Anti-abortion groups are attempting to sway the Trump administration away from mandating health insurance coverage of in vitro fertilization, or IVF, by emphasizing the “Make America Healthy Again” principle of addressing infertility as a chronic disease.

President Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed “fertilization president,” issued an executive order in February to start the process of addressing increasing infertility rates and lowering the $60,000 price tag for IVF and other artificial reproductive technologies. Insiders expect Trump to issue another executive order on IVF within the next few weeks, possibly in the form of an Obamacare-style mandate for insurers to cover the procedure.

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Anti-abortion advocates have attempted to dissuade the administration from imposing an IVF coverage mandate by instead championing restorative reproductive medicine, or RRM, a holistic medical alternative to address the root causes of infertility. 

Anti-abortion advocates are not explicitly referencing the “Make America Healthy Again,” or MAHA, movement in their support of RRM and other restorative fertility methods, but they do use the language of chronic conditions and “underlying factors” to describe the infertility problems faced by 1 in 6 couples worldwide.

In a memo shared with the Domestic Policy Council and obtained by the Washington Examiner, the hard-line anti-abortion group Live Action asked that the administration not mandate insurance coverage of IVF and instead “promote ethical alternatives such as RRM, which treat infertility holistically.”

RRM uses integrative medicine techniques to address menstrual cycle irregularities, hormonal imbalances, and other female and male reproductive problems that lead to infertility. Lifestyle and nutrition changes work hand-in-hand with medication and surgical interventions within an RRM framework to address problems that inhibit natural fertility.

Lila Rose, founder and president of Live Action, told the Washington Examiner that embracing RRM rather than IVF is “a chance to make America healthier and more family-friendly.” 

“We just reject public funding for a practice that kills children in the name of family building and instead embrace alternatives like Restorative Reproductive Medicine that heal bodies, honor life, and help families flourish,” Rose said.

Opposition to IVF explained

Conservative religious groups and anti-abortion organizations have long objected to the IVF process on the grounds that it necessitates creating excess human embryos that are often either destroyed or cryogenically frozen in perpetuity. The IVF process, critics argue, also allows for genetic selection. 

The Live Action memo cites that more than 85% of embryos are “either frozen indefinitely, miscarried, discarded, subjected to experimentation, or die during the IVF process.” The memo also cites that less than 10% of embryos created through IVF result in live birth. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 98,000 children born in the United States were conceived via artificial reproductive technologies in 2022, about 2.6% of the infants born in the U.S. that year. 

The CDC identified more than 435,000 embryo transfers completed in 2022, which anti-abortion advocates highlight as a low rate of success for IVF and similar procedures. 

Healing fertility as MAHA

Noah Brandt, spokesman for Live Action, told the Washington Examiner that in contrast to IVF, RRM is “as MAHA as it gets.”

“IVF doesn’t solve a woman’s or a man’s infertility issue. It creates an embryo outside of the body and then implants it back into the mother, whereas RRM actually helps mother and father become healthier and helps in solving their fertility issues in a sort of holistic way that allows them to get pregnant,” Brandt said. 

Students for Life, another strident anti-abortion organization, has also been in communication with the White House to try to dissuade the administration from pursuing an IVF coverage mandate. 

Kristi Hamrick, spokeswoman for Students for Life, told the Washington Examiner that examining the root causes of infertility fits into the MAHA priority of using what the administration calls “gold-standard science” to identify the root causes of chronic disease. 

Regarding infertility as a chronic disease, Hamrick said, Students for Life has urged the administration to pursue policies on “how to help families have children with a real examination of why infertility is dropping to begin with,” instead of mandating IVF coverage. 

“This idea that you’re going to rush ahead and assume that IVF is the answer to a question that we haven’t asked is a mistake,” Hamrick said. 

Senior administration officials have floated the idea of bolstering fertility awareness education, which relies on menstrual cycle information often used by conservative Christian women as a natural form of birth control and conception planning.

But on the campaign trail, Trump said he would pursue a policy of compelling insurance companies to pay for IVF treatments for couples struggling with infertility as part of his broader “baby boom” agenda. 

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White House spokesman Kush Desai told the Washington Examiner that the Domestic Policy Council has completed its recommendations for content of the executive order but did not provide details of when the final order will be released.

“The Domestic Policy Council has worked closely with external stakeholder groups for nearly three months to deliver on President Trump’s executive order to formulate a plan on expanding IVF access for American families,” Desai said. “This is a key priority for President Trump.”