About That IVF “Alternative” GOP Senators Are Trying to Fund

Last week, Senate Republicans introduced a bill that would designate federal funds for “Restorative Reproductive Medicine,” a loose group of therapies meant to help treat infertility without the use of in vitro fertilization or artificial insemination. The seven lawmakers who introduced the Reproductive Empowerment and Support through Optimal Restoration (RESTORE) Act, say it isn’t meant as an attack on IVF, which recently has come under fire by conservatives. “I strongly support treatments such as IVF, which have helped so many families experience the miracle of life,” Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), one of the bill’s sponsors, said in a statement last week. “Healing the actual causes of infertility will only help increase the success rate for couples trying to conceive.”

Yet Restorative Reproductive Medicine isn’t the politically neutral medical field that the measure’s champions claim. Rather, it’s the latest rebranding of an IVF “alternative” by religious groups who consider the process of IVF, which can include the destruction of unused embryos, to be a form of abortion.  

“Healing the actual causes of infertility will only help increase the success rate for couples trying to conceive.”

The authors assert that Restorative Reproductive Medicine “means any scientific approach to reproductive medicine that seeks to cooperate with, or restore the normal physiology and anatomy of, the human reproductive system, without the use of methods that are inherently suppressive, circumventive, or destructive to natural human functions.” If that sounds vague, it’s because it is: Restorative reproductive medicine, according to these lawmakers, basically can include anything that’s not IVF, artificial insemination, and certain kinds of birth control. The bill says that “most male and female infertility” can be treated with medication, surgery, or simply by figuring out the optimal time for intercourse in a woman’s cycle.

In particular, the bill champions a therapy called NaProTechnology, short for ‘‘Natural Procreative Technology,’’ a Catholic alternative to IVF that the bill defines as “an approach to health care that monitors and maintains a woman’s reproductive and gynecological health, including laparoscopic gynecologic surgery to reconstruct the uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries, and other organ structures to eliminate endometriosis and other reproductive health conditions.” So basically, like Restorative Reproductive Medicine, anything that’s not IVF, artificial insemination, or birth control.

I wrote about it in 2017:

“Tucked away in a brick-lined office building in Omaha, Nebraska, is the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction, the home of NaProTechnology. Its founder, Dr. Thomas Hilgers, is an obstetrician and a devout Catholic; he developed the practice in the mid-’80s, around the same time the Vatican denounced artificial insemination and test-tube babies. Hilgers, now 74, says his method—which typically involves some combination of mucus charting, blood tests, transvaginal ultrasounds to monitor ovulation, fertility medications, and one or more exploratory surgeries—has helped thousands of infertile women get pregnant. He claims that NaPro’s success rates are more than twice those of IVF.”

Sounds great, right? Just one problem:

“Scant medical evidence supports Hilgers’ lofty statements about pregnancy success rates, according to leading reproductive endocrinologists. Most of the research that Hilgers cites is self-­reported; the only peer-reviewed studies are by a NaPro practitioner and medical school professor in Utah, [Dr. Joseph Stanford.] I shared his studies with Dr. David Adamson, a clinical professor at Stanford University and the former president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Adamson pointed out that the studies were small and did not control for variables that might have influenced the results. Those results, Adamson wrote in an email, are ‘not replicated in any other studies and are not believable when compared with multiple good studies.'”

Today, Dr. Stanford is the director of research for the International Institute for Restorative Reproductive Medicine (IRRM). This main professional group for physicians and researchers doesn’t use any religious language, nor does it explicitly state any affiliation with anti-abortion groups. Instead, it claims that its members can identify the “root cause” of infertility and dismisses IVF and artificial insemination for seeking to “bypass the underlying problem.” Stanford is a faithful Mormon who has argued that the morning-after pill causes abortion. Its president is Dr. Phil Boyle, an Irish physician who has been a member of the anti-abortion group Irish Doctors for Life. In a 2018 YouTube video he said that he didn’t believe that abortion could save women’s lives, the Irish outlet The Beacon reported in 2022. The itinerary of the IIRM’s annual conference last year included a field trip to Fátima, a Catholic holy site in Portugal where the Blessed Virgin reportedly appeared. Mass attendance was optional.   

Chief among the IRRM’s goals is “to give women and couples the tools and education to track biomarkers of the woman’s fertility cycle”—basically, analyzing a woman’s menstrual cycle to identify the optimal window for fertility. Essentially, it’s the flip side of the “rhythm method” of birth control. The new bill, too, promotes the practice of cycle-tracking for getting pregnant—it specifically mentions methods called FEMM, Marquette, Creighton, and Billings—all of which were developed by Catholic medical practitioners and are promoted by the Catholic Church.

Dr. Marguerite Duane, a Catholic physician who promotes cycle-tracking, spoke at IIRM’s conference last year. Duane is also a board member of Pro-Life Partners Foundation, a group that funds legislative efforts to restrict abortion rights in the United States.

A press release about the bill on the website of Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) quotes Dr. Patrick Yeung, a St. Louis gynecologist who “supports the legislation, noting that the status quo of offering symptomatic (band-aid) treatment for pain, or IVF (that bypasses the problem) for fertility is not satisfactory for most women,” the press release says.

What it doesn’t mention is that Yeung has made outsize claims about the success rates of restorative reproductive medicine to treat infertility caused by endometriosis, as I reported last year:

On his Instagram account, citing unpublished data as his source, Yeung claims, “The rate of pregnancy after optimal excision of endometriosis and a restorative fertility approach is about 75 percent.” Yet the ESHRE guidelines, based on a body of literature, caution that the evidence for improved fertility after excision surgery is shaky at best. For mild endometriosis, there is some evidence that excision can help, but for more severe versions, the guidance says, “No compelling evidence exists that operative laparoscopy for [deep endometriosis] improves fertility.”

Yeung has also referred to birth control as an attempt to “disinvite the author of life” from the “marital embrace.” In a phone call last December, Yeung told me his Catholic faith did not conflict with his medical practice. “It’s all part of the same truth—how we’re created, how things work, how the human person works,” he said.

The new bill calls for the use of Title X funds to train medical students and practicing physicians in restorative reproductive medicine. It also calls for grants from the government’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention program to go to groups promoting “restorative reproductive medicine, restorative reproductive health, and fertility awareness-based methods” (the practice of charting the menstrual cycle to determine the window of optimal fertility), as well as mandating specific training in these areas for the staff of the federal government’s Reproductive Health National Training Center.

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), a co-sponsor of the bill, lists the high cost of IVF as a reason to support alternatives. “IVF is an incredible scientific advancement that allows families to bring life into the world,” he said in the press release, “but IVF is very expensive and shouldn’t be the only option available to families.”

Lankford is right: IVF is expensive—upwards of $12,000 per cycle. But it’s also backed by reams of robust clinical research, unlike Restorative Reproductive Medicine. The federal government could help by devoting funds to IVF research and access. House Democrats attempted to get that ball rolling with a bill to protect IVF rights—but last week, Republicans who claim to support IVF blocked it.