Democrats Invite Women To Freeze Their Eggs So They Can Fight

The military has announced plans to cover costs for sperm and egg freezing for service members, expanding a negligent “reproductive” effort to the detriment of military personnel and their families.

The pilot program, launching Sept. 14 under the Veteran Families Health Services Act of 2025, will run for three years and reimburse costs of sperm freezing up to $500 and egg cryopreservation up to $10,000 for service members who meet deployment or separation requirements.

The program fulfills a longtime Democrat-backed effort to disassociate military women from maternal family roles; increases dissonance in already strained military families, further divorces procreation from spousal stability, and ensures mothers can be separated from their children.

The Sexes Are Not Equal in Combat

Women have supported the armed forces in non-combat roles since the development of the Army Nurse Corps in 1901, with increased but limited access to positions until 2013. At that time, then-President Barack Obama supported a lifting of the ban by former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. By 2016, gender specific roles in the military were effectively eliminated.

The exclusion of women from serving in combat roles has been justified. Combat poses the direct and imminent risk of injury and death, as well as placing soldiers in tactical locations that cannot adequately accommodate gender separation. Forward operating bases and outposts offer little to no separate housing or privacy barriers between the sexes. Experiential hardships can extend well beyond privacy, encompassing lack of food and sleep that disproportionately harm women. 

A small-scale study of Army rangers claiming that women are less physiologically affected by rigorous training than men, does not match up with any large-scale studies of women exposed to extreme physical hardship. The study presents an insufficient apples-to-oranges comparison and should not be utilized as an argument to place excessive physical strain on women in the military.

The Biological Clock

Soon after the military opened doors to place women in hazardous duty stations, Democrat-led efforts for IVF-related services began. Building on that effort, in 2018 Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., called IVF the “most effective form of assisted reproductive technology” for service members whose fertility was affected by their service. Rather than improving health and safety for women, the costly, unethical, and dangerous technology was promoted.

Ten years after so-called integration, women who entered combat in their peak fertility years are now aging out of childbearing, or at least edging closer to the end of their fertile years. The possibility of deployment has likely affected the many military women choosing to begin families after age 35, further decreasing their likelihood of conceiving naturally.

As infertility continues to disproportionately plague women in service, IVF serves as an expensive, politically driven distraction.

An Unhealthy Family Unit

Members of the partisan-led advocacy initiative have lauded the pilot program as “an important step … guaranteeing that members of the military have the support they need to have children.” But this is inaccurate. Extending coverage for separation from a “spouse, domestic partner or dating partner” only encourages atypical family situations, contributing to less stable families and higher stress within the ranks.

The divorce rate of service members is already significantly higher than the general public. Contributing factors are many and varied, and directly affect emotional and mental health outcomes.

Health coverage in the military was designed around traditional family units and is not equipped to adequately provide care for increasingly nontraditional situations. Traditional family units have historically provided a source of stability for those who place their lives on the line for the protection of Americans, and that stability is critical. 

The need for advance directives in case of maternal death highlights the program’s controversial underpinnings. Increased risk of death leaves the complex issue of the eggs or sperm left behind if a service member dies downrange. Program participants are required to provide directives for the handling of their “genetic material” in the case of death. Increased rates of poor health outcomes in children born through IVF are another serious consideration.

Republicans have effectively blocked military-wide coverage of IVF, but have failed to stop the creep of subsidiary programs like the one launching this month.

When actualized, the gamete cryopreservation pilot program will result in all-around losses. Loss of improved health for military women, loss of funding support for stable, healthy family structures, and the potential loss of a parent before a child’s birth.

The program is one in a long line of policy failures passed in the name of “equity” disserving women.

Ashley Bateman is a policy writer for The Heartland Institute. Her work has been featured in The Washington Times, The Daily Caller, The New York Post, The American Thinker, the Ascension Press blog, and numerous other publications. She previously worked as an adjunct scholar for The Lexington Institute and as editor, writer, and photographer for The Warner Weekly, a publication for the American military community in Bamberg, Germany. She and her brilliant engineer/scientist husband homeschool their six children.