Matt Keil with newborn twins Faith and Matt Jr.
WASHINGTON–Tracy and Matt Keil’s two-year-old twins love playing on their father’s wheelchair, one on his lap, the other hanging on the back.
“They know daddy’s in a wheelchair, but they don’t know he’s any different,” Tracy said.
On Feb. 24, 2007, while stationed in Iraq, an insurgent shot Matt Keil in the neck only six weeks after he married Tracy. The bullet entered the right side of his neck and exited his shoulder, severing his spinal cord and leaving him paralyzed from the neck down.
Despite the injury, Matt and Tracy decided they still wanted to try to have children. When they went to a Veterans Administration hospital to inquire about in vitro fertilization, VA officials said they wouldn’t cover the cost. The VA bans the advanced fertility treatment under any circumstances. In comparison, 15 states require private insurers to cover IVF, and a number of plans in other states also cover it.
The procedure can cost more than $12,000 per round of treatment.
“Everything changed at that moment,” Tracy said. “Because it’s one thing to decide you don’t want a family, but it’s another to not be able to have a family.”
Through donations and fundraisers, the Keils were able to raise the money. Although Tracy conceived on the first try, others are not as lucky — the average success rate is less than 50 percent.
Tracy and other severely injured veterans’ wives embarked on a six-year campaign to change the VA policy, making calls and writing letters to Congress before getting the attention of Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who last year introduced legislation to end the ban on IVF coverage at the VA.
Though that bill didn’t move last year, it’s back this year with bipartisan support from Reps. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., and Steve Stivers, R-Ohio.
“There is absolutely no reason that this this bill should not move quickly to the president’s desk,” Murray said while reintroducing the bill on the Senate floor in January. “These are veterans who have sustained serious and deeply impactful wounds and who are simply asking for help to begin a family.”
The Strain of Not Having Kids
In January 2010, Army Ranger Capt. Derick Carver was leading about 40 soldiers on a mission to clear improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, from the area around a school outside Kandahar, Afghanistan. After his platoon was ambushed by Taliban fighters, Carver was hit by an IED that destroyed his left leg.
“Be straight with me. How’s it look, doc?” he asked as medics evaluated his injuries.
But he wasn’t talking about his leg.
Because of extensive injuries to his genitals, doctors say Carver has about a 3 percent chance of having a child without in vitro fertilization. He and his then-wife were shocked to learn the procedure would not be covered by the VA.
“It makes no sense. Why shouldn’t the government take that responsibility?” said Carver, who earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart among other military accolades. “Wounded men in combat shouldn’t have to justify wanting to have a family. Now guys like me are looking at a $10,000 crap shoot. They shouldn’t have to carry that burden.”
Carver said his injuries and difficulty having children were among the issues that led to his recent divorce.
“There was never any doubt that I wanted to start a family,” Carver said. “The thought of not being able to do that is tough.”
Tracy says the stress of not being able to have a family can weigh heavily on veterans.
“As if the guys didn’t feel like failures who are unable to support their family, and then here’s another thing added to it,” Tracy said.
Andrew Robinson, who was paralyzed in 2006 when his truck hit a roadside bomb in Iraq, said the VA helps veterans with every part of their lives from building accessible houses to providing them with cars. Yet they ignore those who need help to have children.
“My definition of a normal life…I would say that kids are a part of it,” said Robinson, whose wife became pregnant with twins through IVF.
Hope for the Future
Matt and Tracy Keil play with their twins, who were born last November.
Murray said she hopes the Republican-controlled House moves quickly on the bill this year to help nearly 2,000 service members who suffered severe reproductive and urinary tract trauma between 2003 and 2011.
“We should not make these veterans, who have sacrificed so much, wait any longer to be able to realize their dreams of starting or expanding their families,” she said. “We owe them nothing less.”
And Tracy Keil recalled the words of Abraham Lincoln, which became the motto for the VA: “To care for him who shall have borne the battle.”
“Everybody always says they want to do everything they possibly can to make these guys whole again,” she said. “This is part of it.”
