Anti-Abortion Leaders Declare Victory Over Removal of IVF Provision in Defense Bill

Republicans loudly declared in 2024 they backed access to in vitro fertilization, even changing their party’s platform to highlight their support.

But little has been done to actually deliver on those campaign promises. And when lawmakers unveiled over the weekend the final negotiated language for the National Defense Authorization Act, a provision that was passed in both the House and Senate versions requiring insurance coverage of IVF for active-duty service members was missing.

Anti-abortion leaders, who have long opposed IVF over the practice of discarding embryos, are now declaring victory.

“When you have a significant, and I would call it a significant portion of the public having moral concerns about this … let’s be sensitive to that,” Frank Pavone, the national director of Priests for Life, told NOTUS. “This victory shows us a sensitivity to that.” (Polling has found that an overwhelming majority of Americans support access to IVF.)

Kristi Hamrick, vice president of media and policy for Students for Life of America, added in a statement that “more pre-born lives are lost in IVF than abortion.”

“IVF is not an industry that deserves blanket support and funding,” Hamrick continued. “We can do better.”

Tricare, the Pentagon’s health care program for service members, currently does not cover IVF or other assisted reproductive technologies.

The provision stripped from the NDAA would have required Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “ensure that fertility-related care for a member of the uniformed services on active duty (or a dependent of such a member) shall be covered under TRICARE Prime and TRICARE Select.”

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democratic member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who championed the IVF provision, last week urged President Donald Trump to stop Speaker Mike Johnson from removing the provision from the bill. At the time, a Johnson spokesperson told NOTUS the speaker is “supportive of access to IVF when sufficient pro-life protections are in place.”

The White House did not respond to NOTUS’ request for comment on whether it supported the IVF measure.

Advancing American Freedom, a conservative group led by former Vice President Mike Pence, released a memo celebrating the removal of the provision: “Many pro-life Americans are opposed to IVF because the standard process destroys human embryos.”

“Mike Johnson is an effective Speaker because he is taking public arrows for his team. The majority of the Republican conference is pro-life and understands that this controversial provision should have never been in NDAA in the first place,” John Shelton, the group’s policy director, said in a statement.

Similarly, Lila Rose, president of Live Action, thanked Johnson for “ensuring TRICARE was not used to subsidize this destruction of life.”

While anti-abortion advocates were quick to say they won the battle, Senate Republicans involved in the discussions on the NDAA language were fairly tight-lipped as to exactly why the IVF provision was suddenly removed from the bill. When asked about the issue, The chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker, told NOTUS, “I can’t speak to that.”

Sen. Markwayne Mullin said the provision was removed as a negotiating tool, as senators considered what compromises could be made to “get this thing passed.”

“I think it’s got a chance to find its way back in, but it ought to be clean, because there was other language attached that caused it to be, what we call, a poison pill,” Mullin continued. He declined to say what language Republicans opposed because “we’re still negotiating.”

Duckworth scoffed at Mullin’s explanations for why the clause was excluded, adding that the move was not exactly surprising because the provision was also eliminated at the last minute from the NDAA last year.

“It passed out of the House; it passed out of the Senate committee; it passed out of both chambers; I negotiated in committee, it passed. It’s Speaker Johnson and his key staffers in his office,” Duckworth told NOTUS. “This is a religious opposition to it, and it’s sad that they’re doing it in the dark of night, you know, behind closed doors.”

Some Republicans, however, lamented the removal of the IVF provision from the bill.

“It’s not the way that I would do it,” Sen. Mike Rounds — who said he’d “personally” like to see the provision reinstated — told reporters. “But remember that a bill this size and this critical will have to have a consensus approach to it. If the House doesn’t have a consensus, or if the White House doesn’t have an agreement on it, we still need the rest of the bill.”

“While the bill is not as good as it could be, it’s still better than not passing the bill,” Rounds continued.

Back in October, after months of speculation on how Trump would fulfill his campaign promise to make IVF free, the president announced a plan to lower the prices of a commonly used fertility drug and encouraged employers to offer IVF coverage for employees — though he did not offer any incentives to insurance companies or employers to do so.

The plan fell short of his proposal to fully cover IVF costs — and some anti-abortion advocates took that as an indication that the administration and Republicans were listening.

“The people I’ve talked to in the administration have said very explicitly, you know, these concerns have been heard, these moral concerns,” Pavone told NOTUS.”