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Today, May 19, 2025, is the deadline for policy recommendations on how President Donald Trump's executive orders can be implemented to expand access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) and reduce costs. And while his administration is currently thinking about strange and loving ways to increase birth rates, including baby bonuses and motherhood awards, my suggestion is to support military personnel who desperately want to raise their families.
I am extremely proud to represent San Diego, the largest military community in the country. San Diego is home to 110,000 active service members and over 118,000 families. So I've always heard about their lives and their struggles with paying rent and putting food on the table, their inability to find reliable childcare, their concerns about their safety, their infertility journey.
For example, Matt, a senior registered sailor, shared with me that he and his wife Jenny have two daughters via IVF.
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Approximately a quarter of active service members and military spouses report infertility. This is twice the national average for the general population. When we think about the level of sacrifice we are seeking from military families, their struggle with infertility makes sense.
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order in support of the IVF. File: Trump in his oval office in the White House in Washington on Tuesday, February 25th, 2025. (Pool)
Our service members withstand physically intensive training, demanding schedules, and frequent relocations during major reproductive years. The deployment is often long and stressful, physically separated from the partner, and brings emotional sacrifices. Additionally, military service also means living and working in dangerous environments that can adversely affect fertility.
Despite all of these well-documented stressors, the country's military health insurance plan, Tricare, only covers fertility services for those who can prove their connection to the service with injuries or illness, which is often impossible. This leaves our military with three realistic options: It involves paying tens of thousands of dollars of out-of-pocket for family opportunities, having children, or leaving the military forever.
The living crisis has affected everyone in our country, but military families in particular, living on fixed incomes and struggling to afford childcare, housing and food on the table. This is not a demographic that can easily afford tens of thousands of dollars of out-of-pocket for everything, so people have left the military for this reporting, exacerbating the recruitment and retention challenges and affecting military preparation.
Flashback: Trump is about to expand infertility compensation after Tim Waltz once accused him of being “anti-IVF.”
Military families need IVF access. They deserve it. And they won it. That's why I introduced “IVF for Military Families” alongside Illinois Democrat Sen. Tammy Duckworth and requested Tricare to cover the diagnosis and treatment of infertility, including IVF. Our law covers up to three complete egg retrieval, unlimited embryo migration, and medications needed for IVF and intrauterine insemination (IUI).
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Starting this year, Congressional members and our staff will be able to receive comprehensive fertility treatments, including IVF compensation, as well as many other private employees in the federal and private sector. You should have access to benefits that military families don't have. But despite this hypocrisy, our bill still lacks support from our Republican colleagues in both the House and Senate.
I am (obviously) skeptical of Trump's commitment to expanding IVF access, but he calls himself the “fertilized president” and the “father of IVF.” If he wants it to be true, he should cast his support behind the demographics that have already sacrificed much for the safety and security of our country: our military family.
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Expanding IVF's Tricare coverage could be a fork moment needed to change the entire market and make IVF accessible to everyone in our country. You can put market pressure on private insurance companies and make sure your health insurance plans include IVFs and other fertility treatments.
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This leaves our military with three realistic options: It involves paying tens of thousands of dollars of out-of-pocket for family opportunities, having children, or leaving the military forever.
While IVF's military family law is a monumental step, the ultimate goal is to ensure that everyone has access to the full scope of reproductive care.
We ask our service members to risk their safety, to separate themselves from their families and to give up certain freedoms, but we should not ask them to give up the opportunity to build a family. As a nation, we need to do more than say we value the military community. You need to actually show that. And I think President Trump has a great place to start by supporting our bill and expanding IVF coverage for military families.
