A proposed piece of legislation would make it significantly easier to access in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and other fertility treatments, creating what its sponsors describe as a “nationwide right to access IVF”.
The Right to IVF Act of 2026 was introduced in both houses of Congress on July 23, ahead of World IVF Day, according to a press release from Rep. James Walkinshaw, Democrat of Virginia.
If enacted, the legislation would “create a statutory right for an individual to access, a provider to provide, and an insurer to cover assisted reproductive technology (ART), including IVF and intrauterine insemination (IUI), without prohibition, limitation, or interference”, the press release said.
The Bill would also require coverage of assisted reproductive technology for members of the military, veterans, federal employees and people covered by employer-sponsored insurance, Medicaid, Medicare and Affordable Care Act plans.
President Donald Trump pledged during his election campaign to provide free IVF services to Americans if elected and announced a series of measures aimed at expanding IVF access in October 2025.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, said the President had “failed to deliver” on those promises.
“Trump and Republicans' ‘support' for IVF is nothing but lip service. They want us to have more babies, yet they'll do nothing to actually help make it easier for the millions who struggle with infertility to start and grow their families,” she said in a statement.
The Catholic Church opposes certain forms of assisted reproduction, including IVF and intrauterine insemination. In Donum vitae, published in 1987, the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith outlined the Church's moral objections to these practices. Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington, Virginia, reiterated that teaching in a pastoral message published in 2025.
“A great moral injustice of IVF is that many of the embryonic children brought about by the process will either be discarded, having been deemed undesirable, or frozen, having been deemed desirable but unnecessary,” Burbidge wrote.
He said IVF “both creates life and destroys life”.
“The most obvious moral difficulty of IVF, that despite giving rise to new life it also destroys many others, is a reality knowable by human reason.”
While acknowledging that around 12 million children have been born through IVF since 1978, Burbidge said there are “many tens of millions more missing brothers and sisters who have either been deliberately destroyed, experimented upon, or frozen in liquid nitrogen and denied their natural right to the fullness of their development”.
Burbidge argued that the federal government should not become involved in IVF and described its promotion as a response to falling birth rates as “misguided”.
“The Church stands in solidarity with all those experiencing infertility and proclaims the dignity of all who come into existence as a result of IVF; however, she stands absolutely opposed to any federal or state governmental action that would involve every citizen with a grave moral injustice,” he said.
He added that a federal IVF mandate or entitlement would amount to “an illegitimate handing over to Caesar the things of God – the gift of human life and the good of the family from which society springs”.
Such a mandate, he argued, “would insert the state into the very heart of the home and gradually bring about the false sense that the state and those holding power, now effectively the sponsors of human persons even prior to conception, can and should direct the lives of those their power has brought about”.
“In this way, the prospect of a federal IVF mandate represents a grave threat not only to human rights, but to the future liberty of a free people.”
