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CNN
25-05-2025
- Health
- CNN
Trump wants a ‘baby boom,' but an ultra-conservative agenda may hurt IVF access
Donald Trump Maternal health Abortion rightsFacebookTweetLink Follow 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.'
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
‘Dismantling one of the strongest tools we have': Conservatives fret HHS cuts
The Trump administration's decision to gut reproductive health research is alarming some conservatives, who worry it undercuts the president's pro-family agenda. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. laid off thousands of federal employees last month, including about 80 who worked at the Centers for Disease Control's Division of Reproductive Health, according to three former CDC staffers granted anonymity to speak candidly on agency dynamics. The office collected state and national data on live births, abortion trends and fertility treatment outcomes — the kind of information policymakers rely on to assess and improve maternal and infant health care, said Isaac Michael, a former HHS statistician who worked on the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System before he was laid off. 'If you cut PRAMS, this is dismantling one of the strongest tools we have to prevent maternal deaths, to reduce infant mortality and to close socioeconomic health gaps,' he said. Michael — who said he voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 based on his anti-abortion stance and supports the president's push to rein in federal spending — said ending PRAMS contradicts the administration's pro-family messaging. By tracking maternal health behaviors before, during and after pregnancy, Michael said the PRAMS team helped identify health disparities, evaluate the effectiveness of Medicaid and Women, Infant and Children (WIC) programs for pregnant people and understand causes of preterm birth and infant death. 'Without it, we are flying blind,' Michael said. 'We lose the ability to see where we are failing mothers and babies until it's too late.' Trump and members of his administration have been silent on the cuts. The White House did not respond to requests for comment about the future of the division's gutted programs. HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said in a statement to POLITICO that 'critical programs' from the CDC's Division of Reproductive Health 'will continue under the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA) alongside multiple agencies and programs to improve coordination of health resources for American.' PRAMS was one of multiple research teams within the division's women's health and fertility branch, which was wiped out by the layoffs, former CDC employees said. A fertility epidemiology studies team within the branch helmed projects like the CDC's contraception guidance for healthcare providers and an annual abortion surveillance report, which collected voluntary data about legal abortions. The division's field support branch, which deployed epidemiologists to states to improve maternal care, is also gone. The cuts come as more American women died around the time of childbirth last year, reversing a two-year decline, according to provisional data released last month. Patrick T. Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, called the layoffs 'short-sighted,' suggesting it could backfire on the Trump administration's pro-family message. 'Especially if we're going to be pumping more money or more rhetorical power into IVF or … maternal mortality, an area with a lot of bipartisan support, we should be investing in the kind of research that helps inform those debates and approaches,' he said. Brown, whose work focuses on pro-family economic policy, said the cuts may force conservatives to rely on abortion surveillance data from groups like the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion rights think tank. On IVF, Brown noted that while not all conservatives support expanding its access through federal mandates, basic data on usage and success rates is still necessary to inform proper policymaking. 'This is the kind of basic statistics gathering that there's just not really a good free market solution for,' Brown said. 'Collecting data like this is a pretty classic function of government and it's not something that you can rely on private industry or even academic institutions to do in the same scope or scale.' Still, Brown is not convinced the programs are 'gone for good.' He said he suspects the Trump administration will eventually reconsider the cuts. Even groups hesitant to criticize Trump directly are sticking up for PRAMS. 'Tools like PRAMS have real value when they're used to support vulnerable populations and guide evidence-based care,' Mary Hodges, vice president of the National Association of Pro-Life Nurses, said in a statement to POLITICO. 'If this program is being phased out, we would encourage the development of new, transparent systems that preserve those strengths while aligning with a pro-life framework.' PRAMS was temporarily paused earlier this year while HHS reviewed the program's compliance with the Trump administration's executive orders, according to Michael and the three other former CDC staffers. The team was greenlit to resume some operations in April — but then the workforce reduction hit, one former CDC staffer told POLITICO. A congressionally-mandated team working on assisted reproductive technology — the most common type being in vitro fertilization — was also a casualty of the layoffs. While some conservatives support the cuts as part of an overarching goal of shrinking the federal government, others fear it could weaken public health policy efforts that align with their values. Trump has made boosting birth rates and access to IVF a key plank in his agenda, referring to himself as the 'fertilization president,' during a Women's History event at the White House in March. And in February, Trump signed an executive order aimed at expanding access to IVF and reducing out-of-pocket costs. But those critical of the cuts are largely reluctant to criticize the Trump administration to avoid jeopardizing higher-profile goals, like reinstating strict FDA regulations on the abortion drug mifepristone. One leader at a national anti-abortion organization, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive dynamics without upsetting allies in the Trump administration, said while he personally was "really sad to see" the programs eliminated, neither he nor anyone else he knows in the movement is planning to speak out against them. "We can't just be the party of cutting," this leader said. "We also need to support life and support women." Mayra Rodriguez, state director for the anti-abortion group Moms for Arizona, said when she voted for Trump she hoped he would purge federal agencies of ideological bias — not cut maternal and infant health research. "Their data needs to be better, but again, it is their data that has helped us pass a lot of legislation that protects life,' said Rodriguez, who worked for Planned Parenthood before joining the anti-abortion movement. Rodriguez said the CDC's abortion surveillance report has helped identify the gaps and inconsistencies in state-level abortion reporting, aiding the passage of legislation that monitors post-abortion complications among women. She pointed to an Arizona law passed in 2018 that revised the state's abortion reporting requirements, mandating health care providers to report specific complications, including 'incomplete abortion retaining part of the fetus requiring reevacuation.' "If we truly care about women and children, we need the data to improve health outcomes, and removing groups or organizations that do that contradicts the pro-life stance that we value both the mother and the child,' she said. For now, the division's Maternal and Infant Health branch remains — spared from the layoffs. But according to an HHS announcement about the department restructuring, the so-called Administration for a Healthy America will tackle maternal and child health issues, leaving the future of the branch uncertain. One former staffer warned that the remaining employees can't absorb the lost workload. "They won't be able to do it,' the staffer said. 'There are so few experts in this topic area throughout the country … they don't have the time or ability or institutional knowledge to continue these programs.' Alice Miranda Ollstein contributed to this report.
