New Arkansas law promotes misleading fertility treatment

Arkansas Republicans have passed a law that undercuts the science around in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in favor of discredited “restorative reproductive medicine (RRM).”

The Republican dominated legislature passed House Bill 1142, dubbed the Reproductive Empowerment and Support Through Optimal Restoration Act, and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) signed it into law in April. HB 1142 will go into effect in August and require insurance companies in Arkansas to cover restorative reproductive health care medicine (RRM).

According to the bill’s text, RRM is defined as “a scientific approach to reproductive medicine that seeks to cooperate with or restore the normal physiology and anatomy of the human reproductive system.”

The bill lists the ways to achieve this goal, including “teacher-led reproductive health education, blood tests, ultrasounds, hormone panels, exploratory surgeries, elimination of environmental disruptors), natural procreative technology and fertility awareness methods.”

According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), RRM can expose patients to unnecessary and painful surgical interventions, which can increase out-of-pocket costs and delay time to pregnancy when prioritized over evidence-based infertility care from an OBGYN or fertility specialist. ACOG also criticizes the RRM approach for focusing on lifestyle changes and fertility awareness.

“Concentrating on fertility awareness and lifestyle changes can add unnecessarily to the timeline; be ineffective and redundant, as most patients have already tried these methods before seeking infertility treatment; and make patients less likely to have a baby by delaying the identification and treatment process until patients are much deeper into — or even past— their fertility window,” an ACOG brief reads. “Although endometriosis excision, fertility awareness, and lifestyle changes may have value for some patients and should be a part of conversations people have with their doctors, they must not be the sole approaches available to people undergoing fertility treatment.”

In an interview with Magnolia Reporter, Little Rock Fertility and Gynecology Associates Dr. Dean Moutos said RRM is not a proven alternative to IVF.

“If you read between the lines, [Act 859] is a backhanded attack on assisted reproductive technology in my view, not because of what they say, but because of what they clearly omit [proven IVF treatment],” Moutos said. “When they talk about natural procreation, restoring nature and all this other stuff, that’s great, but the patients I’ve seen have already tried that and it hasn’t worked.”

RRM methods are also tied to the “personhood” effort, which attempts to legally designate fertilized eggs as people. Last year, a state Supreme Court ruling in Alabama temporarily granted personhood status to fetuses and embryos last year, effectively halting all IVF procedures in the state. U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) introduced a similar bill in May.