Imagine yourself part of a young couple trying and failing to get pregnant. After years of being asked when you’ll have kids and less-than-helpful advice to “just relax, and God will take care of it,” you finally decide to see a doctor about the problem. After taking your history, doing a physical exam, and running a few simple tests, the fertility specialist tells you that in vitro fertilization (IVF) is your best option—and immediately starts talking about payment plans.
For many Christian women, regardless of their opinions about the moral and ethical problems with IVF, this approach to fertility treatment feels slapdash. And their other experiences with reproductive healthcare may be no better: Many women who aren’t trying to get pregnant but deal with chronic gynecological problems have grown skeptical of hormonal birth control, feeling their health care providers push it as a one-size-fits-all solution to any problem between their ribs and their knees.
This is the context in which some women are turning to an alternative approach called restorative reproductive medicine (RRM) to take charge of their health.
What is RRM? In short, it’s a two-step approach to women’s reproductive health: (1) find an underlying cause for whatever problem a woman may present, and (2) cure that problem with a wider variety of tools than the average obstetrician-gynecologist would be likely to use. RRM practitioners are trained in techniques like the Creighton Model FertilityCare System and the Billings Ovulation Method that were developed to bring scientific rigor to natural family planning while also honoring traditional Christian teachings about artificial birth control and IVF. They’re now trying to do the same for fertility treatments.
related
RRM is gaining popularity, in no small part because it’s personalized and focused on holistic health at a time when medicine is getting more corporate, more standardized, and less attentive to patients as individuals. As a physician, I constantly argue for and try to teach a patient-centered approach, and I hear from women whose experience with mainstream medicine made them feel like widgets on a conveyor belt. Modern medical systems too often dehumanize both doctors and patients, and IVF and hormonal birth control seem like shortcuts to fixing a lot of problems.
That’s not to suggest RRM is a universal fix. An American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) statement denouncing the approach makes a few valid points—for instance, the statement notes that RRM often focuses on endometriosis as a potential cause of infertility when it may or may not be responsible for a couple’s infertility. Endometriosis is very difficult to diagnose, and doctors have argued for years about the best way to treat it.
Some RRM providers specialize in long and potentially dangerous surgeries like the one writer Madeleine Kearns described in a piece for The Free Press. These surgeries have yet to be proven effective in the way other treatments have been. RRM practitioners are also not afraid to use well-studied hormonal treatments like progesterone or clomiphene to help women get pregnant.
RRM is a rival not just to mainstream reproductive medicine but to other political factions as well. We need more federal funds directed toward research on women’s health, including fertility. But that idea is at odds with last year’s government crusade to slash research funding.
RRM also sharply conflicts with other forces in President Donald Trump’s political coalition that are much more enthusiastic about IVF. For example, major Republican donor Peter Thiel invested large sum of money in fertility clinics, including a focus on international fertility medical tourism. If you’re unfamiliar with that phrase, one customer is a Chinese billionaire who used IVF to have dozens of babies in the US, then shipped them to various properties across the world. Also in the picture: a family with at least 25 babies (born via surrogates) who are now in foster care after alleged abuse and neglect.
Yet the ACOG statement—and similar critiques—doesn’t address concerns about standards of care that make women want to seek out RRM in the first place. Some say the profit motive drives fertility specialists to keep using IVF, but the likelier explanation is more mundane: It’s difficult to determine the underlying causes of infertility (and other gynecological problems). Often, no one can find a cause. Doctors jump to IVF and hormonal birth control because other patients would rather have a quick fix than an exhaustive search—and some have even sued their doctors when the process of treatment took longer than they wanted. I can’t say for sure that these patients outnumber those who would prefer RRM, but the general culture of medicine pushes practitioners to embrace quick fixes.
RRM is great because it reclaims the best of what medicine ought to be—a focus on patients as whole people that uses technology appropriately—but we should not oversell its potential benefits. One article about RRM used the headline “We Can Restore Fertility Without IVF,” and that’s only sometimes true. Some women won’t need IVF because RRM treatments have helped them get pregnant, but others will still need to decide whether to use it. For many women, hormonal birth control is still the simplest and most effective answer to their gynecological ailments.
related
Some Christians will conclude that the end of their journeys through infertility will be a witness to the age to come. With cultural conversations about fertility turning toward eugenics, and with crashing birthrates shaping the world over the next few decades, we need solid Christian public witness on sex and fertility more than ever before.
Restorative reproductive medicine could become a key facet of that witness by offering a robust approach to helping couples conceive, but we shouldn’t overstate its potential benefits or demonize mainstream practitioners. We also can’t be naive about the fact that it faces an uphill battle even within the Republican Party. Ultimately, we should recognize that shortcuts of any kind will take over medical care unless we give practitioners sufficient time and money to care for their patients well.
Matthew Loftus lives with his family in Kenya, where he teaches and practices family medicine at a mission hospital. His book Resisting Therapy Culture: The Dangers of Pop Psychology and How the Church Can Respond is forthcoming from InterVarsity Press.
