Victories and Achievements

Added December 9, 2020

Your advocacy matters, and your voice made a difference. 2020 was another significant year for RESOLVE, our advocacy partners, and our volunteers. Despite state legislative closures and delays due to the pandemic, we tracked 66 bills in 28 states and secured historic victories in the following states:

• Colorado became the 19th state to pass an infertility insurance law — and the first to use RESOLVE’s model legislation. Effective January 1, 2022, The Colorado Building Families Act will provide insurance coverage for infertility treatments, including IVF and fertility preservation, for 1.2 million Coloradans in the individual, small and large group insurance markets.
• New York ended its ban on compensated gestational surrogacy, effective February 15, 2021, by passing the Child-Parent Security Act in the New York State Budget. This new law is critical to many New Yorkers—from those struggling with infertility to those in the LGBTQ community—who must rely on surrogacy to grow their families.
• Maryland updated its current mandate, effective January 2021, by removing the marriage requirement and reducing the 2-year “waiting” period to one year of sexual intercourse or three attempts of artificial insemination in the course of a year, enabling more families to access the care they need.
• Our allies in Utah passed a law for IVF coverage for Public Employees and Medicaid patients who are carriers for certain genetic diseases, a very limited but important step in the right direction.

Since 2015, RESOLVE and our advocacy partners – ASRM, Alliance for Fertility Preservation, EMD Serono and Ferring Pharmaceuticals – have helped pass laws providing IVF and/or fertility preservation coverage for more than 36 million people. And the most important ingredient is, and always has been, YOU. It takes grassroots advocacy – by patients and professionals and everyone who cares about family building for all – because our voices are louder when we come together. Please join the RESOLVE Advocacy Network (RAN) to celebrate our victories in 2020 and work for more wins in 2021!

RESOLVE is here until barriers to starting your family are not.

Added 1/21/2020

2019 was another historic year for RESOLVE and our advocacy partners. We are proud to share some of the highlights from a record-breaking year that saw an unprecedented 70 bills in 32 states.

• In New York, our Fair Access to Fertility Treatment Coalition won a multi-year fight for infertility insurance, securing IVF coverage for 2.5 million New Yorkers in the large group insurance market, plus fertility preservation coverage for 4.7 million cancer patients and others at risk of medically-induced infertility in the individual, small- and large-group markets. We will continue to fight for expanding IVF coverage to even more New Yorkers in the 2020 legislative session and to overturn the ban on compensated gestational surrogacy. Learn more about this law here.
• California passed an important law confirming that insurers must cover medically necessary fertility preservation, and we continue to work on passing IVF coverage in the Golden State.
• New Jersey passed a fertility preservation law as well to help those at risk of medically-induced infertility, making it the ninth state in the country to provide this life-changing coverage.
• RESOLVE also supported our friends at RESOLVE New England in passing IVF and fertility preservation coverage in New Hampshire.
• Positive gestational surrogacy laws were passed in Nevada, Vermont and Virginia.

In the last four years alone, RESOLVE and our allies have helped pass laws providing IVF and/or fertility preservation coverage for more than 33 million people across the U.S. We also drafted model legislation in 2019 to help other states expand access to care for the family building community.

At RESOLVE, we believe ANYONE struggling to build a family deserves access to ALL family building options.

Updated 9/5/2018

2018 brought unprecedented legislative activity that impacted those that struggle to build a family. As the only patient advocacy group in the U.S. that fights for the rights of anyone struggling to build a family, RESOLVE devoted volunteers and resources to monitor state activity and mobilize our community to fight for our rights to all family building options—59 bills in 28 different states.

We are very happy to report some historic victories:

• Delaware made history by becoming the “First State” in 13 years to pass a comprehensive infertility insurance law, covering both infertility and fertility preservation treatments, including IVF.
• Maryland became the third state in the country to cover fertility preservation for cancer patients and others at risk of medically-induced infertility.
• Illinois became the fifth and most recent state to close this gap in insurance coverage for medically-induced infertility.
• Washington state and New Jersey both passed laws authorizing gestational carrier surrogacy.

These wins are very exciting, but they are only part of the story — they show what we fought for, not what we fought against. Nearly a third of the bills we tracked in 2018 would harm the infertility community by restricting access to family building options.

These anti-family bills include so-called “personhood” bills, introduced in at least a dozen states that would define human life as beginning at the moment an egg is fertilized. Such legislation could prevent doctors from practicing IVF in accord with the best standards of medical care. We expect this type of legislation to increase in the coming year, and RESOLVE will continue to monitor and mobilize our constituents to defeat these bills whenever they arise.

And we will also dedicate resources to advancing landmark legislation that RESOLVE helped introduce in Congress in 2018, the Access to Infertility Treatment & Care Act, which requires private and federal health insurance plans to cover IVF, plus fertility preservation for medically-induced infertility.

Whether it’s a bill that restricts family building options or one that expands access to care, RESOLVE is there, on the front lines, fighting for you every day.

The 2016-17 legislative season was one for the record books! RESOLVE celebrated an historic victory in Congress and several wins at the state level, not to mention helping defeat numerous bad bills that would hurt the family building community.

#IVF4Vets:

In September 2016, the hard work by RESOLVE advocates and our allies that began in 2012 paid off when Congress passed the MilCon-VA appropriations bill, which included an amendment allowing the Veterans Administration to offer IVF and/or adoption assistance to veterans with a service-related injury causing an infertility medical diagnosis. The #IVF4Vets win is a huge victory for our wounded veterans, and RESOLVE is working to make this temporary fix permanent by pushing for a full repeal of the VA’s ban on IVF.

Increased Access to Care and Fertility Preservation:

Families living in four states (actually three states and the District of Columbia) also saw improved access to family building options in 2017, thanks to the work of RESOLVE and our allies.

Residents of Washington, D.C. now have access to all family building options, including surrogacy, with passage of the Collaborative Reproduction Amendment Act of 2016, which overturned the District’s antiquated ban on compensated surrogacy arrangements. D.C. had one of the most restrictive surrogacy laws in the country, so this win not only is important for families living in the District but sends a message to states with similar restrictions to change their outdated laws.

In New Jersey, infertility insurance coverage was expanded to include single women and women in same-sex relationships. The law also reduces the waiting period for heterosexual couples from two years to one year for women under 35 years of age and from one year to six months for women over 35, and requires the State Health Benefits Program and the School Employees Health Benefits Plan to provide this expanded insurance coverage. Hundreds of thousands more NJ residents now have access to fertility coverage.

More history was made when Connecticut and Rhode Island became the first two states in the country to cover fertility preservation when a medical treatment, such as chemotherapy, causes infertility. RESOLVE and our allies in the Coalition to Protect Parenthood after Cancer believe that patients should not have to choose between effective medical treatment and a future chance at parenthood, and we are working to add more states to this important list.

Personhood Bills:

These wins are very exciting, but they are only part of the story. RESOLVE monitored 51 bills in 25 states and D.C. this past year, more than any other year since we began tracking in 2008. Unlike the bills described above, much of this legislation would harm the infertility community by restricting access to family building options. These anti-family bills include so-called “personhood” bills, introduced in at least 11 states — and even in Congress — that would define human life as beginning at the moment an egg is fertilized. Such legislation could prevent doctors from practicing IVF in accord with the best standards of medical care. To date, no personhood bills have passed, and RESOLVE will continue to monitor and mobilize our constituents to defeat these bills whenever they arise.

Whether it’s a bill that restricts family building options or one that expands access to care, RESOLVE is there, on the front lines, fighting for you every day.