Women’s infertility is Big Pharma’s cash cow



Falling birth rates have become a national obsession — for good reason. The U.S. fertility rate has plunged to 1.6 births per woman, well below the 2.1 replacement rate.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration floated proposals to reverse that trend — a $5,000 one-time “baby bonus,” expanded IVF funding, and fertility education classes. But while the high cost of having and raising children demands attention, a deeper, avoidable crisis hangs over women’s fertility — one under-addressed by doctors, nearly ignored in research, and scorned by the mainstream media.

If America is serious about reversing demographic decline, it must start with reproductive health at its root.

Millions of American women long to bear children but wrestle with infertility caused by conditions that doctors too often write off or treat only with drugs. Doctors prescribed “the pill” to teens to regulate cycles rather than investigate root causes of their irregularity; now, they too often rely on medications as default treatment instead of exploring environmental, nutritional, or lifestyle interventions. One glaring example is polycystic ovary syndrome.

Underdiagnosed, underfunded

Polycystic ovary syndrome remains the most common cause of female anovulation (absence of ovulation) and one of the leading causes of infertility in the world, affecting up to 13% of reproductive-age women. It disrupts ovulation, floods the body with androgens, like testosterone, increases the risk of miscarriages, and plagues women with irregular cycles — yet up to 70% remain undiagnosed.

PCOS research funding remains woefully low. From 2016 to 2022, PCOS received about $31.8 million annually — versus $262 million for rheumatoid arthritis or $420 million for lupus, “despite similar degrees of morbidity and similar or lower mortality and prevalence.” In 2022, the NIH reported just $9.5 million dedicated to PCOS. That’s negligible compared with the disease’s $15 billion-a-year U.S. cost in medical care, complications, and mental health impact.

Women as cash cows

Current treatment of women with PCOS indicates a culture of profit over prevention. Pharmaceutical companies and fertility clinics thrive on long-term medication and expensive IVF cycles — not on teaching diet shifts, endocrine-safe living, or stress reduction.

Nutrition and the environment's impact on health cannot be discussed without being labeled as “anti-science.” The tragedy is that PCOS is not only treatable but in many cases manageable through lifestyle interventions.

Though PCOS is often influenced by genetics — such as family history with type II diabetes — it’s also strongly tied to insulin resistance, poor metabolic health, obesity, and environmental stressors. Nutrition, exercise, weight management, and reduced exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals can dramatically improve fertility outcomes.

Even modest changes — a 5%-10% weight reduction in overweight women or a shift toward lower-glycemic diets — have been shown to restore ovulation in many women. But such non-invasive and inexpensive advice is considered “body-shaming.”

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Touch the holistic third rail

Women’s health, especially fertility, has become fodder for political punditry on both sides of the aisle — with little real research, funding, or solutions for root causes. Instead, women have become cash cows for an entrenched medical-industrial complex that profits from endless prescriptions and IVF cycles, while ignoring what might prevent infertility in the first place.

The “third rail” of holistic fertility care gets dismissed as “anti-science.” That’s part of the problem. It’s time to touch the rail.

If America is serious about reversing demographic decline, it must start with reproductive health at its root. That means early screening for PCOS, education about metabolic health, and shifting from a medical culture of symptom management to one of holistic fertility stewardship.

Women deserve it, and the future generations of Americans — literally — require it.

Why Restorative Reproductive Medicine Is More Pro-Woman Than IVF

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Fertility doctors are bullying women into IVF



In her late teens, Catie VanDamme was diagnosed with endometriosis, which is a disease that can make it more difficult for a woman to successfully conceive.

At 29 years old, after she got married and before she and her husband had started trying for a baby, she decided to go talk to a provider, who ran some blood work.

The doctor explained that her hormone levels, which dictate “how many eggs you could have or will have,” were low.

“It was used as a scare tactic,” she tells Stuckey. “The doctor that I signed up to see just took me on this path of, ‘Well, this is a really huge issue that your numbers are low,’ and really, it was the sense of ‘You needed to start IVF a couple of years ago’ type.”

VanDamme describes the feeling she had sitting in that office as a “gut punch.”


“What was most jarring to me was the push towards making embryos right away. It was like I went in for blood work and all of a sudden I was supposed to be scheduling appointments to come back to start the process,” she continues.

Despite the doctor’s insistence on beginning the IVF process immediately, VanDamme began to question the morality of putting human embryos on ice and whether or not there were other interventions possible to help her production of the necessary hormones, and she decided to get more opinions.

“We went to a third doctor,” she tells Stuckey. “And that was probably the most jarring experience.”

“It was, again, the same story of, ‘Okay, your blood work is kind of iffy, you should have started IVF a long time ago, but are you sure you even want to go through with this?’” she explains, telling Stuckey that the doctor then told her couples spend thousands for babies who die or are born with birth defects.

He also asked her if she was sure she even wanted to be a mom, said that he himself had “a really annoying niece,” and said that she could travel with her husband instead.

“It felt like I was sitting across from death,” she says. “I think he has seen so much carnage of what he has done at the sake of making money and playing God.”

However, despite the incessant fearmongering, VanDamme went to see a doctor who specialized in NaPro Technology — and was pregnant a month later.

“I worked with a provider to chart my own cycle, and it was done through something called the Creighton method,” she tells Stuckey. “He did something as simple as doing a follicle scan with me for a couple cycles and found out that I just wasn’t ovulating correctly. My hormones were out of whack.”

“All he did was put me on some progesterone medication. It was $4 with my insurance,” she explains. “He told me to go on a paleo diet and take a couple of these different medications that help with ovulation, and we’ll continue to see what happens.”

