EBSA-2026-0232-0001, Fertility Business Initiatives Institute

Hello, Thank you for this opportunity to express my comment on this important topic. The ability to have children should be accessible to all families who wish to pursue this path. While the desire to have children is deeply rooted in our human psyche and should be respected and supported, public funding for assisted reproductive technologies (ART) or in vitro fertilization (IVF) raises important ethical and policy questions. Although IVF has helped about one third of families experiencing infertility achieve a successful pregnancy, the commodification of the fertility industry creates financial incentives that risk treating infertility primarily as a market opportunity rather than as a medical condition requiring the least burdensome and most effective care. Governments should carefully consider directing taxpayer funding toward expanding IVF when hundreds of thousands of cryopreserved human embryos already exist worldwide, many of which remain indefinitely in storage or are ultimately disposed of. Public policy should address these ethical implications rather than encourage a practice that will increase the number of embryos placed in these predicaments. As an ethical response to infertility, governments should prioritize investments in fertility education alongside reproductive health education, evidence-based fertility-awareness methods, and infertility-prevention treatments that identify and address the underlying causes of infertility, rather than subsidizing IVF. Public funding should promote approaches that strengthen reproductive health, restore it whenever necessary, and ensure that ethical considerations surrounding embryo creation and disposition receive appropriate weight. Should the government ultimately decide to expand ART/IVF coverage, it should require that all families accessing this coverage receive fertility science education as a preliminary step toward achieving pregnancy naturally, before initiating ART/IVF to mitigate the failures most familes are likely to experience. Thank you.