Military families hit with bitter blow after Congress strips fertility treatment funding from defense bill
By Brianna Keilar, CNN
(CNN) — Back in 2017, when my husband was still in the Army, we learned he was unexpectedly deploying right as we were going to start trying to get pregnant. Military families get accustomed to this pattern: You plan and the United States Armed Forces makes you go back to the drawing board.
Inconveniently, he had pre-deployment work travel pop up while I was ovulating, which is how we found ourselves explaining to the staff at a local fertility clinic that we needed to freeze my husband’s sperm so I could do an intrauterine insemination while he was away.
It was incredibly stressful. It was like the clinic had never dealt with a couple in our situation. We didn’t have fertility issues that we were aware of, but I was 37 and it felt like we didn’t have a month to waste. One staff member tried to charge us for a full IVF cycle, at a cost of at least $10,000. Ultimately, after a negotiation, we were able to get the job done a la carte for several hundred dollars.
The IUI didn’t work. Maybe I do have fertility issues, I thought. I wasn’t exactly young for having children.
I remember thinking how I wished I hadn’t switched to my husband’s military insurance, TRICARE. It covered only fertility issues related to “a serious or severe illness or injury while on active duty.” My employer-provided insurance did, though it was more expensive but significantly cheaper than paying for IVF out of pocket.
I should note that having the choice of two insurance options is something many military spouses do not have. My husband was at the end of his military career, and his home base was stationary. The constant moves that usually define military life wreak havoc on a military spouse finding a job, let alone maintaining a career. Military spouses have an unemployment rate four to five times the national average. TRICARE is often their only choice for medical coverage.
More than eight years after my failed IUI, as federal employees have seen an expansion in their fertility benefits, TRICARE still doesn’t offer fertility coverage. A couple of weeks ago, it really looked like it would, which is why as we ring in 2026, I am thinking of the military families struggling to have a baby, for whom this new year will be off to a bitter start.
They were banking on a provision in the massive defense bill signed into law by President Donald Trump just before the holidays that would have given them the same kind of access to fertility coverage that other federal employees have.
The IVF language easily passed out of committees in the House and Senate. But as the bill was buffed and polished into a final version for both chambers to pass and send to Trump’s desk, the IVF provision was stripped from the measure just days before a vote.
It was devastating for military family members like Courtney Deady and her husband, a member of the Ohio Air National Guard, who have been trying to have a baby for a decade.
They’ve spent $100,000 on multiple attempts to conceive by intrauterine insemination and in vitro fertilization.
“It’s the mental health, it’s the travel,” Deady said. “There’s so many other things, such as cryopreservation” of embryos.
Deady has one embryo left for one last round of IVF.
She was counting on the fertility coverage in the defense bill. It seemed like it had a real shot. After all, Trump campaigned on making IVF more accessible, and this was the first National Defense Authorization Act he would sign after he reentered the White House.
Broken campaign promise
On the trail in 2024, Trump had pledged that “under the Trump administration, your government will pay for, or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for, all costs associated with IVF treatment.”
Deady voted for Trump, sold on his IVF promises.
She was buoyed by the executive order he signed in February to ease the financial burdens of fertility treatment and deflated when he signed a defense bill this month that did nothing to ease the financial burdens of IVF for military families.
“It honestly feels, for lack of better terms, more of a slap in the face to a lot of our community when our Congress is receiving a lot of those benefits that we so desperately would love to have on our end,” she told CNN.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a combat wounded veteran who battled infertility and ultimately conceived two children through IVF, was the Senate sponsor of the TRICARE coverage provision.
Duckworth blames House Speaker Mike Johnson for removing it last minute from the bill.
“The committees in both chambers support this. There’s nobody opposing this other than Speaker Johnson and his religious views,” she told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”
“The president of the United States … promised on the campaign trail to make IVF available to all Americans, and I can’t think of a better place to make it available than to the men and women of this great nation,” the Illinois Democrat said.
Duckworth sent a letter to Trump with a handwritten note: “Speaker Johnson wants you to become the deadbeat dad of IVF,” a reference to Trump’s description of himself as “the father of IVF.”
Johnson’s home state of Louisiana has some of the most restrictive laws in the country governing IVF, emblematic of the influence of anti-abortion activists in the state.
Louisiana is the only state to prohibit patients and clinics from disposing of unused embryos, requiring they be shipped out of state.
A spokesperson for Johnson’s office told CNN that expanding access to IVF remains a priority.
“President Trump and Congressional Republicans have been working to lower costs and expand access to IVF. The Speaker has clearly and repeatedly stated he is supportive of access to IVF when sufficient pro-life protections are in place, and he will continue to be supportive when it is done responsibly and ethically,” they said in a statement.
Deady, who also works as the community support director of Building Military Families Network, a nonprofit for military families experiencing difficulties with fertility, rejects the position.
“When we’ve — all of our families — have really thought logically and we’ve prayed about it or we’ve done the research to figure out what, ethically, this journey looks like for us and to not have that, it goes to show that there’s a … lack of education when it comes to this realm of reproductive medicine,” she told CNN.
There was bipartisan disappointment in the last-minute yanking of the IVF provision and, in the House, a group of veterans and lawmakers representing significant military communities has already reintroduced IVF coverage in TRICARE.
Republican Rep. Nick LaLota of New York, a Navy veteran, is among them.
“Since 2023, Congress has rightly focused on strengthening military recruitment and retention by increasing troop pay, improving housing, expanding health care, and investing in quality of life for servicemembers and their families. Now, Congress should expand access to IVF, as many civilian employers already do, to build on that progress and help ensure America maintains the most lethal fighting force the world has ever known,” he said in a statement.
Republican Rep. Jennifer Kiggans, who represents a large number of military families in her Virginia district, which includes Virginia Beach and areas around Norfolk, the largest naval base in the country, said that “Military families already sacrifice so much in service to our nation. Access to IVF and fertility care shouldn’t depend on financial means.”
A sacrifice families shouldn’t have to make
I am writing this column with my 7-year-old son fast asleep in his bed, counting my blessings that my failed IUI was my one and only fertility treatment.
After it, my husband returned home from his work trip but deployed before I expected to ovulate again. So, when I realized I was pregnant long after he deployed, it felt like a miracle, especially when my first sonogram showed I was pregnant with twins.
A few weeks after, another sonogram showed I had what’s called “a vanishing twin.” The second embryo had failed to develop. But there was still one. We made it through a large subchorionic hemorrhage of my placenta and a few other difficult moments, including my water breaking a month early while my husband was in Asia on a graduation trip for his eldest child not long after returning from his deployment. Somehow, he made it back for the final minutes of my labor to see our son born.
Not even a year later, my husband deployed again, for longer this time. Military family life was a lot for me to manage, caring for a baby and my young stepson as well, but I can’t imagine not having the chance. Being a military spouse has been one of the best experiences of my life, but nothing surpasses being a mom.
For many military families struggling with infertility, choosing between the two feels like a sacrifice they shouldn’t have to make.
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