In February, a decision by the Alabama Supreme Court prompted IVF clinics in the state to close their doors. The legislature swiftly stepped in with a jury-rigged solution to allow them to conduct their business.

But the court’s ruling made everyone realise that the IVF industry is not above criticism. Images of glowing mothers and gurgling babies paper over troubling ethical and medical issues. As a result, IVF is shaping up to be a major issue in the 2024 US Presidential campaign.

So it’s interesting that the main independent candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, has selected an outspoken sceptic of the IVF industry as his vice-presidential running mate, Nicole Shanahan. She doesn’t mince her words. “I believe IVF is sold irresponsibly, and my own experience with natural childbirth has led me to understand that the fertility industry is deeply flawed,” she said in an essay in People magazine.

Outside of Silicon Valley, Shanahan is better known as the ex-wife of the co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin. But the 38-year-old attorney is an impressive figure in her own right. She is the founder of a legal tech company and has set up a couple of foundations for research into her passion, “reproductive longevity”. She believes that extending the age at which women can have children is “the natural and necessary progression of the women’s-rights movement.” 

When married to Sergey Brin, she struggled to have a child. After a two-year rollercoaster ride on IVF treatment, she magically conceived her daughter Echo naturally. That convinced her that IVF is more of a commercial endeavour than a scientific one. “I’m learning now that it wasn’t magic at all. I was actually very healthy,” she told the Financial Times. “And it turns out many women have these moments of surprise conception when they least expect it.”

Ever since, she has had little time for the IVF industry. “I think that there has been a very big missing category of medical services,” she told The New Yorker last year. “Many of the IVF clinics are financially incentivized to offer you egg freezing and IVF and not incentivized to offer you other fertility services.”

“It became abundantly clear that we just don’t have enough science for the things that we are telling and selling women,” Shanahan told the Financial Times in January: “It’s one of the biggest lies that’s being told about women’s health today.”

“I’ve spent the past five years funding science to understand the environmental factors that impact women’s reproductive health because these have gone largely ignored,” Shanahan told Politico. “IVF is a very expensive for-profit business, and many of these clinics are owned by private equity firms that are not invested in the underlying health of women.”