In early April, in one of its cost-cutting moves, the Trump administration dismissed six public health personnel who constituted the Center for Disease Control’s Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Surveillance team. The timing of the dismissal sparked commentary as it happened at the midpoint of a much-publicized review of federal funding for in vitro fertilization (IVF), the ART team’s primary mission. Today, with the Trump IVF review now several days overdue, the weakness of data on key issues surrounding reproductive matters — everything from IVF to abortion to infertility to environmental and dietary contributors — should be cause for national alarm and fresh consensus.

We are not quite there yet. Advocates for more taxpayer investment in IVF — like the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) — have been vocal regarding the lack of response by the Trump Domestic Policy Council to their requests for input on the emerging IVF policy. The firing of the existing ART team means that an already slim menu of government data focusing on what the CDC site calls “ART success rates” may fall even further behind (the most recent February 2025 table of by-clinic success data is from 2022).

As various authors have pointed out, this data provides market information that the fertility clinics desire potential clients to have but omits major data covering other health and ethical issues. A January 2024 comment to the CDC by the Center for Bioethics and Culture (CBC) Network details a wide array of topics on which the CDC should be reporting, but is not.

Quoting from CBC, the nation’s nearly 500 in vitro fertilization centers should be sharing:

• The number of embryos from their clinic donated to research or discarded;
• The number of embryos transferred in any given cycle (do clinics have a policy of only single embryo transfer);
• A clear distinction from pregnancies reporting a live birth from a surrogate mother vs. a biological mother;
• Improved, consistent data on embryo transfer(s), pregnancy, pregnancy outcome (miscarriage, abortion, selective-reduction, multiples, and live birth). It is well-known that not all clinics report equally, which makes reporting confusing and misguiding to the general public on success rates.
• Outcomes of the child or children (NICU admission, complications, life beyond year one, how many live births died minutes, hours, or days after delivery);
• Fresh vs. frozen embryo usage and the age of any frozen embryo from either an egg donor or the genetic mother;
• Socioeconomic status/race of egg donors vs. those who use the donated egg;
• Socioeconomic status/race of surrogate mothers.

Proceeding with, as Trump policy advisors have suggested, either a mandate on health insurers to cover IVF or federal employee health insurance coverage (or both), without any review of data or transparency on these topics or a plan to collect and publish information, is putting the cart before the horse. Advocates of IVF can make a strong case — not only for rehiring of the ART analysts let go in April — but for new hires and data requirements that will allow Americans to understand the real impact of IVF on mothers, surrogate mothers, babies born from the procedure, babies rejected during the procedure, babies placed in frozen storage, and babies discarded or donated for various types of research. A proposal like this would enjoy broad public support — and would ideally be implemented, tested, and refined well before any tax-driven initiative to pay for an extraordinarily expensive and ethically fraught process.

The Hyde-Smith bill, introduced on May 22, should likewise enjoy support across the political and philosophical spectrum. Its aim is an amelioration of underlying conditions that not only disrupt fertility but cause significant impairment to individual health. No organ system operates entirely independently of the others. The introduction of an earlier version of the RESTORE Act last year prompted a writer for the leftish Mother Jones to deplore various approaches to infertility as tools of the “religious right,” as if dealing with underlying conditions like endometriosis and blocked fallopian tubes and low sperm counts involved some measure of political partisanship. The Mother Jones article noted the Catholic religious affiliation of NaProTechnology founder Dr. Thomas Hilgers.

NaProTechnology stands for Natural Procreative Technology and refers to a set of measures designed to allow a return to fertility and physiological health, rather than ART methods which evade infertility through ex utero embryo creation. Its methods, based on decades of research and practical experience, have led to the establishment of a string of Fertility Care Centers across America.

Objecting to this approach and others focused on fertility restoration makes as little sense as objecting to germ theory because Dr. Louis Pasteur was Catholic, or to the telegraph because Samuel F. B. Morse and Alfred Vail used Numbers 23:23 to tap out their first message. The Hyde-Smith bill (S. 1882) is called the RESTORE Act for its goal of Reproductive Empowerment and Support Through Optimal Restoration. Its House counterpart is awaiting a bill number and will be sponsored by Reps. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) and Riley Moore (R-W.Va.).

Opponents of the Hyde-Smith bill attempt to pigeonhole the measure, but its value transcends whether it functions as an alternative to some or many of the couples who might otherwise seek to utilize IVF. Infertility affects an estimated 15 to 16% of couples in the United States, and Hyde-Smith insists it will rely on existing funding streams to finance its training and educational materials. The bill reads as a call to research, record, and publish data on direct attempts to alleviate the underlying conditions that contribute to or cause infertility.

ASRM and other proponents of a more or less unregulated IVF industry have unwisely chosen to oppose the RESTORE Act on the ground that it will tend to divert support and resources away from conventional IVF clinics. This is mistaken for multiple reasons. First, Senator Hyde-Smith and others have not opposed IVF generally — she issued a statement in 2024 saying, “I have been clear about my strong support of IVF and its ability to help bring God’s beautiful creations into the world.” She reiterated her view in 2025.

More importantly, nothing in the Hyde-Smith bill is determinative of the issues at stake in untrammeled IVF. The legislation works upstream from decisions or actions to undertake IVF, and it seeks to redress the patient factors that can disable many couples’ ability to conceive a child of their own. It offers them a less costly, truly reparative approach that is less physically and emotionally taxing, in addition to assisting couples in creating a storehouse of knowledge about their own reproductive health and well-being. The legislation builds on the demonstrated potential of restorative methods and pays the highest attention to the collection, analysis, and publication of reports in peer-reviewed journals where the maximum benefits can be obtained.

The RESTORE Act announcement relates that its major provisions would:

• Develop educational tools for women seeking information about reproductive health conditions and restorative reproductive medicine;
• Provide training opportunities for medical professionals to learn how to diagnose and treat reproductive health conditions;
• Direct the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other HHS officials to “conduct data collection and implement ongoing reports” on restorative reproductive medicine to guide future policy;
• Use existing funding channels like Title X of the Public Health Service Act and the HHS Office of Population Affairs to fund training for medical students and professionals in these areas;
• Advance lifestyle medicine prescriptions as a way to treat male infertility; and
• Direct the HHS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and all relevant panels to update diagnostic and procedure codes related to infertility to ensure data collection is uniform and accurate.

In a slightly different world, and perhaps even in this one, consensus could be achieved on federal policy that identifies all the health parameters at stake in the infertility and IVF debates and provides legislation and funding sufficient to ensure the government supports only ethical and effective health policy.

In 2025, there is no doubt that the United States and most of the rest of the world are undergoing an unprecedented decline in birth rates and fertility. “More babies” can be a beautiful call to action, but we must not avert our gaze from every impact of public policy, including those that have led to blindness regarding untreated infertility, high expenses, injuries to women, and massive loss of nascent human life. The time to do so is now before any Trump administration funding mandates move forward.