Submit comments now to oppose
harmful proposed health insurance mandates!

Virginia’s Health Insurance Reform Commission is considering whether to make additions to the list of items health plans are required to cover – including the possibility of adding mandatory coverage of IVF and embryo banking. A USCCB primer explains the Church’s teaching on these topics.

Last week, the Virginia Catholic Conference submitted online comments to the Commission, which will make its decisions during an October 6 meeting. Our remarks affirmed that there are many ways to address the need to accompany and support families facing the challenge and hardship of infertility, while also explaining that requiring coverage of IVF and embryo banking would be contrary to religious liberty, conscience rights, and – most fundamentally – respect for every life. 

To submit online comments echoing these concerns, please click here, check the “Provide Written Comments” box, and follow the instructions. The deadline to submit comments is Monday, October 6. 

Please consider including one or more of the following points in your remarks:

• I support the need to help and accompany families facing the challenge of infertility. It is also essential to recognize that each embryo is a genetically unique human being whose life must be respected.
• I oppose procedures that result in human embryos being frozen, destroyed, discarded, or experimented upon.
• I also oppose forcing people who deeply disagree with these procedures to pay for them in the health plans they provide.
• Countless human embryonic children are frozen or do not make it through the IVF process alive.
• Please do not mandate that Virginia health plans cover IVF, embryo banking, and similar procedures that would cost even more embryonic children their lives.

Please submit your comments now!

For further reference, here is the full text of the Virginia Catholic Conference’s submitted comments: 

 “The need to accompany and support families facing the challenge and hardship of infertility is substantial and very important. There are many ways to address this need. As this significant and sensitive topic is considered, and as financial costs are assessed, we note that some procedures that would be included in the proposed coverage also have high social and moral costs.

Some entities, including the Catholic organizations we represent, could not cover IVF, embryo banking, or similar procedures in their health plans – due to the religious tenets or moral convictions that are at the core of their mission. Mandating coverage of these types of procedures would come at the cost of fundamental religious liberty and conscience rights – raising serious issues in relation to Virginia’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the federal and state constitutions. In his Signature Explanation accompanying the bill that authorized HIRC to consider coverage of infertility treatments, Governor Youngkin made a similar point. He stated, ‘I firmly believe it is essential that HIRC exempt nongovernmental plan sponsors with sincerely held religious or ethical beliefs from any coverage requirements it may recommend. Protecting these deeply held convictions is a fundamental principle.’

Moreover, whether a conscience exemption is included or not, it is essential to recognize that although IVF creates some lives, it destroys many others. To account for limited success rates, what some consider to be “excess embryos” are created and then frozen indefinitely, or eventually destroyed, discarded, or experimented upon. The outcome of many IVF procedures, therefore, is the birth of one child with missing siblings that were denied their natural right to development. There are more than 1.5 million human embryonic children in freezers across the U.S., and 97 percent of embryos do not make it through the IVF process alive. Mandating that Virginia health plans cover IVF, embryo banking, and similar procedures would cost even more embryonic children their lives. 

Each of us began our life as a human embryo. Each embryo created through IVF is a genetically unique human being and our brother or sister in the human family. To the largely unregulated IVF industry, some lives are expendable as long as others survive. We urge the Commission to reject coverage options that would further this tragic social and moral cost and force others who deeply disagree with these practices to subsidize them.

Every life must be respected. So too must religious liberty and conscience rights. There are alternatives to address infertility that do not violate fundamental constitutional rights or put countless lives at risk of being indefinitely frozen or destroyed.”

Pregnant and need help? Click here to find pregnancy resources offered by our two dioceses.

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In prayer and in public, your voices are urgently needed to bring Gospel values to bear on vital decisions being made by those who represent you.

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The Virginia Catholic Conference is the public policy agency representing Virginia’s Catholic bishops and their two dioceses.