Abortion arguments at play in limiting veterans’ IVF benefit

Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio

A federal program to help injured veterans and their spouses conceive children through in vitro fertilization is being hobbled by anti-abortion forces that oppose how the process can lead to embryos being destroyed.

Since 2012, Democrats in Congress have repeatedly championed legislation permanently extending IVF benefits to veterans whose injuries in the line of duty have left them unable to conceive children otherwise.

But those bills have fizzled in the face of opposition from Catholic bishops and others in favor of a temporary program that must be reauthorized every year, complicating efforts by eligible veterans to begin or extend their families.

The benefit is further limited to exclude veterans who are not married, straight, able to produce their own sperm and eggs and, if they’re female, able to carry the baby in their own uterus.

Those limitations have been a problem for couples like Jacob and Ashley Lyerla, who needed to use donor sperm and eggs to create viable embryos after three heart-wrenching rounds of IVF using their own genetic material failed. The Milroy, Ind., couple has spent about $35,000 out of pocket to continue the expensive procedure with donor material, despite Jake being rendered a paraplegic at 19 by an IED blast in Afghanistan.

Ashley Lyerla, not a veteran herself, said IVF gives them and other couples trying to conceive the ability to bond with their babies as soon as physically possible, unlike alternatives such as adoption and surrogacy.

“By using donor embryos, you have all those memories, you have all those firsts,” she said. “You’re not having to make yet more sacrifices, more compromises.”

Fertility treatments using IVF involve combining extracted eggs and sperm in a lab. The process involves producing multiple embryos and transferring them all into the woman’s womb, in hopes one would implant and cause a pregnancy. Today, many embryos are usually frozen, as couples opt to transfer the most viable one at a time to avoid multiple births. Unused embryos may be stored indefinitely, donated to science or destroyed – a prospect opponents see as tantamount to abortion and a key sticking point in their opposition to this military program.

Restrictions imposed on the program closely mirror views the nation’s most influential anti-abortion groups have espoused for years. Many of those views focus on life starting at conception, including these embryos, and the groups want to make sure they’re never destroyed.

VA spokesman Terrence Hayes said the government is not tracking how many babies have been successfully conceived or born through the program.