WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) expressed its opposition to proposed bipartisan legislation to force insurance companies to insure in vitro fertilization (IVF) services that destroy countless nascent human lives.
Introduced by U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn (R-IA) with cosponsorships so far by eight Republicans, nine Democrats, and one independent, the HOPE (Helping to Optimize Patients’ Experience) with Fertility Services Act (HR 8119) would require group health insurance plans to “ensure that such plan or coverage provides coverage for infertility or iatrogenic infertility treatments,” including “(1) the treatment of infertility, if such plan or coverage provides coverage for obstetrical services; and (2) standard fertility preservation services when a medically necessary treatment described in subparagraph (A), (B), (C), or (D) of subsection (b)(1) causes, or is expected to cause, iatrogenic infertility.”
Treatments required to be covered expressly include IVF, and failure to cover it would be punishable by fines of up to $100 per day.
In an April 29 letter to members of Congress, the USCCB reiterates its “grief for the growing number of families suffering infertility” and “corresponding support for life-affirming, but often overlooked, restorative reproductive medicine,” but deems HR 8119 an unacceptable remedy.
“Restorative reproductive medicine involves deeper and more comprehensive diagnostic studies, and more detailed cycle monitoring than a typical workup, to inform surgical, hormonal, and/or even lifestyle treatments that frequently work to truly heal patients,” the bishops explain. “These practices, and additional research to strengthen them, warrant support and awareness. Patients and hopeful parents deserve no less. IVF in contrast, especially as practiced in the United States, represents a relatively unregulated industry that creates hundreds of thousands or even millions of preborn children who will be interminably frozen, expended in attempts to place them within a mother, or discarded and killed (often in a selective, eugenic manner).”
While that suffices to oppose IVF mandates, they argue HR 8119 carries additional risks for religious freedom.
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“Some proponents have asserted that placing the bill’s mandate within the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) means that it will not affect religious employers,” the letter details, but “many religious employers that are otherwise exempt from ERISA, however, choose to provide their employees’ health insurance under ERISA anyway precisely because ERISA’s preemption of state law allows them to avoid having their consciences violated by state-level insurance requirements (including for IVF). A mandate within ERISA would therefore place these employers in a new bind between its requirements and those of problematic state laws. At the same time, certain other religious employers’ plans, such as those of independent religious schools, may not qualify as “church plans” exempt from ERISA in the first place.”
“As pastors, we see the suffering that infertility can cause and the deep desire of couples to grow their family. We strongly encourage licit means of easing this suffering, both medically and emotionally. For all of the above reasons, we implore you to consider that life-ending assisted reproductive technologies (ART) cannot be the solution,” concludes the letter, signed by Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland, Bishop Daniel Thomas of Toledo, and Bishop Edward Burns of Dallas.
The IVF process 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 following IVF, and that as many as 93 percent of all embryos created through IVF are eventually destroyed. A 2019 NBC News profile of Florida fertility doctor Craig Sweet acknowledged that his practice has discarded or abandoned approximately a third of the embryos it places in cold storage.
Yet the political lines of the issue were blurred in 2024 after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos qualified as children in a wrongful death suit, thrusting the issue into the national spotlight. Most national Republicans rushed to declare their support for IVF (with just a handful of exceptions). Leading the charge was President Donald Trump, who cast himself as a “leader on fertilization” and even promised to enact a new federal entitlement to IVF, whether through direct subsidy or insurance mandate (though he also suggested he would support religious exemptions to the latter).
The White House eventually backed away from the idea of mandating IVF, but said it still wanted to find a way to deliver on Trump’s campaign pledge. Last October, Trump announced he had struck a deal to reduce IVF costs and increase IVF “access” by (among other actions on lower prices for fertility drugs) by creating a new benefit option specifically covering IVF and other fertility treatments for employers to offer their employees.
As the argument over restricting such practices rages on, some groups advocate trying to alleviate the harm already done by promoting so-called “snowflake adoptions,” the adoption of already-conceived “excess” embryos at risk of staying frozen indefinitely or eventually being destroyed. Others, however, argue that such adoptions are a morally-impermissible form of surrogacy under Catholic doctrine. Over the years, LifeSiteNews has published a series of articles representing the debate between both perspectives.