority of Americans, who very much oppose that radical approach to abortion and IVF, he tries to change his tune, and then is shocked when each side now is starting to call him out on that."

The Republican nominee for November's presidential election has recast his position on IVF as a strong supporter of the pricey treatment - a characterization Democrats reject, accusing him of shifting his position only after US voters signaled broad support for reproductive rights.

Similarly, Democrats accuse Trump of shifting his position on abortion rights. On Friday, he said he would vote against a ballot measure in his home state of Florida that would protect abortion rights beyond six weeks after facing backlash from conservative supporters.

A day earlier, Trump upset anti-abortion activists when he told NBC News that he supported the measure. "You need more time than six weeks," said Trump, who has repeatedly boasted about how his three appointees on the US supreme court created a conservative supermajority which eliminated federal abortion rights in 2022.