CV NEWS FEED // The Biden administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on Monday announced it will offer taxpayer-funded in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and surrogacy to veterans, including those in same-sex “marriages.”
VA Secretary Denis McDonough is a self-professed Catholic.
A VA press release stated that it will “soon be able to provide [IVF] to eligible unmarried Veterans and eligible Veterans in same-sex marriages.”
“VA will also be able to provide IVF to Veterans using donated sperm or eggs,” the release continued:
Before today’s expansion of care, VA was only allowed to provide IVF services to Veterans who were legally married and – within that relationship – able to produce their own gametes (both eggs and sperm). Under this expansion of care, VA will offer IVF benefits to qualifying Veterans regardless of marital status and – for the first time – allow the use of donor eggs, sperm, and embryos.
In the release, McDonough stated that the “expansion” of IVF had “long been a priority for” the VA under his leadership. “[W]e are working urgently to make sure that eligible unmarried Veterans, Veterans in same-sex marriages, and Veterans who need donors will have access to IVF in every part of the country as soon as possible.”
Critics blasted the VA’s proliferation of so-called “assisted reproductive technology.”
Them Before Us foundress Katy Faust wrote: “[T]he first thing I think about when it comes to national defense is the intentional creation of motherless and fatherless children.”
Faust was raised by her mother and her mother’s female partner. She now advocates for the right of children to know both of their biological parents.
Center for Baptist Leadership Executive Director William Wolfe also slammed the VA’s move.
“Unbelievable,” he wrote on X. “The VA is going to subsidize rent-a-womb surrogacy arrangements for homosexual couples with your tax dollars.”
McDonough’s VA is also embroiled in another unfolding controversy.
A Monday investigative report by The Daily Wire detailed an internal probe into the department’s office for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), which uncovered “a hostile, toxic work environment with a permissive culture of rampant gossiping and innuendo.”
The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak noted that “multiple layers of top officials … participated in and covered up sexual harassment.”
Also on Monday, CatholicVote reported:
McDonough testified in front of the House Veterans Affairs Committee last month, when lawmakers pressed him about the scandal.
Rosiak noted: “[A]lthough a whistleblower contacted [McDonough] about the issue, he didn’t remember it, and it didn’t get his attention when [Committee Chairman Mike] Bost [R-IL] wrote to him about it.”
The secretary then stated that he had “just ignored” letters members of Congress had sent him.
>> REPORT: THE DEI OFFICE OF BIDEN ADMIN’S VA HAS PERVASIVE SEXUAL HARASSMENT PROBLEM <<
CatholicVote continued: “Back in 2013 when [McDonough] was serving in the Obama administration, NBC News reported that he “holds his Catholic faith in high importance.”
A 2013 piece in Newsweek reported that,
as close as he is to [Obama], McDonough is even closer to his faith.
In fact, he can sometimes be found in the basement of the West Wing, sharing an early morning breakfast and conversation with a bishop or priest.
…
Denis’s faith was so deeply entrenched that he went on to study under the Benedictine monks at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, a liberal arts school with a strong Catholic identity. Two of his brothers took their Catholic study a few steps further: his brother Bill is a former priest, and brother Kevin is currently a priest and pastor of the Church of St. Peter Claver in St. Paul.
