It Is Time for the U.S. to Cover IVF (for Gays and Lesbians Too)

Huffington Post, March 18, 2013 – Dov Fox and I. Glen Cohen

This week the United Kingdom joined the ranks of countries like Israel and Canada that provide in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment to citizens under a certain age (42 in the U.K.) who can’t have children without it. That includes gays and lesbians. When it comes to helping people form the families they long for, the United States is woefully behind. The U.S. has among the lowest rates of IVF usage of any developed country in the world, owing in part to boasting the highest cost for the procedure, on average $100,000 per successful pregnancy.

Among the handful of states that require insurers to cover IVF, many carve out exclusions for same-sex couples and people who aren’t married. These singles, gays, and lesbians are sometimes called “dysfertile” as opposed to “infertile” to emphasize their social (rather than just biological) obstacles to reproduction. The U.S. should expand IVF coverage for the infertile and include the dysfertile too.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the inability to reproduce qualifies as a health-impairing disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The commitment to universal health care that we renewed in President Obama’s health reform act invites us to understand the infertile and dysfertile alike as needing medicine to restore a capacity–for “[r]eproduction and the sexual dynamics surrounding it”–that is, in the words of the Supreme Court, “central to the life process itself.”

It is true that dysfertility fits less comfortably within the medical model. But why should that alone make less worthy the desires of gays and lesbians to have a genetic child? Joe Saul, the protagonist in John Steinbeck’s 1950 play Burning Bright, put it best:

A man can’t scrap his bloodline, can’t snip the thread of his immortality. There’s more than . . . the remembered stories of glory and the forgotten shame of failure. There is a trust imposed to hand my line over to another.

My impulse to create a biological family, to raise “my own” children, to “hand my line over to another” is shared by people single or married, black or white, gay or straight. And the arguments against IVF subsidies fall short.

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in IVF / Legal / Legislation / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Pediatrics Group Backs Gay Marriage, Saying It Helps Children

March 21, 2013
New York Times

The American Academy of Pediatrics declared its support for same-sex marriage for the first time on Thursday, saying that allowing gay and lesbian parents to marry if they so choose is in the best interests of their children.

The academy’s new policy statement says same-sex marriage helps guarantee rights, benefits and long-term security for children, while acknowledging that it does not now ensure access to federal benefits. When marriage is not an option, the academy said, children should not be deprived of foster care or adoption by single parents or couples, whatever their sexual orientation.

The academy’s review of scientific literature began more than four years ago, and the result is a 10-page report with 60 citations.

“If the studies are different in their design and sample but the results continue to be similar, that gives scientists and consumers more faith in the result,” said Dr. Ellen Perrin, a co-author of the new policy and a professor of pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine.

Other scientists called the evidence lackluster and said the academy’s endorsement was premature. Loren Marks, an associate professor of child and family studies at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, said there was not enough national data to support the pediatric association’s position on same-sex marriage. “National policy should be informed by nationally representative data,” he said. “We are moving in the direction of higher-quality national data, but it’s slow.”

The academy cited research finding that a child’s well-being is much more affected by the strength of relationships among family members and a family’s social and economic resources than by the sexual orientation of the parents. “There is an emerging consensus, based on extensive review of the scientific literature, that children growing up in households headed by gay men or lesbians are not disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents,” the academy said.

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in Legal / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Kansas Supreme Court Upholds Co-Parenting Agreement

According to this February 22, 2013 decision, “A coparenting agreement is not automatically rendered unenforceable as violating public policy merely because it contains the biological mother’s agreement to share the custody of her children with another, so long as the intent and effect of the arrangement will promote the welfare and best interests of the children.”

The court basically stated that same-sex couples have the same rights as opposite sex couples in parenting.  Way to go Kansas – Who knew?

Click here to read the entire decision.

in Anonymous/Known Donation / Legal / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Married Gay Couple In Iowa Fighting For Both To Be Listed On Child’s Birth Certificate

By    On Top Magazine Staff
Published:    March 04, 2013

The Iowa Supreme Court is considering a legal challenge brought by a married lesbian couple denied the right for both to be listed on their child’s birth certificate.

In a landmark 2009 decision, the state’s highest court unanimously struck down the state’s law limiting marriage to heterosexual couples.

However, the Iowa Department of Public Health has refused to issue birth certificates listing married spouses of the same gender as the legal parents of newborn children.

Heather and Melissa Gartner are one such couple.  Despite being married, only Heather Gartner, their daughter’s biological mother, is listed on the birth certificate.

