“The initiatives I’ve just announced are the boldest and most significant actions ever taken by any president to bring the miracle of life into more American homes,” President Trump said Thursday from the Oval Office.
He had just signed an executive order expanding access to fertility drugs and IVF.
“There’s no deeper happiness and joy than raising children. And now, millions of Americans struggling with infertility will have a new chance to share the greatest experience of them all.”
I’m glad to see the president spotlight the joy of raising children—and the heartbreak of infertility. One in eight couples in America struggles to conceive, and our national replacement rate is falling fast. These realities deserve attention.
But the way President Trump is addressing them is deeply misguided. Ironically, it won’t help the forgotten Americans he so often champions—and it may even make their struggle worse.
Here’s why Trump’s fertility plan won’t make America great or healthy again.
1. Infertility = Unhealthy
Infertility isn’t natural in the biological sense. Under normal conditions, regular, unprotected sex over several months leads to pregnancy.
When it doesn’t, something is off. It’s a sign that the body’s equilibrium is disrupted. Restoring that balance is essential not just for conception but for overall health. To achieve pregnancy, we must first ask why the body isn’t functioning as it should.
Unfortunately, the current medical paradigm rarely does this. Rather than searching for the root cause, it often skips straight to intervention.
Take PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome), for example, a common factor in infertility. When a woman with PCOS doesn’t want to get pregnant, she’s often prescribed hormonal birth control or metformin to “manage” the condition. When she does want to get pregnant, the prescription simply changes: hormone therapy, and if that fails, IVF.
In both cases, the same crucial question remains unasked: What’s causing the PCOS in the first place?
Could it be a nutrient-poor, pro-inflammatory diet—something research has clearly linked to PCOS? Insulin resistance? The hundreds of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in a woman’s daily cosmetics routine? A stressful lifestyle? Or, as is often the case, some combination of them all?
The same level of scrutiny must be applied to every case of infertility.
Consider the range of possible culprits: hypothalamic or pituitary dysfunction, endometritis, nutrient deficiencies, chronic stress, poor sperm quality, elevated estrogen in men or women, or a decade of hormonal birth control disrupting natural hormonal rhythms.
These are only a few of the many reasons pregnancies don’t occur. There are dozens more. And within each condition, there are often multiple factors contributing to the imbalance.
A man may have low sperm motility, or a woman may have poor egg quality. Those are useful data points, but they’re not the root cause. They’re indicators. Symptoms of something deeper.
Infertility isn’t an isolated disease. It’s a manifestation of systemic dysfunction, a signal that the body is no longer able to carry out one of its most basic—and important—biological functions.
2. Drugs and IVF Do Not Treat Infertility
Central to the president’s plan for increasing America’s birth rate is expanding access to fertility drugs and IVF, making them cheaper and more widely available.
But these measures don’t address the deeper problem. Even if a couple conceives through IVF—which succeeds only about 20–40% of the time—the underlying health issues that prevented natural conception remain unresolved. The body hasn’t healed; it’s simply been bypassed.
It’s also worth noting that IVF pregnancies and births carry higher risks than natural ones—for both mother and child. What’s even more concerning is emerging research suggesting that children conceived through IVF may face greater long-term health challenges compared to their naturally conceived peers.
3. It’s Antithetical to the MAHA Mission
If there’s one defining trait that MAHA wants to restore in Americans, it’s independence.
We’ve been told to trust the experts. To depend on their systems, their prescriptions. The result? A population sicker, angrier, and more determined than ever to reclaim health on its own terms.
This new IVF executive order undermines that essential MAHA spirit. Its message is clear: Want to get pregnant? You’ll have to go through us.
It reinforces dependence, not freedom. It says the government—and the medical establishment—hold the keys to life itself. Trust us. We know how to make you a parent.
4. Big Pharma Profits
EMD Serono—part of the Merck pharmaceutical empire—became the third major drug company to strike a deal with the Trump administration, agreeing to provide its IVF companion drugs at steeply discounted prices. In return, the company is receiving relief from Trump’s tariffs.
5. It Fails to Highlight NaPro Technology
Pioneered in the 1980s by Dr. Thomas Hilgers, Natural Procreative Technology (NaPro) is a medical approach to achieving pregnancy without the use of IVF. It’s holistic—designed to uncover why infertility is happening in the first place, and then restore fertility (and health) to both mother and father through natural means.
It’s also far cheaper than IVF—because it treats the underlying issues, it’s often covered by insurance—and it boasts an astonishing 80% success rate among couples experiencing infertility, compared to IVF’s 20–40%.
Restores health. Costs less. Works better. What’s not to love?
Well—if you’re the Big Pharma company making IVF-companion drugs, or an IVF doctor raking in tens of thousands per patient—pretty much all three.
With sperm counts dropping more than 50% over the past five decades, it’s blazingly clear that modern American life itself is what’s driving our fertility crisis.
If we actually want to reverse this trend, we have to make individuals holistically healthy, because healthy people make babies.
Drugs and IVF won’t fix what’s broken. What will? NaPro, certainly. And getting back to the basics: lifting weights, minimizing exposure to endocrine disruptors, and eating fewer seed oils and more butter.
Spot on. This is such an important message
Absolutely true. Throwing drugs at a situation never actually fixes the situation and it’s just more profits for Big Pharma.