“And in like two months, I was pregnant,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Higher rates of autism? The harsh reality of being an IVF baby



In-vitro fertilization is sold as a cure-all for those struggling with fertility issues — but not only does it rarely work, it also can cause a myriad of issues in the mother and child when it does.

Jennifer Lahl, founder of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, is one of the leading voices sounding the alarm.

“IVF is fraught with risk. It’s risky to the woman’s health; it’s risky to the health of the unborn child,” Lahl tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey on “Relatable.” “You can just follow the CDC data, and for the last 10-plus years, overwhelmingly, all IVF cycles fail.”

Data is now coming out that IVF increases the chance of pregnancy-related complications, like preterm labor and birth defects.


“My grandson was born with a heart defect. And when his care was transferred to a big university hospital in California, two independent pediatric cardiologists there said, ‘Is he an IVF baby?’ He’s not, but in the medical literature, IVF babies have much higher rates of congenital heart defects at birth,” Lahl explains.

“Shouldn’t that be something that at least could make us pause and think? We know that pregnancy is risky; I know that, you know, any child that’s born healthy, praise God, because there’s a lot of things that can go wrong to make children born with all kinds of defects, but knowingly doing it, I think, is problematic,” she continues.

Stuckey has also done her research on the issues associated with IVF, and one of them is a higher prevalence of the child being diagnosed with autism.

“Specifically because there was a fertility problem on the father’s part. So that is because say a dad has basically immobile sperm. They’re just not fast enough, strong enough, to do what they have to do in the natural fertility reproduction process,” Stuckey says, noting that in IVF they “take the sperm and put it on the egg.”

“There is a reason that that sperm isn’t working. There’s an underlying issue there that will affect the baby that is born, because those sperm weren’t supposed to re-create, and when you force them to re-create, then the baby is going to inherit a lot of problems,” she adds.

“People like to say, ‘We’re playing God,’ and I always say, ‘Well, no, because God doesn’t play that way. We’re playing naughty people,'” Lahl agrees.

“There’s a natural order to how things are supposed to work and how our bodies are supposed to work, and even though the human body is incredibly resilient, our fertility is very fragile,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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New Campaign Urges Daily Prayer For Couples Struggling With Infertility

[rebelmouse-proxy-image https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Screenshot-2025-03-21-at-4.05.29 PM-1200x675.png crop_info="%7B%22image%22%3A%20%22https%3A//thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Screenshot-2025-03-21-at-4.05.29%5Cu202fPM-1200x675.png%22%7D" expand=1]Though many local churches pray over parishioners longing for children, the EveryLife campaign is a uniquely public display of support.

Texas Bill Seeks To Hold Big Fertility Accountable By Mandating Embryo Destruction Reports

[rebelmouse-proxy-image https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Screenshot-2025-03-06-at-2.21.50 PM-1200x675.png crop_info="%7B%22image%22%3A%20%22https%3A//thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Screenshot-2025-03-06-at-2.21.50%5Cu202fPM-1200x675.png%22%7D" expand=1]The legislation paves the way for a semblance of transparency in an industry that has spent years evading it.

The real ‘Handmaid’s Tale’: Why Lily Collins' surrogacy announcement was the bridge too far



Lily Collins' is the latest celebrity to announce the birth of a child via a surrogate — and the announcement has sparked yet another debate surrounding the ethics of the practice.

Allie Beth Stuckey of “Relatable” isn’t a fan of Collins' choice.

“How do we get to the point where we are now renting wombs and in some cases buying children via egg and sperm donation?” Stuckey asks, noting that criticizing surrogacy is often met with manipulation and emotional games.

“If you show compassion for the surrogate, if you show compassion for the baby who has just been torn away from the only body and smell and heartbeat that she knows, you are being hateful towards the parents who wanted to do this,” Stuckey says, adding, “Because in all of these, in all forms of reproductive technology, what is being prioritized more than the well-being of the child is the wish of the parent.”


While many women on the left have protested stricter abortion laws by dressing up in dystopian garb, Stuckey explains that those people are missing the point, as renting a womb via surrogacy is “actually akin to ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’”

“For some reason, liberals love to dress up in their red robes and pretend that Margaret Atwood’s novel is about abortion, like allowing children who have been conceived to not be murdered and to be born. That’s not what it’s about. It is actually much closer to the surrogacy industry,” she says.

In “The Handmaid’s Tale,” rich women who struggle with infertility use lower-class women against their will to carry their children for them.

“I know people say, ‘Well, it’s voluntary, and so if everyone consents to it, what’s the big deal?’ There are a lot of things that people consent to that are morally wrong,” Stuckey says. “Many of them may say that they are consenting to what they do, that does not mean that offering your body for a price is moral.”

The argument doesn’t end at whether or not it’s morally wrong to financially incentivize a woman to loan out her body but rather whether or not it’s morally wrong to tear a baby from the only mother he or she has known for nine months.

“It is physiologically true that at the moment of birth, the child longs for the woman who has been carrying him or her,” Stuckey says, noting that it’s even more egregious in cases where it’s two men renting out another woman’s womb.

“In the case of two men, they’re actually purchasing the egg-seller, they’re purchasing a separate surrogate, they’re taking the baby away from the biological mother, they’re taking the baby away from the woman who carried that child, and they are intentionally raising a child who is motherless,” she explains.

“I mean, what a cruel, draconian, demonic, social experiment that we are forcing un-consenting children into in the name of ‘love is love’ and inclusion,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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