Active-duty service members and veterans will be allowed to access invitro-fertilization treatment regardless of their marital status or sexual orientation, the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs announced. (Jaimee Freeman/U.S. Air Force)
WASHINGTON — Service members and veterans will be allowed to access in vitro fertilization treatment regardless of their marital status or sexual orientation, the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs announced.
Defense officials on Friday said they would end a policy requiring service members to be legally married and able to produce the necessary gametes — the sperm and eggs — for a pregnancy to have a child.
The policy had effectively kept same-sex couples, unmarried couples and single adults from receiving IVF treatment to have a child.
The VA said Monday that the agency also would end the restrictions on IVF treatments to align with the Defense Department.
Under the expansion of care, the Defense Department and VA will offer IVF benefits to eligible service members and veterans regardless of marital status and for the first time allow the use of donor eggs, sperm and embryos.
“We are grateful to the Defense Department and overjoyed for the service members who, through this policy change, will now be able to access the reproductive health care so desperately needed in order to build their families,” said Sonia Ossorio, director of the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women.
NOW-NYC, the Veterans Legal Services Clinic and the Reproductive Rights and Justice Project filed a lawsuit in August in federal court in New York City that challenged the policies for IVF treatment by the Veterans Affairs and Defense departments as discriminatory.
Air Force veteran Ashley Sheffield, who served in the military for 20 years, had filed a second lawsuit in Massachusetts federal court on behalf of a proposed class of veterans excluded from IVF treatment.
Sheffield said in her lawsuit that exposure to jet fuel affected her reproductive system and ability to have children. She also claimed she was exposed to polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, which are chemicals in fire-fighting foam that has been linked to infertility, the lawsuit stated.
Sheffield, who retired from the military in 2021, said she was denied IVF treatment because of discriminatory VA policies. She said her constitutional rights were violated.
“In 2021, Ms. Sheffield married her wife,” according to the lawsuit. “They live in Massachusetts and hope to conceive a child of their own and share their passion for serving others with that child.”
Her lawsuit included a letter to Sheffield from the VA that reads “if [you’re] in a same-sex marriage or if the sperm is donated from someone other than a male spouse” she was disqualified from the treatment.
“LGBTQ+ veterans like Ashley Sheffield who have bravely sacrificed for our country deserve equal treatment when they seek the medical benefits they have earned,” according to the lawsuit. “VA must end its blatant and willful discrimination of veterans in same-sex marriages and provide Ms. Sheffield, and all other veterans denied IVF because of sex and sexual orientation, the health care they have earned.”
VA, under the new policy, will provide IVF treatment to veterans using donated sperm or eggs, which is “a critical step toward helping veterans unable to produce their own sperm or eggs due to service-connected injuries and health conditions,” the VA said Monday in announcing the rule change.
But the Defense Department and the VA will continue to require that an illness or injury must precipitate coverage for IVF treatment.
Attorneys in the NOW-NYC case said they will continue to press for IVF coverage regardless of whether an individual has a service-connected disability or injury that caused infertility.
Lindsay Church, a Navy veteran represented in the NOW-NYC lawsuit, had said in the lawsuit that her injuries were not directly related to the infertility that she was experiencing. Church had served as a petty officer 2nd class working as a cryptologic linguist from 2008-2012.
“My service came with severe injuries, leaving me disabled and unable to carry a child due to extensive damage to my ribs, sternum, spine and torso,” Church said. “Despite my service-connected disability, my spouse and I do not have access to vital fertility treatments, such as IVF, because my disabilities are not to my reproductive system, and we are in a same-sex marriage.”
