Published September 15, 2025
When Madeleine Kearns got married in 2023, she knew she would have trouble getting pregnant. She had been told she likely had a gynecological disorder (though an official diagnosis couldn’t be given without an invasive surgery). Although doctors suggested in-vitro fertilization (IVF), Madeleine knew IVF wasn’t a route she and her husband could pursue due to their Catholic faith.
Madeleine isn’t alone. She is one of 53 million Catholics in America for whom IVF is prohibited as members of the Catholic Church. And while Protestants have no top-down prohibition against IVF as Catholics do, many of the 136 million Protestants in America have conscientious objections to IVF. Despite this, referrals for IVF based on “unexplained infertility” have become the standard of care for many women in the United States. As a system, women’s healthcare is broken, and while there are hopeful signs that the field is changing, major medical associations are seeking to stifle innovation and maintain the status quo.
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Katelyn Walls Shelton is a Visiting Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s Bioethics, Technology and Human Flourishing Program. She is a women’s health policy expert and, as a 2025-2026 recipient of the Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship, is conducting a year-long research project on reproductive biotechnology and human nature.
