Now it’s personal
Donald Trump has fired all his infertility advisors. How, exactly, will that improve access to IVF?
Good morning. Me again, taking Gabby’s place, to get my rant on about Trump interfering with fertility medicine. Again!
I’ll be back on Friday to talk about the difference between NHS and private clinics — what do you get? What do you miss out on? Is it worth skipping the NHS and going straight to private treatment? Upgrade to paid by clicking the button below.
Until then!
Emma xxx
It’s hard to believe that it was less than two weeks ago that Donald Trump swaggeringly declared himself “the fertilisation president”. At an event to “celebrate” (ha) Women’s History Month, Trump said he had “tremendous goodies in the bag for women”, including “the fertilisation and all the other things we’re talking about.”
Then he said he was “very proud of” fertilisation. “I don’t care. I’ll be known as the fertilisation president and that’s OK.” This was only a few months after he declared himself “the father of IVF”.
Five days later, Trump proved that he is neither the fertilisation president nor the father of IVF, by firing every single person in the US government who is dedicated to IVF and infertility.
‘Deeply concerning development’
On 1 April, thousands of workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US government’s main public health agency, woke up to notifications that they were being dismissed. The White House had previously said it wanted to cut 2,400 workers’ jobs from the CDC, and as part of it, the teams tracking, studying and finding ways to prevent STDs, immunisations and HIV were all cut.
Also, infertility.
It was a small team – just six epidemiologists, data analysts and researchers – but they did important work, producing data showing the effectiveness of each of the US’ 500-odd fertility clinics. “The data was produced at the clinic level every year, so you could say, ‘Is this clinic successful 15% of the time, 20% of the time, 25% of the time,’” Aaron Levine, a professor of public policy at Georgia Tech, told NBC news. “That is super valuable information for patients considering IVF, or maybe considering IVF at multiple clinics, and trying to make their choices.” No kidding.
Resolve, the US’ national infertility association, posted a statement on its Instagram feed explaining that after the layoffs, “there will be no experts on infertility who will be able to inform public policy, brief members of Congress, publish articles and reports, and advance public awareness on the causes and treatments for infertility.” The organisation, said its chief executive, Barbara Collura, was “deeply concerned by this development and what it means for those who struggle to build their family.”
What it means
What does it mean for those who struggle to build their family? The CDC layoffs come after funding and grants for thousands of projects were removed from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). We don’t know quite how much funding has been removed from fertility-related projects, but we do know that the NIH is one of the world’s biggest investors into women’s health research.
When I spoke to Professor Nick Macklon, the medical director at London Women’s Clinic, a few weeks ago, he pointed out that the NIH “doesn't just fund American scientists, it funds scientists from all over the world”. The cuts send “a terrible message, apart from anything else, for women's health, at a time when [research] is only just beginning to really get going.” So this doesn’t just affect Americans — eventually, Trump’s short sightedness will affect us all.
Access to IVF
By 20 May, Trump’s advisors are due to deliver a list of policy recommendations on “protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment”, per the executive order he signed back in February. Notably, those recommendations will be aimed at helping “loving and longing mothers and fathers” – ie. heterosexual couples – to access IVF.
As I wrote in this month’s issue of Prospect, Trump has a problem: on one hand, his nearest and dearest, like Elon Musk, are passionate pronatalists who are enthusiastic users of IVF (Musk has used it to select the sex of his children; other pronatalists screen their embryos for IQ, although the science behind that is still disputed). On the other, his biggest supporters are increasingly anti-IVF.
So what’s coming in May? Last month The Heritage Foundation, the think tank which produced Project 2025, the framework for Trump’s second term, published a sort of manifesto on IVF, promoting something called “restorative reproductive medicine”, ie. treating the cause of infertility instead of doing IVF (because no-one had thought of that…).
The other idea, which might keep both sides of Trump’s fandom happy, is something his supporters are calling “ethical IVF” – rounds of IVF where either only one egg is collected and one embryo is produced. Forced donation to other couples of surplus embryos might be another route. You don’t need me to tell you how catastrophic that would be.
In late February, Resolve said it hadn’t been contacted by the White House to help come up with ideas for this new policy — last night, just a month and a half before new policies are due to be delivered, it said it was “collecting crucial patient-driven data” to take to the team working on the executive order.
Last month two of my sources confirmed that only one US IVF advocacy organisation had been contacted by Trump’s advisors. That’s important: in these kinds of situations, governments usually consult with dozens of groups and individuals over a period of months and months. The fewer organisations consulted, the smaller the breadth and diversity in any ideas that do come out.
Meanwhile, a woman in Georgia has been arrested for the crime of having a miscarriage. Maria Chandler-Scott was found bleeding and unconscious after losing her pregnancy at 19 weeks; because she had disposed of the remains of her foetus, police charged her with concealing the death of another person and throwing away or abandonment of a dead body. The charges have been dropped, but it’s a sign of things to come. This is what happens when women’s bodies are regarded as property of the state.
Oh, and also…
Sorry, did I happen to mention I’ve got a piece in this month’s Prospect? Regular readers know I’m obsessed with what happens when IVF falls into the “wrong hands” – here, I look at why pronatalists love IVF so much, and how Trump keeps his pro-life followers happy. Also, the illustration is really cool. Read more.
A woman secretly crowdfunds her friend’s IVF, that friend gets pregnant, then the woman takes objection to the name the friend is planning to give their child. Should the woman confess to being the secret funder? This is a very silly problem to have – and yet another we can add to the list of “Sh*t people who can conceive naturally would never have to put up with”. Read more.
A woman has given birth to the first baby born from a womb transplant. Grace Davidson has MRKH, a condition which means women are born with an underdeveloped womb or without one at all, but with functioning ovaries. Her sister, Amy, donated her womb in 2023, and the baby was born in February. In the UK, 15,000 women of childbearing age don’t have a functioning womb. Read more.
Thanks for reading! Don’t forget that we have a referral scheme — refer three friends and get three months of paid BFN free! I’m investigating private clinics vs NHS clinics this week: what are the advantages of going private?