House speaker strips popular IVF treatment for military families from defense bill

Members of the military wait for U.S. President Donald Trump to arrive for a meeting convened by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Quantico, Virginia, U.S., September 30, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Although in vitro fertilization (IVF) enables many couples to overcome fertility problems and have kids, the process is vehemently opposed by some evangelical Christian fundamentalists. One of them is House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), who, according to The Guardian's Mike Sherman and MS NOW reporters Julianne McShane and Mychael Schnell, stripped an IVF provision from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) earlier this year.

The NDAA, established by Congress in 1961, is a series of federal laws that specifies budget expenditures for the U.S. Department of Defense. The NDAA laid out earlier this year included a provision funding IVF treatment for active-duty members of the military, but Johnson, Sherman reports, had it removed.

In an article published on December 8, Sherman explains, "Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House and a diehard anti-abortion Republican, worked behind the scenes to strip the provision from the new version of the NDAA, MS NOW reported last week. Although IVF is extremely popular with the American public, abortion foes often oppose it on the grounds that it creates unused or discarded embryos, which they see as people."

Sherman notes that in recent years, Republicans have "sought to use the NDAA to entrench their socially conservative policies within the military" — even though Donald Trump campaigned on IVF in 2024.

"Congress may vote on the latest version of the NDAA as early as this week," Sherman notes. "While on the campaign trail, Trump claimed that he was 'the father of IVF' and said that he wanted to make IVF free. Since retaking the White House, however, he has fallen far short of that promise."

Read Mike Sherman's full article for The Guardian at this link.

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