IVF treatment may expand for military members. Here’s why servicemembers say that’s important.

When Julie Eshelman and her husband were diagnosed with unexplained fertility, they struggled to find resources to help them build the family they desperately wanted to build.

“There was nowhere to lean on for support. There was no military organization. As military families, we often look to military organizations to provide support because we also face unique challenges, moving constantly, deployments, all these other challenges,” Eshelman said.

It’s what led Eshelman to start Building Military Families Network, a nonprofit that links military and veteran families to resources that can help them connect to family-building services such as in vitro fertilization. It’s also why she was one the people who participated in a Wednesday afternoon roundtable discussion convened by U.S. Rep. Susan Wild with leaders and advocates in Pennsylvania’s veteran and military communities and health care providers.

The roundtable was held at the headquarters of BattleBorne, an Allentown nonprofit that connects veterans to resources that help them recover from mental, emotional and physical trauma.

The discussion focused on recent attacks on IVF treatment for veterans and plans to protect assisted reproductive technologies for all.

Dr. Jaclyn Davolos, an OB-GYN for St. Luke’s University Health Network, said IVF is often associated with women who delayed getting pregnant until later in life but it is also for people who cannot conceive naturally and people who need to delay fertility for medical reasons, such as those receiving certain cancer treatments, that would render them infertile in the future.

TriCare, the insurance program that serves active duty servicemembers, does not cover assisted reproductive technology, such as IVF and intrauterine insemination treatment, for service members unless they suffered an injury in the line of duty that caused the infertility. However, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs recently announced that it would be expanding the availability of IVF treatment to eligible veterans who are unmarried, in same-sex marriages or are using donated sperm or egg cells.

Eshelman, who is married to a member of the Army Reserve, said based on her own experiences with infertility and those of families she has worked with as CEO of Building Military Families Network, many military and veterans families are looking for help getting access to IVF or other family building resources.

“So many people tell me, ‘Where has this been, I’ve been waiting for an organization like this.’ They are finding the educational materials are very helpful. We share grants with families so they can help lower the costs [of treatment],” Eshelman said.

Christopher Yarnell, president of BattleBorne, said his organization’s mission is to meet the mental health needs of veterans that are not being met. This can include connecting veterans to doctors and medical services they would have struggled to get otherwise. He said it can also include assisting women veterans with issues specific to them, something BattleBorne has significantly stepped up in the last few years, and he sees no reason why it wouldn’t help veterans connect to organizations like Eshelman’s.

“If it’s something pertaining to women’s mental health then why not? If it’s something that’s going to benefit women mentally to be able to reproduce, there are a lot of services that the VA offers for veterans’ mental health that I’m sure many people view as not as valid,” Yarnell said.

Some abortion opponents have tried to restrict access to IVF because it can result in fertilized embryos being disposed of. In February, Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos must be treated as children under state law and cannot be disposed of, a move that led to many IVF clinics in the state pausing services.

Dr. Hannah Anastasio, an OB-GYN for St. Luke’s, said IVF is also extremely expensive if not covered by insurance, with patients often paying five figures per month. She explained that during IVF, medical providers often try to acquire many eggs at once because women receiving the treatment have to take medication for an extended period to make that possible.

Families undergoing IVF also have to pay for their eggs to be stored — Eshelman said she pays $65 per month. Anastasio said if a family is lucky and the procedure is successful and they no longer need the fertilized embryos, they can choose to dispose of the eggs or donate them to other families. Under Alabama law, patients or fertilization clinics would have to pay for the eggs to be stored indefinitely.

Four members of Congress’s House Freedom Caucus singled out veterans last month in their push to limit IVF when they sent a letter to the VA urging it eliminate in vitro fertilization support for military members, veterans and their families. The move came shortly after the VA’s announcement about the expansion of access to IVF treatment for veterans.

The attacks on IVF treatment have not gained unanimous support among Republicans; former President Donald Trump and several Republicans in swing states say they support the treatment.

Wild, who is running for reelection this fall, is part of the effort to preserve IVF access through her bill, the Access to Family Building Act, which would enshrine access to assisted reproductive technologies, including IVF, nationwide, superseding laws or rulings in individual states. The bill would also give the U.S. attorney general the power to enforce the law and allow individuals and health care providers to sue when they believe the law is being violated.

Wild said the necessity of this bill for military families is that they have no control over where they will be deployed, so leaving the decision on IVF up to states unfairly penalizes members of the military who need IVF to conceive.

“You could be starting your path toward an IVF pregnancy in Pennsylvania and then get reassigned to a state where it’s either been outlawed or it’s supposed to be outlawed and there is nothing you can do about it,” Wild said. “I don’t want to see families at all having to struggle with the emotional strain and the financial strain of infertility and assisted reproductive technologies also having to struggle with the idea that the government or a politician or a judge is going to tell them how their journey is going to go or not go.”

As of Wednesday, Wild’s bill has been co-sponsored by 158 members of Congress, including Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Bucks County, one of four Republicans supporting the bill.

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