SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WCIA) – If you haven’t cast your ballot yet, you’ll see three advisory questions. One of them focuses on reproductive health care, asking voters if insurance plans should cover in vitro fertilization, or IVF, without limits on the number of treatments.
“This wonderful science is out there for the taking and we should make it available to everybody because if you want a family, if you want children, you should be able to have one, not just because my plastic card looks different than your plastic card,” Rachel D’Onofrio, who has gone through IVF treatment, said.
D’Onofrio said she met her husband later in life at age 39, and before they got married, they knew they wanted to have children.
“I got pregnant a few times, lost the baby early both times,” D’Onofrio, who lives in Lincolnwood, said.
She decided to go through IVF treatment. She went through three rounds of treatment which her insurance covered, but it didn’t work.
“Not only did I feel scraped out and in pain, but because there were not a lot of eggs fertilizing, I just felt so emotionally devastated and down,” D’Onofrio said.
Eventually, they decided to continue IVF treatment but this time using eggs from a donor, and her insurance covered that too. As a result she got pregnant with her first child. She went through that process again and now she has two children: Ruth and Francis.
“We both came from families,” D’Onofrio said. “We both just so value our connections with our siblings. We wanted to be able to do that. And now that they’re one and a half and three and a half, they’re actually starting to interact with each other.”
But D’Onofrio said it wouldn’t have been possible without her insurance covering the treatments.
“Infertility is all consuming,” D’Onofrio said. “It is mentally, physically, emotionally draining, but you still have to show up for every part of your life. And so the fact that I did not have to worry about finances because my insurance covered most things, how lucky, how grateful, how privileged am I?”
Now an advisory question on the ballot asks voters whether insurance companies should cover procedures like IVF without limits on the rounds of treatment.
“The more patients who have access to care, who have fertility treatment through employer based insurance is going to allow patients to get the care that they need,” Dr. Allison Rodgers, a reproductive endocrinologist and fertility specialist with the Fertility Centers of Illinois, said.
The cost for IVF treatment can range between $18,000 to $23,000 just for one cycle.
And in Illinois, the state mandates that group health insurance plans that provide pregnancy related benefits and who insure more than 25 employees cover the cost of IVF treatment for up to four IVF retrievals.
But it does create exemptions for employers with less than 25 employees and for religious employers.
Rodgers said most patients don’t need more than four rounds of treatment but that some patients would benefit from more rounds including people with certain genetic diseases and older people.
“It’s truly best in my opinion to leave that up to the patient and the doctor of what is needed for their fertility care,” Rodgers said.
Anti-abortion groups like the Pro-Life Action League oppose the question.
“We aren’t just entitled to be able to to create a family however we please to,” Ann Scheidler, the organization’s president, said. “A child is a gift. It’s not an entitlement. It’s not something you can purchase if you have enough money to afford it or you can get your insurance company to cover it.”
Scheidler said they oppose IVF overall for moral reasons.
“You usually end up with more embryos created than are used, and now you have the issue of what do you do about this,” Scheidler said.
Access to IVF in general has also been a big focus this election cycle. The issue took center stage after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos are considered "unborn children,” raising concerns about access.
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October 30, 2024 at 01:02AM
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