Fertility treatment advocates have expressed concerns about a new Arkansas law they say is meant to cast doubt on the effectiveness of assisted reproductive technology, even though the law does not penalize or prohibit such treatments.
Act 859 of 2025, the Reproductive Empowerment and Support Through Optimal Restoration (RESTORE) Act, is “groundbreaking legislation that champions reproductive healthcare for women in Arkansas by prioritizing restorative reproductive medicine,” the conservative group Heritage Action for America said in an April news release.
The law defines “restorative reproductive medicine” as “a scientific approach… that seeks to cooperate with or restore the normal physiology and anatomy of the human reproductive system without the use of methods that are inherently suppressive, circumventive or destructive to natural human functions.”
Restorative reproductive medicine includes ultrasounds, blood tests, hormone measurements, exploratory surgeries, “natural procreative technology” and “fertility awareness-based methods,” among other things, according to Act 859.
The law goes into effect in August and requires Arkansas insurance companies to cover restorative reproductive medicine. This includes the Medicaid expansion program, Elizabeth Pitman, director of the Division of Medical Services for Arkansas Medicaid, told the House Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee in March.
The RESTORE Act’s sponsor, Heber Springs Republican Rep. Alyssa Brown, said at the same committee meeting that restorative reproductive medicine is not only more affordable than assisted reproductive technology such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) but also is “less abrasive on the body and has higher success rates.”
“I want to be clear: This doesn’t limit anyone’s ability to access IVF,” said Brown, who did not respond to the Advocate’s requests for comment.
Brown’s statement about not limiting access to IVF was true, but Act 859 is still cause for concern, said Dr. Dean Moutos, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Little Rock’s Arkansas Fertility and Gynecology Associates. The clinic’s website includes a header that warns prospective patients against restorative reproductive medicine, saying it’s “not a medically 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” by not including proven methods such as IVF in discussions of fertility treatments, Moutos said in an interview.
He disputed the claim that assisted reproductive technologies are “suppressive” as supporters of restorative reproductive medicine claim.
“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,” Moutos said.
Similarly, the IVF advocacy group Resolve: The National Infertility Association is concerned that the rhetoric surrounding restorative reproductive medicine frames it as a necessary “first step before IVF,” and this could “take some of the autonomy from the patient,” Resolve Director of Government Affairs Alise Powell said in an interview.
“It’s concerning that folks are trying to deprioritize something that is evidence-based in favor of something that… folks are already doing in order to prepare themselves on their fertility journey,” Powell said.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, which advocates for physicians that practice reproductive health care and fertility treatments, said restorative reproductive medicine “is not medical practice but ideology.”
“Its proponents create a false narrative that standard fertility care skips proper diagnosis or healing, when in fact, it is based on precisely those principles,” the organization stated.
Moutos said he was not surprised that assisted reproductive technology has come under conservative scrutiny in the three years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and left abortion access up to the states. Arkansas has one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion bans, with a narrow exception to save the life of the pregnant individual.
IVF providers in Alabama, which also has one of the most restrictive abortion bans, temporarily halted operations in response to a February 2024 state Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos are children and if destroyed, a wrongful death lawsuit could be filed. State lawmakers later passed legislation providing criminal and civil protections for IVF clinics.
Republican President Donald Trump, who called himself the “father of IVF” on the campaign trail last year, issued an executive order earlier this year directing policy advisers to create a report on how to make in vitro fertilization more accessible for Americans.
‘Natural’ methods
Restorative reproductive medicine is “not mainstream medicine,” which merits the warning against it on the Arkansas Fertility and Gynecology website, Moutos said, but none of his patients have asked him about it because it lacks “traction with the general public.”
In addition to the insurance coverage requirement for restorative reproductive medicine, Act 859 also prohibits state-funded entities from penalizing a medical professional who declines to participate in fertility treatments due to “sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions.”
Some branches of conservative Christian ideology disagree with assisted reproductive technology and condone only “natural” methods of conception.
Act 859 frequently mentions “fertility awareness-based methods,” such as tracking body temperature and hormone production during the menstrual cycle, as methods of assessing fertility without medical intervention. The law specifically cites the Billings Ovulation Method of fertility tracking, endorsed by the Catholic Church, which opposes artificial contraception. The law also cites the Creighton Model FertilityCare System, marketed as a “standardized modification” of the Billings method.
Moutos said these methods are not part of standard fertility treatment practices because they are “too unreliable” and have “a pretty high failure rate.”
The RESTORE Act requires the use of fertility awareness-based methods in programs funded by federal Title X family planning grant funds, which the Trump administration has attempted to withhold.
An earlier version of the RESTORE Act, which Brown amended in March, would have required the Department of Health to “implement reporting requirements for the standard of care for the diagnosis of infertility,” including “referrals to restorative reproductive medicine that are given before referrals for or use of assisted reproductive technology.”
Rep. Denise Ennett (D-Little Rock) said at the March committee meeting that she had issues with this portion of the bill because it could lead to privacy violations and discrimination via “the surveillance of tracking women’s personal health data.”
Brown told Ennett the intent of the deleted language was to “figure out how to update these services to better serve women who want to conceive.”
Other legislation
A 2023 bill sponsored by Rep. Richard Womack (R-Arkadelphia) would have charged abortion recipients with homicide and repealed sections of Arkansas law that protect IVF providers from prosecution if an embryo is damaged or discarded. The bill was never heard in committee.
Two other bills related to fertility treatments that Brown sponsored during the 2025 legislative session caught Moutos’ attention, he said, but neither made it out of committee.
The proposed Fertility Clinic Licensure Act co-sponsored by fellow Republicans Mary Bentley of Perryville, Zack Gramlich of Fort Smith, Wayne Long of Bradford and Aaron Pilkington of Knoxville, would have created a special license for medical clinics that practice IVF in addition to their existing medical licenses.
The proposed Assisted Reproductive Technology Reporting Act, also sponsored by Sen. Jim Dotson (R-Bentonville), would have required fertility clinics to annually report to the state Department of Health how many embryos they fertilize and the outcomes of each one, ranging from discarding to full-term pregnancies.
Fertility clinics are already required to report this data to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Moutos said.
Rep. Dolly Henley (R-Washington) said she was strongly opposed to the Assisted Reproductive Technology Reporting Act. She voted against the RESTORE Act in the House Public Health committee in March because she mistakenly thought it was the other bill. Henley later realized her mistake and voted for the RESTORE Act when it passed the full House, she said in an interview.
The law passed the House with the support of three Democrats — Reps. Glenn Barnes of Pine Bluff, and Joy Springer and Fred Allen of Little Rock — and 76 Republicans. It passed the Senate along party lines with all six Democrats voting against it.
Republican U.S. senators introduced the RESTORE Act on the federal level in May after the same bill did not advance in Congress last year. Conversely, Senate Democrats introduced legislation this year and last year to protect access to IVF.
A Democrat-sponsored bill to require Arkansas’ State and Public School Life and Health Insurance Program to cover IVF did not advance in the Legislature this year.
Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.
Source
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
