Trump wants a ‘baby boom,' but an ultra-conservative agenda may hurt IVF access

CNN

6 days ago

The recent attack on a California fertility clinic has placed in vitro fertilization back into the national spotlight, but experts in the field say that a conservative focus on natural conception is an even bigger threat to IVF access.
The car explosion outside the Palm Springs clinic last weekend injured four people and killed the attacker. Authorities are looking into the suspect, including potential links to anti-natalism, the concept that procreation itself is unethical.
Those kinds of fringe ideas don't pose a real political threat to IVF access, reproductive health experts say. Still, the Palm Springs incident is contributing to an increasing unease providers and families are feeling at IVF clinics around the country.
While around 2% of babies born in the US are conceived through IVF, some religious groups who view embryos as people oppose the treatment because of the storage and discarding of embryos. And providers are warning anti-abortion policies that seek to give embryos and fetuses the same legal rights as people, known as fetal personhood, also pose a threat to IVF access.
After trending downward for decades, the US fertility rate has been hovering near a record low.
President Donald Trump and key figures in and around the administration want to change that with a 'baby boom' and are considering incentives like a $5,000 'baby bonus' for new parents. Trump also issued an executive order seeking recommendations to protect IVF access and reduce costs.
The White House has said Trump is now reviewing those recommendations. CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.
While the administration has been seeking counsel from some providers and experts, one of the nation's most prominent IVF medical and advocacy groups, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, told CNN it has been notably excluded from the conversation.
The organization made multiple attempts to reach members of the administration and received no response, Sean Tipton, the group's chief advocacy and policy officer, said.
Tipton's organization has been sounding the alarm about misleading terms like 'restorative reproductive medicine,' which it says is being used to promote ideas that could eventually hinder access to IVF treatment.
The term has gained traction among the Make American Healthy Again movement and conservative groups who emphasize 'natural solutions,' like nutrition changes and cycle tracking, rather than treatment like IVF for infertility.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative group that authored Project 2025, has promoted the idea, while framing IVF as a treatment that ignores underlying health problems.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine insists restorative reproductive medicine is 'not a new solution or a distinct specialty. It emphasizes treatment of underlying infertility causes, which fertility doctors already do for every patient, and may not address all fertility challenges, such as male factor infertility or blocked fallopian tubes.'
There's a lot of misleading medical information on the internet, but not all of it reaches the highest levels of government and policymaking.
'You have to address it, because the political organizations that have promulgated (restorative reproductive medicine) have the ear of many Republicans, including people in the White House,' Tipton said.
'They want to confine people to medical technology that was frozen in the 1970s, and we think people ought to have access to good, cutting edge 21st century care.'
Sean Tipton, ASRM chief advocacy and policy officer
The push toward natural conception also notably excludes LGBTQ needs.
Kerrie King, a 29-year-old who runs a family farm in Mississippi, said she and her wife have been trying to have a child through IVF for over two years. After plenty of searching, they were able to find an LGBTQ friendly fertility clinic two hours from their small town.
King and her wife have watched the ways in which the Trump administration has come after the rights of trans and other LGBTQ Americans, and they fear for what that could mean for their own family.
'We hope to continue treatment, but with the executive order up in the air at the moment, we have kind of come to a standstill because of Trump's presidency and how he might restrict access to fertility treatment for LGBT Americans,' King told CNN.
Toeing the line between public support for IVF and a conservative turn against it may prove difficult for the president, who once called himself the 'father of IVF.'
Last year, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled frozen embryos are considered human beings and those who destroy them can be held liable for wrongful death, leading fertility clinics throughout the state to pause IVF treatments. Chaos ensued for families who faced losing their shot at a baby, along with the steep amounts of money they invested in fertility treatments.
Families, providers and advocates rallied at the state Capitol, while Alabama lawmakers scrambled to remedy the decision.
Soon after, the governor signed a bill into law aimed at protecting IVF patients and providers from legal liability. Fertility clinics reopened their doors the next day, and the swift backlash against the court's decision was framed as a win for proponents of IVF.
But the issue of fetal personhood at the heart of the Alabama court's decision isn't going away, says University of California, Davis Law Professor Mary Ziegler, and the public backlash has not deterred other states from wading into the debate.
While the Supreme Court declined to take up a fetal personhood case in 2022, Kansas recently passed a law requiring child support payments cover embryos and fetuses. And Florida lawmakers are advancing a bill allowing parents to seek civil damages for the wrongful death of an embryo or fetus.
The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant body, also passed a resolution last year asserting embryos are human beings and urged its members to weigh the 'ethical implications' of IVF.
Experts say these policies advance fetal personhood. The goal is to end abortion rights nationwide – but it could also mean devastating consequences for IVF treatment, the way so many families in Alabama experienced firsthand last year.
In fact, Ziegler says the most prominent threat to abortion rights and IVF access are one and the same.
'Anti-abortion activists who are the most extreme have also started protesting outside of IVF clinics the way they protest outside of abortion clinics,' Ziegler said.
While many are anxiously awaiting word from the White House on those IVF policy recommendations, Ziegler said she's watching the courts.
'It's more likely that Trump would nominate judges who believe in a legal theory of fetal personhood, and those judges could reach a ruling with really negative impacts on IVF,' she said. 'And he wouldn't have his fingerprints on it.'
'To some degree, we've seen this movie before,' she added. 'The most significant changes with respect to abortion in the first Trump administration were not policies that Donald Trump signed into law or executive orders. They were from courts.'