Starting in July 2025, most insurance companies in California must cover certain in vitro fertilization (IVF) expenses for couples seeking to treat infertility, under a bill Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law on September 29.
Religious employers are exempt from the law, which also revises the definition of “infertility” to apply to same-sex couples and individuals.
Gov. Newsom signed Senate Bill 729 on September 29, according to a press release from his office.
The California legislature passed the pro-IVF bill in August. In a September 29 letter to state senators, Newsom wrote that he “wholeheartedly agree[s] that starting a family should be attainable for those who dream to have a child – inclusive of LGBTQ+ families.”
Before Newsom signed SB 729, “infertility” was defined in the state’s Health and Safety Code as “the presence of a demonstrated condition recognized by a licensed physician and surgeon as a cause of infertility, or… the inability to conceive a pregnancy or to carry a pregnancy to a live birth after a year or more of regular sexual relations without contraception,” according to Justia US Law.
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SB 729 edited these various definitions slightly and introduces another one: “A person’s inability to reproduce either as an individual or with their partner without medical intervention.”
The Catholic Church teaches that IVF is not morally acceptable under any circumstances, for several reasons. Additionally, although some have claimed that IVF is “pro-life,” its process inevitably involves the violation of human dignity through freezing the “unused” embryonic children, or the destruction of human life by the discarding of embryonic children who were not selected for implantation – or both.
Currently in the US, there are an estimated 1,500,000 embryonic human beings frozen because of IVF and assisted reproduction technologies, according to the National Embryo Donation Center’s website.
As CatholicVote previously reported, a theologian recently wrote on the various moral and ethical problems of IVF, explaining why IVF is a grave sin and is not pro-life. His full article can be found here.
