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WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced Monday that it is expanding in vitro fertilization (IVF) services to service members who are either single or in same-sex relationships as well as allowing them to use donor sperm, eggs, or embryos.
A VA press release explained that the previous rules limited IVF to married service members whose military service led to a health condition making them infertile but still capable of producing their own eggs or sperm. Now, however, the department “will offer IVF benefits to qualifying Veterans regardless of marital status,” and expects the new policy to go into effect in a matter of weeks.
“Raising a family is a wonderful thing, and I’m proud that VA will soon help more Veterans have that opportunity,” VA Secretary Denis McDonough said. “This expansion of care has long been a priority for us, and we are working urgently to make sure that eligible unmarried Veterans, Veterans in same-sex marriages [sic], and Veterans who need donors will have access to IVF in every part of the country as soon as possible.”
IVF has dominated the national conversation for weeks now, with Democrats attempting to stoke fears that it is on the verge of being banned ever since the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that because frozen embryos are children under the law, their accidental destruction can be grounds for wrongful death lawsuits. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall soon confirmed he had no intention of prosecuting IVF facilities based on the ruling, and the state legislature overwhelmingly passed legislation protecting the industry. Democrats continue to push it while Republicans have largely bent over backward to avoid appearing anything less than supportive.
The IVF process is fraught with ethical peril, as it entails the conscious creation of scores of “excess” embryonic humans only to be killed and human lives being treated like commodities to be bartered over. It has been estimated that more than a million embryos are frozen in storage in the United States after IVF, and that as many as 93% of all embryos created through IVF are eventually destroyed. A 2019 NBC News profile of Florida IVF practitioner Craig Sweet acknowledged that his practice has discarded or abandoned approximately a third of the embryos it places in cold storage.
The Catholic Church teaches, based on natural law, that IVF is gravely immoral because it separates the sexual act from procreation and violates the right of the child to be born of a conjugal union.
The VA’s expansion of IVF to those outside of monogamous opposite-sex marriages highlights how the technology can also be used to separate parenting from naturally procreative unions despite the detrimental effects of intentionally depriving children of an ideal environment in which to grow up.
A substantial amount of social science literature supports the truth that children are best served by homes with both a mother and a father, as each sex tends to bring unique strengths and emphases to parenting, which complement one another; and gives children a positive role model of their own sex as well as helping them to understand and relate to the opposite sex. By contrast, a homosexual male “couple” would by definition lack a mother, and a lesbian “couple” would be unable to provide a father.
Political correctness and later woke ideology in the administration and leadership of the U.S. military steadily grew during the Democrat presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, were not significantly curtailed by the Republican presidencies of George W. Bush or Donald Trump, and have exploded under current Democrat President Joe Biden, from COVID-19 mandates to gender ideology to abortion-on-demand to rooting out conservative views under the guise of policing “domestic extremism.” These trends have contributed to significant concerns about morale, recruitment, and public confidence in America’s armed forces.
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