Natural alternative for infertility

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: holistic fertility treatments.

About 1 in 5 women struggle to get pregnant. Many assume IVF is their only option. But advocates for natural infertility care say that’s not true.

WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown brings us the report.

MEANEY: My wife Marie and I were married in the year 2000 and we were expecting to have a large family, certainly very open to that idea.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN: Joseph Meaney is a senior fellow at the National Catholic Bioethics Center.

MEANEY: We were surprised when no children came within a year and then another year. And so then we started getting worried and we started looking at the different medical options available.

He and his wife learned many fertility specialists have just one solution in mind.

MEANEY: When a couple suffers from infertility in the United States, pretty much the only medical option that is offered to them is in vitro fertilization in most cases.

Many couples who struggle getting pregnant are encouraged to try IVF. The procedure makes up nearly 3% of U.S. births.

The federal government seems to be prioritizing making IVF more affordable. The procedure can cost up to $30,000 per round of treatment. In February, President Donald Trump issued an executive order about IVF. White House staff secretary Will Scharf explained the directive at a news conference.

SCHARF: These are treatments that have become unaffordable for many Americans. And the executive order is a directive to the domestic policy counsel to examine ways to make IVF and other fertility treatments more affordable for more Americans.

This year, legislators have introduced at least five bills to offset the cost of IVF treatments. Fifteen states mandate some insurance coverage for the procedure.

But the effort to subsidize IVF has hit some speed bumps. Audio from CBS News:

CBS: The Alabama Supreme Court ruled last Friday that frozen embryos are now considered children under state law.

Since that 2024 ruling, conservatives have become more outspoken with their criticisms of IVF. Only around 40% of embryo transfers result in live births…meaning three out of five implanted embryos don’t survive. On top of that, at least 1.5 million fertilized embryos are thrown away every year.

Plus, IVF doesn’t address why a couple couldn’t get pregnant. Some physicians say restorative reproductive medicine does just that. RRM specialists often look at menstrual cycles and hormone levels to pinpoint the causes of infertility.

Dr. Jean Golden-Tevald is an RRM specialist at MorningStar Family Health Center in Flemington, N.J.

GOLDEN-TEVALD: Basically IVF is a procedure, you know, you take the parts of your body, we put them together, we put it back in and see if it goes. Whereas RRM is really trying to restore normal anatomy and physiology and let the couple do what they want with that. And so conception happens within the privacy of their own home and their own relationship, not in a laboratory or otherwise in a clinic.

RRM leads to live births in about 37% of cases. Even though IVF and RRM have similar success rates…many families are choosing restorative reproductive medicine to avoid the ethical dilemmas associated with IVF. Additionally, women who opt for RRM are also three times more likely than IVF patients to carry their babies to full term.

Still, Golden-Tevald believes RRM is widely misunderstood. Medical organizations like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists describe RRM as a nonmedical approach. Golden-Tevald says that’s not accurate.

GOLDEN-TEVALD: We use all the tools and diagnostics that are just part of general medicine.

Some groups like the American Society for Reproductive Medicine also argue that IVF doctors already do the work of RRM specialists. But other experts say that’s not true. Emma Waters is a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation and a contributor to WORLD Opinions.

WATERS: And the reality is, is they're just not, they are doing basic semen tests, analysis tests. They're doing basic hormonal panels. But time and time again, if those basic tests or treatments don't result in a clear understanding of what's causing infertility, their outcome is always the same, which is you need to go to IVF.

Waters helped craft the RESTORE Act, which aims to fund RRM research. Legislators introduced the bill in the House and Senate in May. Arkansas passed a similar bill in April.

The Trump administration is expected to release another executive order about infertility treatment. Waters can’t predict whether the order will address RRM or not.

WATERS: What we certainly know is that restorative reproductive medicine aligns very closely with the Make America Healthy Again model, which is all about providing root cause care for patients that really empower the patient with a deeper understanding of their body.

Waters believes IVF and RRM don’t have to be seen as competitors. They can work in tandem. For example, a couple might struggle with frequent miscarriages. Using RRM could enable a woman to carry an IVF embryo to term.

Still, many IVF advocates have tried to undermine RRM. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine hosted a Congressional Briefing on September 16th to champion IVF and warn lawmakers about RRM.

Less than half a mile away, the International Institute for Restorative Reproductive Medicine held its own Congressional Briefing. Here’s communications and development director Tracey Parnell:

PARNELL: We just needed to make sure that there wasn't just one voice. Patients need to know they have options. If you've never heard about an option, you will not choose it.

If RRM hadn’t been an option for the Meaneys, they say they would have accepted infertility. But it didn’t come to that. In 2009, the Meaneys welcomed their daughter Thérèse.

As a parent and a bioethicist, Meaney finds it troubling that many couples don’t even know that RRM exists.

MEANEY: The idea is that there should be proper informed consent before any medical procedure takes place. And part of informed consent is to know all of your options. And so when it comes to infertility care, there's kind of a glaring issue there because in vitro fertilization, IVF is pretty much the only thing that is widely known and the only thing that is widely practiced.

For WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown, with reporting by Bekah McCallum.

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