Lawsuit alleges VA won’t pay for IVF for same-sex couples
A year before Ashley Sheffield left the military, she and her partner decided to try to have a child. The two women had always hoped to build a family. They were passionate about serving others, and they wanted to share that with a child.
Sheffield and her wife tried eight rounds of artificial insemination, but none worked. By the time Sheffield medically retired from the Air Force in 2021, she was 37, nearing what she suspected was the end of her fertility window. She and her wife decided to try in vitro fertilization.
The procedure can be costly, but the Department of Veterans Affairs covers IVF for veterans who have a “service-connected disability” that impacts their fertility, and Sheffield assumed she’d qualify. After nearly 20 years in the Air Force, VA had awarded her 100% disability, plus an additional monthly compensation for “loss of a creative or reproductive organ.”
But when Sheffield asked her physician about the treatment, the department declined to pay for it.
According to court documents filed in Boston this week, the local women veterans program manager wrote to Sheffield on Aug. 18, 2021, to explain the denial. Sheffield could not qualify, the manager wrote, if she was “in a same sex marriage or if the sperm is donated from someone other than a male spouse. I am sorry.”
Sheffield and her wife paid for the treatment themselves, but their fight is not over. This week, Sheffield sued VA on behalf of a proposed class of veterans excluded from IVF care. A second group, led by the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women, also filed a lawsuit in federal court against VA and the Department of Defense over their IVF eligibility policies, which also prevent single or unmarried straight veterans from accessing the benefit.
“I earned the health benefits that millions of veterans enjoy,” Sheffield said in a statement. “I’m shocked and disappointed that the VA is denying me and other veterans IVF benefits because we’re in same-sex marriages. We are entitled to equal treatment, and we should no longer be treated as second-class citizens.”
VA began covering in vitro and adoption in 2016, in large part because it recognized that military service can leave veterans and service members with limited family building options.
Some veterans are exposed to toxic chemicals. Others suffer from combat-related injuries. Because of the widespread use of improvised explosive devices in combat zones, those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered greater rates of spinal cord and genital injuries than in past conflicts, leaving many veterans unable to conceive naturally.
Over the last decade, federal leaders have repealed discriminatory policies such as the Defense of Marriage Act and the Clinton-era “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule. Still, LGBTQ+ veterans say those policies continue to affect them.
Last year, a group of veterans forced out of the military because they were gay said their discharge papers prevented them from accessing health-care benefits, home loans and educational support through VA.
Same-sex marriage was already legal nationwide when VA adopted its IVF policy. But the suits filed Wednesday allege the department has discriminated against LGBTQ+ veterans because the appropriations statute for the benefit refers to a similar policy the Department of Defense adopted in 2012. That policy memo uses DOMA’s unconstitutional definition of “lawful spouse” to limit IVF services to service members in heterosexual marriages.