Congress wrestles with providing fertility benefits for injured veterans and servicemembers

This was the year the government was going to start helping injured veterans and members of the military maintain their ability to start families by offering unprecedented fertility preservation programs.

In January, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced the Pentagon would soon launch a pilot program to help active-duty servicemembers freeze their eggs and sperm, as a precautionary measure to ensure soldiers who suffer fertility-ending injuries can still have children. Then last month, Congress took the unprecedented step of agreeing to overturn a longtime ban against covering in vitro fertilization treatments for veterans whose ability to have children was compromised by injuries suffered in the line of duty.

But political fights in Congress are now threatening to halt these efforts before they have a chance to begin.

A Senate-passed defense policy bill would zero out funding for the Pentagon program and a spending bill that would expand fertility benefits for veterans is currently caught up in a separate fight over how much funding Congress should approve to counter the mosquito-borne Zika epidemic.

“The current policy is outdated, it’s wrong, and it’s a disservice to the men...