Stop denying wounded warriors the opportunity to start a family

Starting a family with my husband means everything to me, but there was a time when we weren’t sure it would ever be possible. Kevin didn’t return home from Afghanistan to a hanger full of flag-waving family members waiting to embrace him. Kevin was medically evacuated from Afghanistan and went directly to Walter Reed where he spent nearly three years recovering from severe blast wounds. Kevin lost a leg, he lost a pinky, his wrist and remaining leg were mangled, and one of his testicles was badly damaged.

Because of Kevin’s injuries, the military doctors knew we would need to utilize in vitro fertilization to start the family that we wanted and had dreamed about. Those doctors also knew that for as much as lawmakers and government officials try to make the transition from service member to veteran as seamless as possible, only the military covers in vitro fertilization for wounded warriors. The Department of Veterans Affairs is prohibited by law from offering veterans the same services that the military does.

{mosads}We were forced to make an impossible choice: rush into starting a family while Kevin was still undergoing reconstructive surgeries and before we had a home specially adapted to Kevin’s new needs or wait until we could welcome a child into a stable family situation. We chose what we felt was the responsible route. We decided to wait until Kevin had transitioned from wounded warrior to veteran.

Congress is rightly focused on ensuring service members leaving active duty have a smooth transition into a job or higher education, their community, and even VA medical care. Whether injured in combat or retiring after 20 years, leaving the military and returning to civilian life is a jarring change. To ease the strain on service members and families, Congress created a formal “Transition Assistance Program” in 2011 to help explain VA benefits and resources for finding a job, starting a business, or going to school. Today, there are more than 30 bills currently under congressional consideration intended to refine and improve the Transition Assistance Program to better reintegrate service members into civilian communities.

That drive for a seamless transition ends when it comes to one critical area: being able to start the family we always wanted.

While lawmakers offer dozens of pieces of legislation to help veterans find jobs, we have only four dedicated to helping veterans like us start families. And for years, Congress poured more than a billion dollars into creating an integrated electronic health record to link medical records between the Department of Defense and VA. Couples like Kevin and me are not asking for a billion dollars.

We are simply asking for the opportunity to regain as many of the abilities as we had before that fateful step he took in Afghanistan. We are asking for an opportunity to be called “Mom” and “Dad”.

The Department of Defense and the VA have worked so hard to make Kevin whole again. From those first days in the hospital to now, doctors and physical therapists at Walter Reed and the VA have helped Kevin transform from taking tentative first steps to completing the Army 10-Miler. Before medically retiring from the military, Kevin was able to start taking college courses and continues now as a veteran using his GI Bill. Because the Department of Defense and VA worked together to provide Kevin’s educational benefits, he has interned with NASA and our local city government while working towards a degree in computer science.

We don’t look at Kevin’s injury as him losing a leg. We look at Kevin’s injury as something that proves his strength. So much of how far he has come is thanks to the support we’ve received from the military, from the VA, and from organizations like Wounded Warrior Project. Yet, only Congress can give us back the one thing Kevin and too many other veterans have lost: the chance to start a family.

Kevin and I, Matt and Tracy Keil, Crystal Black and Tyler Wilson, and so many others who have felt the cost of war call on Congress: ensure VA coverage of IVF remains part of this year’s Military Construction-VA appropriations bill.