At a White House Women’s History Month event, Donald Trump used a large portion of his speech to denounce trans rights, claiming trans activists have declared a “war on women.”

“We had an administration that tried to abolish the very concept of womanhood and replace it with radical gender ideology,” he told the crowd, referring to President Joe Biden’s push for trans rights.

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“It’s literally a 180. There was no warning,” said one former recipient.

“They destroyed women’s spaces and even tried to replace the word mother with the term birther person. A mother became a birther person. What’s that all about?” he said, likely referring to the controversy over the term “birthing people” when it was used by some activist organizations, which was never intended as a replacement for the word “mother” and that the Biden administration never used as such.

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He also made a dig about “men” playing in women’s sports before declaring that his administration plans to end “the Marxist war on women.”

“You had a war on women, and we’re protecting women’s rights, defending women’s dignity, and standing up for the American moms and daughters. So many are represented here,” Trump said.

Republicans have argued for years that trans inclusion is anti-woman because allowing trans women to inhabit women’s spaces is both dangerous and unfair to cis women. Neither of those things is true.

Trans people, in fact, are more than four times as likely as cisgender people to be the victims of violent crime, according to the William Institute. And another study from the Williams Institute found that there is no link between trans-inclusive bathroom policies and safety.

Trump also brought up his executive order declaring that gender is immutable and that there are only two genders.

“Is there anybody that disagrees with that in this room?” he said.

“No matter how many surgeries you have or chemicals you inject, if you’re born with male DNA in every cell of your body, you can never become a woman. You’re not going to be a woman.” The crowd applauded.

He also touted his executive order banning trans women from women’s sports, claiming trans inclusion is “demeaning to women.”

He then brought up his ban on puberty blockers and “the sexual mutilation of minor youth.”

“We’re ending it,” he said. “We’re sending it back to where it came from, oblivion.”

He then made some bizarre comments about reproductive rights, saying they will “have tremendous, tremendous goodies in the bag for women too, the women between the fertilization and all of the other things that we’re talking about… It’s going to be great.”

“I’m still very proud of it, I don’t care,” Trump added as the crowd laughed. “I’ll be known as the fertilization president, that’s not bad, that’s not bad. I’ve been called much worse. Actually I like it.”

Trump was likely referring to the fact an executive order he signed in February purportedly to expand IVF access. What it actually did, however, was ask administration officials to submit “a list of policy recommendations on protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment.”

As Mother Jones put it, “This is far less than Trump’s campaign promise to force the government or private insurers to fund IVF, which one estimate says could cost around $8 billion, based on an average cost of about $20,000 per cycle.”

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), a fierce advocate for IVF, posted on social media at the time that the order “does nothing to expand access to IVF.”

“But if he’s actually serious about delivering on his campaign promise,” she continued, “he can prove it by calling on Republicans to back my Right to IVF Act. Otherwise, it’s all just lip service from a known liar.”

The future of IVF was thrown into doubt last February when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law. Destroying unused embryos, a common practice after a successful IVF pregnancy, would amount to murder and make doctors and potentially patients liable for their destruction.

The Alabama legislature passed a measure shielding IVF providers from legal liability soon after, but the state court’s ruling thrust the fertility treatment into the campaign spotlight, where it remained until the election.

In October, Trump declared himself “the father of IVF.”

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