Our Military and Veterans Deserve to Build Their Families

Our military and veterans are critical to our nation's history and future. A model of selflessness, they protect our rights as Americans and risk their lives for people they have never met.

And for all they do for us, our country doesn’t always provide them with the health and benefits they might need to thrive. When military members transition back to civilian life, many face a range of health issues, which may include family-building problems. In fact, a 2014 Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) study found that 15.8% of female veterans and 13.8% of male veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan experience infertility.
 

Responding to the needs of our veterans and military families, caregivers, and survivors is not only a moral imperative — but we owe it to our veterans.

May is Military Appreciation Month: an opportunity to highlight the needs that remain for veterans/military trying to build their families, as well as EMD Serono’s ongoing efforts to support them.

Having children isn’t always top of mind until an injury makes that dream difficult or impossible for military veterans. And according to the VA study, only approximately 40% of veterans will seek medical help for their fertility issues. The reasons are varied, although one reason may be tied to eligibility criteria under the Veterans Administration.

The VA offers a range of infertility benefits, from fertility testing to in vitro fertilization (IVF). However, to qualify for coverage under the VA's current policies, veterans and their spouses must meet criteria that include being legally married, being able to produce their own eggs/sperm, having an intact uterus, and having a service-related condition that affects fertility. This means that the VA’s policies deny coverage to any veterans whose infertility treatment requires the use of donor eggs, sperm, or embryos, or working with a gestational surrogate, which can be required following a service-related injury or loss of reproductive organs; and those who cannot establish that their fertility issues are service-related, which can be especially difficult for women when the precise cause of infertility is unclear and baseline fertility levels were never established.

Veterans impacted by infertility who do not meet these narrow criteria will likely face significant financial burden in managing their journey to parenthood. After sacrificing for their country, our service men and women should be entitled to more than that.

At EMD Serono, we have long been committed to helping our military and veterans on their journey to parenthood. Our Compassionate Corps program has been in existence since 2014, aiming to help eligible, uninsured, medically retired veterans (or their spouses) who have suffered service-related injuries affecting their fertility.

More recently, we have been advocating for changes to the VA policy that would broaden criteria, allowing more veterans access to treatments to help in trying to build their families. And we’ve supported organizations like the Bob Woodruff Foundation, who created their Veterans In Vitro Initiative (VIVA) to provide funding and support veterans/military families struggling with infertility.

With our long-standing leadership in the fertility space, we remain committed to helping diverse audiences on their journey to parenthood. Our military veterans deserve the right to build families, and we will continue to support and staunchly advocate on their behalf.