Kathleen Whipple and her husband had dreamed of a big family, but struggled to conceive.
Upon his return from an overseas deployment with the Navy, the couple learned from a fertility doctor that her husband’s sperm count was half of what it had been before his most recent tour of duty, which had involved diving daily into water contaminated with heavy metals.
To get pregnant, the couple was told, they would need to undergo in vitro fertilization, a procedure that would cost over $25,000. And because they couldn’t prove that their infertility resulted from the circumstances of her husband’s deployment, they would have to shoulder the entire cost themselves.
“We would like to be able to purchase land and start building a home,” said Ms. Whipple, who is based in San Diego and asked to be referred to by her maiden name out of fear of retribution by the military against her husband. “We don’t have any savings anymore to do that.”
Such cases are the driving force behind an effort in Congress to expand military health coverage to cover I.V.F. for service members and their families, a push that has generated some degree of bipartisan support but has so far been thwarted by Republicans.
For months, advocates have hoped that this would be the year that the effort could succeed. President Donald Trump pledged on the campaign trail to make the procedure free for all Americans, then doubled down on the issue within weeks of taking office, issuing an executive order that promised to lower the cost of I.V.F. and expand access.
And Democrats won inclusion of the coverage expansion in the annual defense policy bill making its way through Congress. But the provision faces long odds after Speaker Mike Johnson intervened to kill a similar one last year.
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The post Push for Military Coverage of I.V.F. Faces Challenge in Congress appeared first on New York Times.
