Posted on 02/22/2025 12:53:03 PM PST by Morgana
This week, President Trump signed an executive order directing his domestic policy team to make a list of recommendations on “protecting IVF [in vitro fertilization] access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment” over the course of the next 90 days.
Sadly, in the United States, difficulty with childbearing has skyrocketed. In 2019, estimates showed 15.4% of women ages 25-49 struggling to get pregnant, and 8.7% of women were infertile. With numbers that high, virtually everyone knows someone who is desperately hoping and praying to have a child.
In his executive order, President Trump speaks of this tragic situation. He wrote, “Today, many hopeful couples dream of starting a family, but as many as one in seven are unable to conceive a child. Despite their hopes and efforts, infertility struggles can make conception difficult, turning what should be a joyful experience into an emotional and financial struggle. My Administration recognizes the importance of family formation and as a Nation, our public policy must make it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children.”
Then, the order goes on to talk about the cost and accessibility of IVF and the hope it brings to men and women experiencing fertility challenges.
It’s clear that what President Trump and the seven out of 10 Americans who support access to IVF want is to relieve the heavy cross of infertility. Unfortunately, the multi-billion dollar IVF industry has done a spectacular job of touting itself as the solution.
Certainly, IVF has brought the hope of bearing a child to fruition for a small percentage (23%) of couples who utilize the process. All of us should acknowledge that the millions of children born as a result of IVF are a blessing to their families and to our world. At the same time, however, we must recognize that millions more lives have been lost through this process that treats children as a commodity, not a gift — with estimates suggesting that more than 97% of embryonic children are discarded, miscarried, frozen indefinitely, or donated for use by others or experimentation.
The IVF industry engages in eugenic pre-screening of embryonic children for sex, genetic conditions, or traits such as eye color. It encourages surrogacy and anonymous parenting. It puts the mother’s physical health at risk while doing nothing to treat the cause of infertility, and it relies on the good faith of the completely unregulated IVF industry that charges $12,000-$25,000 per round of IVF (and has over 50 documented cases of intentional fraud and exploitation) to ensure that embryos are not willfully mixed up, that the intended gametes are the ones used, and that the created embryos are treated with respect. Time and time again, the IVF industry has failed to meet these basic standards.
Once explored beyond the promise of a beautiful baby, it’s clear that IVF offers a perverse hope — one that requires the denial of basic human dignity and the destruction of human life.
Thankfully, there are other options for couples facing infertility.
Restorative reproductive medicine — like NaPro,FEMM, and the Billings Ovulation Method — looks for the underlying cause of infertility and actually treats it. Physicians who practice this type of medicine monitor a woman’s physical symptoms, perform extensive bloodwork, and provide medical, and sometimes surgical, treatments and lifestyle changes that restore a woman’s (or her husband’s) health and in doing so, restore the couple’s ability to achieve pregnancy.
These methods work with a woman’s body instead of ignoring an unhealthy system and trying to override it as IVF does. Restorative reproductive medicine is not extraordinarily expensive, and no part of the process infringes upon the dignity of any of the persons involved — including the unborn. There are no eugenic tests, no gametes to mix up, and no “excess” embryonic children to destroy.
Perhaps most importantly, restorative reproductive medicine has a success rate of over 60%, with many couples successfully carrying a pregnancy to term even after failing to conceive via IVF. A listing of centers around the U.S. and the world that offer restorative reproductive medicine can be found here.
President Trump is a staunch defender of the unborn and of families. He is a man of compassion looking to provide hope for couples struggling with infertility. Let’s pray that in the next 90 days, instead of padding the wallets of an industry that exploits and destroys, the domestic policy team has the courage to present President Trump with medical solutions that will actually treat infertility respecting the sanctity of life and make Americans healthy again as it does so.
$25,000 is an old number.
I 100% support President Trumps support of IVF.
Thank you again for your tireless efforts to keep us informed of these difficult and distressing issues and your selfless giving of your time and energy to stand up for pre-born babies.
“Sadly, in the United States, difficulty with childbearing has skyrocketed.”
We don’t put contraception as a mechanical device inside women here like they do in the Silo, instead they put it inside women as vaccines, crops, food additives, medications, maybe even the air they breath.
Never gave this any thought. Now having done so, I am troubled by all the discarded embryos (babies).
If life begins at conception, which it does, then discarding them is murder of a baby.
I guess I’m now anti-IVF for a very good reason.
Anyone “Pro Life” should agree. If not, you are not really “Pro Life”.
Put more men on the job.
Numerous discarded embryos - creating life to be destroyed - and clinics giving men porn to watch to get the specimens in order to do this.
Imagine being a kid learning you were conceived this way - your dad essentially cheating on your mom watching x-rated movies...and even worse that it was just the luck of the draw you weren’t the one flushed down a sink.
“In 2019, estimates showed 15.4% of women ages 25-49 struggling to get pregnant, and 8.7% of women were infertile.”
Women are waiting far too long to start a family. Do the same study with women of ages 20-35 instead of 25-49 - I guarantee the results will be quite different.
Right...49 and struggling to get pregnant? No kidding.
I thought adoption was the solution? If a couple doesn’t want to fund IVF, I’d rather any subsidies go to adoption.
Adoption is no panacea.
It is better for the child to be raised by bio family.
If there is no bio family a foster home or orphanage is a good option.
Worked for years with Adoption families... too numerous to count.
Rare that it works out well. The children are the bio imprints of blood family. Which can shake the adoptive family to the core. They discover how little they mattered.
Best monies woul go to keep mother child bond intact.
Perhaps it is time to help childless couples to accept their lot ans discover other callings in their lives. Not all are called to be parents.
Heck Perhaps it is time to realize not all are cut out for family life and instead serve in an adjunct role in the tribe.
Foster homes better than adoption?
I’ve seen more and less successful adoption scenarios, but the foster situations I’m aware of skew decidedly more to the unsuccessful.
People my age bought into the idea that fertility was elastic due to continuing advances in medicine. I got married younger than most in my friend group, and was able to have 3 kids the usual way. One of the girls spent more than $100,000 on IVF to have one baby. Others had either one or none, for instance marrying at 30 and having baby at 40.
Girls my daughter’s age are more realistic and her friend group got married younger and started families earlier.
Also, in the Torah and Talmud, “wasting seed” is a terrible sin. Many rabbis have said demons are created when you do this. God killed not one, but two sons of Judah for this sin (spilling their seed into the ground)
I think the science itself isn’t immoral just the way it is used. What if IVF was cheap enough that people could fertilize one egg at a time and give each one a chance?
…IVF itself isn't the problem, it's how it's conducted. Multiple eggs are taken and fertilized to ensure some take, and often multiple embryos are injected to improve implantation chances….
The other ethical conundrum is posed by how the sperm is collected. Many clinics literally have a whole separate room with adult content videos and paraphernalia.
It is a very heavy and wrought subject so any further insights, especially from a Christian perspective, would be appreciated. My pro-life instincts tell me to be fully against it, yet I know of both wonderful people who either conceived this way, or were the products of such conceptions.
Never thought about it from that angle. Not like a man can just lay back and think of England and the non sexual methods of sperm extraction will not get many takers.
The Bible is pretty clear about lustful thoughts being sinful but Genesis 38 has some precedent for helping a woman other than your wife get pregnant, which I would think required some lustful thoughts.
Perhaps the most ethical way to collect sperm is to have the intended recipient help in the process in lieu of pornographic material?
What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to conceive.
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