During Tuesday’s presidential debate, Vice President Kamala Harris claimed, without proof, that American couples who are trying to start a family “are being denied IVF treatments.” But medical experts say that the underlying health issues that cause infertility are being ignored in the political rhetoric surrounding in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Last week, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump stunned conservatives by declaring that if elected, he would mandate health insurance companies to cover the cost of controversial IVF treatments. Despite the unprecedented nature of the position for a Republican seeking public office, Democrats have continued to accuse conservatives of seeking to outlaw the procedure, which involves the creation and destruction of human embryos. Harris went so far as to claim during Tuesday’s presidential debate that as a result of Donald Trump’s “abortion bans” (which she claimed exist without proof), “couples who pray and dream of having a family are being denied IVF treatments.”
But as Dr. Marguerite Duane, a board-certified family physician who is the co-founder and executive director of FACTS About Fertility, pointed out during Thursday’s edition of “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins,” there is nowhere in the U.S. where IVF is banned. “I’m not aware that IVF is not available throughout the country. … IVF is legal.”
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Duane went on to emphasize that there is a form of reproductive health care that women across the country are having difficulty accessing — and it’s not IVF or abortion.
“[W]here women do need to travel extensively is to seek physicians who are trained to provide comprehensive reproductive health care through a restorative lens, one that’s really designed to treat the underlying causes of infertility,” she explained. “And in fact, I’ve had patients drive four to six hours to see me, to receive the kind of care that I’m trained to provide. And we currently train physicians across the country to provide care that is real women’s health care that seeks to identify underlying causes of infertility and to treat those through a restorative reproductive approach.”
Duane continued, “The science shows us, in fact, that human life begins at the moment of fertilization or conception, and our goal is to help restore both men and women their reproductive health system so it functions normally so that they will be able to procreate naturally. Now, sometimes this does require support with medications, surgeries, and certain treatments, but the goal is to restore their health so that their reproductive system functions so that they can conceive children and bear them naturally. [It’s] an empowering approach [that] really educates men and women about the reproductive system. It helps them to address a wide range of health issues, everything from painful periods to irregular cycles to premenstrual syndrome.”
Mary Szoch, who serves as director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, concurred with Duane, noting that IVF does not address the root causes of infertility.
“Infertility is a symptom of other underlying conditions that IVF does nothing to treat,” she told The Washington Stand. “Given the lack of treatment of the underlying cause, it is not surprising that only about 23% of women utilizing IVF end the process with a live birth.”
Szoch continued, “Restorative reproductive medicine — like NaPro, FEMM, and the Billings Ovulation Method — looks for the underlying cause of infertility and actually treats it. These methods have a success rate of over 60%. If a couple is doing IVF because they’re struggling with infertility — the odds are not in their favor. But, if they address the underlying issue with restorative reproductive medicine, the odds of carrying a child to term are significantly higher.”
Duane also expanded on how restorative reproductive medicine addresses miscarriage.
“It addresses common causes of recurrent miscarriage,” she observed. “Vice President Harris talked about the pain and the heartbreak of women who have experienced miscarriage. And miscarriage is a very, very common problem. And yet, as physicians, we are not trained to identify and treat modifiable risk factors of miscarriage, which is heartbreaking. Through my work [at] FACTS About Fertility, this is what we aim to do. … How can we identify and treat those underlying causes that could lead to miscarriage so we can truly provide real health care to women and men?”
“I’m happy to both to address the miscarriage issue and the infertility issue through a lens that restores and empowers patients to care for their fertility and reproductive health,” Duane concluded.
LifeNews Note: Dan Hart writes for the Family Research Council. He is the senior editor of The Washington Stand.
