Two congressional Democrats are pressing the Trump administration to require that in vitro fertilization be covered for federal workers.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth and Rep. James Walkinshaw urged the Office of Personnel Management to “strengthen family-building benefits for the Federal workforce,” in a letter exclusively obtained by NOTUS.
Currently, not all health insurance plans offered to federal workers provide IVF coverage.
“One year into the second term of the Trump administration, President Trump has folded in the face of those opposed to IVF,” the lawmakers wrote. “Despite this failure to date, OPM can still make meaningful progress towards making IVF more affordable for families across the country.”
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The letter cited Trump’s 2024 campaign pledge that the “government will pay for, or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for, all costs associated with IVF treatment.”
“518 days ago, on August 29, 2024, then-candidate Donald Trump promised the American people that if they returned him to the White House: ‘Under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for [IVF] that treatment. Or we’re going to be mandating that the insurance company pay,’” the lawmakers wrote.
Duckworth has been pressuring Trump, the self-proclaimed “father of IVF,” to follow through with his campaign promise since the start of his second term in office.
Last month, she wrote to Trump asking him to stop Speaker Mike Johnson from stripping a clause from the National Defense Authorization Act that would guarantee health coverage of assisted reproductive technologies for active-duty service members. (Ultimately, the provision did not make it into the bill that became law.)
Last October, Trump said his administration reached a deal to cut some IVF medication prices and also announced guidance to encourage, but not require, employers to offer IVF insurance coverage. The effort fell short of his campaign pledge to make IVF free for all Americans.
OPM’s annual letter outlining its policy goals and initiatives and highlighting benefits coverage for federal workers is expected soon. In 2025, the agency released it in January.
Members of Congress are guaranteed health insurance coverage for IVF. Duckworth and Walkinshaw argue that all 2 million federal workers and their families should receive “coverage that is at least equivalent” to what health plans “offer Members of Congress and congressional staff.”
“If Trump really supports expanding IVF access — which he’s shouted from the rooftops but done virtually nothing meaningful to accomplish — this should be a no-brainer,” Duckworth said in a statement.
In a statement to NOTUS, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said Trump “is committed [to] lowering costs and increasing access to IVF and high-quality fertility care.”
“Americans struggling with infertility, including those who work for the federal government, will benefit from President Trump’s MFN deals on fertility drugs and the Administration’s efforts to cut red tape,” Desai continued. He added that the White House would “continue to work on innovative coverage that expands Americans’ access to fertility-related services.”
Advocates who support increased access to fertility treatments have long been calling for an IVF coverage mandate for federal workers.
“This is one of the things the president can do,” Kaylen Silverberg, chair of Americans for IVF’s advisory board, told NOTUS. “Just the stroke of a pen. He controls all of this. He doesn’t need a legislative option, doesn’t need a vote of Congress, doesn’t need anything.”
Silverberg, who advises the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, said that prior to Trump’s October IVF announcement, he had conversations with top White House officials, including Susie Wiles, about the issue.
“They asked me specifically, ‘What are things you think the president can do now that would make an immediate impact?’” Silverberg said. “I said, ‘Well, my understanding is he controls health care decisions for veterans, and for active duty military, and for the federal workforce.”
“One thing he could do is immediately say, ‘Hey, we’re going to include IVF benefits among those groups,’” Silverberg continued. “And nobody ever said to me, ‘No, he can’t do that.’”
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