Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. For couples struggling with infertility, in vitro fertilization is often presented as the best and even only next step. to having a child. Even more, what may have once been geared toward women who wanted to wait later in life to start a family is now heavily marketed to women in their twenties and early thirties as an added means of controlling their own fertility.
The global IVF industry has now reached over $30 billion. It's predicted to reach nearly $43 billion by 2033. And marketing and industry are the right words to describe IVF as it's currently practiced today. Today in the US, a woman under thirty five years old will be told by most medical facilities to consider IVF after just a year of trying to naturally conceive, and women over thirty five they're steered toward it after only a few months. On average, couples will spend between $50,000 and $65,000 out of pocket for treatment.
If a successful pregnancy is achieved, the process requires sometimes years of physical and mental preparation. Also, because addressing the root cause of infertility is not the goal of IBF, but achieving conception is, most couples will have to repeat the process if they want to have more children. Certainly, the successful implantation of an embryo is an answer to prayer for hopeful moms and dads.
However, the infertility industrial complex itself is, overall, the source of far more deaths than it is lives, more abortions than fertility. As commonly practiced, IVF involves creating multiple embryos that are screened for viability. The rest are destroyed, donated for research or stored and often not used. The number of viable embryos discarded each year is guesswork at best because the industry is an unregulated Wild West. Yes, a human life can be born because of IVF technology, but though there is no mandatory tracking system, it is very likely that more embryos are destroyed through IVF than through abortion.
Recently, Emma Waters of the Heritage Foundation argued in a World Opinion piece that she's trying to help the church think biblically about infertility. She highlighted what's known as restorative reproductive medicine, an alternative approach to addressing infertility that better reflects God's all-encompassing care for the human body. While IVF, as Waters noted, bypasses the bodies of the man and woman in order to achieve a pregnancy, and I quote here, restorative reproductive medicine follows a completely different trajectory. A doctor trained at NAPROTechnology, Neofertility, or what's known as FEM, Fertility Education and Medical Management, begins with a thorough evaluation of both partners, including diagnostic cycle charting, hormone panels, ultrasound, semen analysis, and when needed, exploratory surgery. And from there, the doctor treats those conditions directly, removing the barriers to natural conception, whether it's medication to restore ovulation, progesterone to sustain pregnancy, the correction of a thyroid disorder, or surgery for endometriosis.
By treating root causes, restorative care can improve egg and sperm quality, reduce the risk of miscarriage, and leave husband and wife healthier regardless of whether a child ever comes. ⁇ In other words, restorative reproductive medicine, RRM, seeks to understand and address the underlying causes of infertility, not just work around them. And the results have been promising. While IVF reports a live birth success rate of about 30 to 33 percent for women under 35 per single embryo transfer decreasing as the age of the hopeful mother increases, RRM shows an average 68% of live births for couples who have gone through 12 cycles of trying naturally after targeted treatment of the underlying condition. This restorative care is also generally just a fraction of the cost of IVF.
And while religious physicians and facilities are typically the only proponents of RRM right now, there are lawmakers taking notice of its success. Last May, the Trump administration proposed a rule that would help employers cover more fertility options outside of IVF. For women who want to understand their bodies more deeply and pursue treatment aimed at restoring healthy reproductive function, that could be good news. Christian ethics do not go by any means necessary, so neither should Christians when giving or receiving medical treatments. If human beings indeed are created by a loving God and made, embodied, and purposed according to His will, then caring for our bodies and restoring them when possible.
That aligns with a Christian vision of creation and restoration. IVF does not. It does not restore what's been broken in the human body. Rather, it isolates conception from the body and from reproductive design. If God's plan includes parenthood, restorative reproductive medicine is offering a way forward for men and women who are struggling with infertility, wish to be moms and dads.
But want to do it in an ethical way. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored with Haley Wilson. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download podcasts. And for more resources or to share this commentary with others, go to breakpoint.org.
