PARENTING
Brittany Raymer, an analyst with Focus on the Family, said the organization is hesitant to support legislation extending and making permanent the benefit, despite having “immense compassion for those military couples who are struggling to conceive due to an injury received while serving our country.”
“We have numerous ethical and moral concerns relative to both IVF and surrogacy,” she said in an emailed statement, including using taxpayer dollars to create embryos that might be left in a state of limbo or destroyed. The Department of Veterans Affairs said it was working to provide The Associated Press with information on how much the IVF benefit costs taxpayers.
Heather Ansley, head of government relations and advocacy for Paralyzed Veterans of America, is among backers of the permanent benefit for veterans and their families.
“We have a responsibility as a society to make them whole and, certainly, for many people, being a parent is part of that,” she said.
In Crystal Wilson’s opinion, limiting access to a permanent IVF benefit harms the families of disabled veterans who are trying to have babies. Wilson has conceived via IVF twice with her husband, Tyler, who was paralyzed from the waist down when struck by a bullet in Afghanistan in 2005. A single round of IVF treatment covered by the VA was not successful.
The Wilsons’ difficult journey to parenthood — they have a 2-year-old son, and a baby on the way — has led them to champion federal legislation expanding and making permanent the IVF benefit on behalf of other military families.
“IVF is pro-life, because we’re all looking to build a family and bring children into this world, and then build them into amazing, incredible citizens of the world,” Wilson said.
A total of 1,549 U.S. service members sustained groin-area injuries, 599 categorized as severe, from 2001 to 2018, according to figures from the Department of Defense Trauma Registry.
Those high numbers were a factor as Congress voted to authorize IVF coverage for veterans in September 2016 for the first time, extending a benefit already available to activeduty service members. The vote lifted, at least temporarily, an earlier ban on IVF benefits for veterans secured by anti-abortion lawmakers in 1992.
U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican, physician and abortion opponent, advanced what he viewed as a compromise in 2016, calling for all the fertilized embryos created under the VA IVF benefit to be stored indefinitely, erasing any “ethical dilemma” for veterans over destroying them.
The proposal ultimately failed, in part due to concerns its language might have prevented use of frozen embryos for conception and its potential to put decisions about their fate in the hands of the government — even years after the death of those who created them.
VA spokesman Terrence Hayes said the government is not tracking how many babies have been successfully conceived or born through the program. What is known is that fertility needs are high among recent military veterans, with rates nearly twice as high as the civilian population, according to a 2013 study by the VA. It found nearly 14% of men and almost 16% of women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan reported infertility.
The National Health Study for a New Generation of U.S. Veterans found female veterans were more likely to seek care for infertility than their male counterparts. The VA says 567 eligible military families have received the IVF benefit since it was first authorized in 2016.
Organizations that work with wounded veterans say dozens, if not hundreds, more could be helped through a more robust, permanent program.
The Bob Woodruff Foundation has provided 32 grants totaling $150,000 to veterans ineligible for the government benefit. That can include same-sex married couples, single female veterans and those with catastrophic injuries that destroyed their reproductive organs.
“We thought that once the VA picked that up, we could happily go out of business on that front,” said Margaret Harrell, the foundation’s program director. “As it turns out, we’ve not been able to do so because, although it is fabulous that the VA is currently providing IVF services, they have limited eligibility rules.”
AP news researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.