“When you have somebody tell you that your marriage is not equal to your counterparts, because of who you’re married to, you can’t be a parent to this child – it’s very hurtful,” Melissa Gartner told CNN Radio.  “I mean, honestly, when the first birth certificate came, it felt like someone had smacked you.”

Click here to read the entire article.

in In the News / Legal / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

We Found Our Son in the Subway

New York Times, by Paul Mercurio, February 28, 2013

The story of how Danny and I were married last July in a Manhattan courtroom, with our son, Kevin, beside us, began 12 years earlier, in a dark, damp subway station.

Danny called me that day, frantic. “I found a baby!” he shouted. “I called 911, but I don’t think they believed me. No one’s coming. I don’t want to leave the baby alone. Get down here and flag down a police car or something.” By nature Danny is a remarkably calm person, so when I felt his heart pounding through the phone line, I knew I had to run.

When I got to the A/C/E/ subway exit on Eighth Avenue, Danny was still there, waiting for help to arrive. The baby, who had been left on the ground in a corner behind the turnstiles, was light-brown skinned and quiet, probably about a day old, wrapped in an oversize black sweatshirt.

In the following weeks, after family court had taken custody of “Baby ACE,” as he was nicknamed, Danny told the story over and over again, first to every local TV news station, then to family members, friends, co-workers and acquaintances. The story spread like an urban myth: You’re never going to believe what my friend’s cousin’s co-worker found in the subway. What neither of us knew, or could have predicted, was that Danny had not just saved an abandoned infant; he had found our son.

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in Adoption / Family Stories / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Making a Child, Minus the Couple

February 8, 2013
New York Times
By ABBY ELLIN

Rachel Hope is 5-foot-9 and likes yoga, dance and martial arts. A real estate developer and freelance writer in Los Angeles, Ms. Hope, 41, is seeking a man who lives near her, is healthy and fit, and “has his financial stuff together,” she said. Parker Williams, the 42-year-old founder of QTheory, a charity auction company also in Los Angeles, would seem like a good candidate. A 6-foot-2 former model who loves animals, Mr. Williams is athletic, easygoing, compassionate and organized.

Neither Ms. Hope nor Mr. Williams is interested in a romantic liaison. But they both want a child, and they’re in serious discussions about having, and raising, one together. Never mind that Mr. Williams is gay and that the two did not know of each other’s existence until last October, when they met on Modamily.com, a Web site for people looking to share parenting arrangements.

Mr. Williams and Ms. Hope are among a new breed of online daters, looking not for love but rather a partner with whom to build a decidedly non-nuclear family. And several social networks, including PollenTree.com, Coparents.com, Co-ParentMatch.com, and MyAlternativeFamily.com, as well as Modamily, have sprung up over the past few years to help them.

“While some people have chosen to be a single parent, many more people look at scheduling and the financial pressures and the lack of an emotional partner and decide that single parenting is too daunting and wouldn’t be good for them or the child,” said Darren Spedale, 38, the founder of Family by Design, a free parenting partnership site officially introduced in early January. “If you can share the support and the ups and downs with someone, it makes it a much more interesting parenting option.”

 
Click here to read the entire article.
in Family Stories / Parenting / Personal Stories  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

France: Children born via surrogates overseas to be granted citizenship

04 February 2013

By James Brooks

Appeared in BioNews 691

The French Justice Minister’s instruction to courts to accept citizenship applications for children born via surrogates in other countries has unleashed a political and popular furore.

The minister, Christiane Taubira, issued the instruction during a debate on gay marriage. Immediately, ministers from the opposition UMP party accused the government of attempting to underhandedly introduce liberal legislation on surrogacy and access to IVF for gay couples. Surrogacy is illegal in France and fertility treatment only available to heterosexual couples.

After Taubira had presented the instruction to the French parliament, the head of the opposition UMP party, Jean-François Copé, declared that the government had ‘let its mask drop’ and that the instruction should immediately be withdrawn.

UMP MP Laurent Wauquiez, who leads a movement calling for a popular referendum on gay marriage, told a full French parliament that ‘the law being presented is the start rather than the finish line and test-tube babies and surrogate mothers are the destination’.

According to the Associated Press, the debate ‘has sent thousands into the streets, turned the bridges over the Seine into billboards and prompted charges that women’s bodies will soon be for rent in a society that still has surprisingly deep conservative roots’.

Faced with such vociferous opposition, both Taubira and President François Hollande have sought to clarify their position. Talking to the press after a cabinet meeting, Taubira said: ‘There isn’t the slightest change in the position of either the President or the government. In law surrogacy is forbidden – there is no debate on that point’.

In fact the instruction concerns only children who are born via surrogacy overseas and ensures that they will be given French civil status – similar to nationality – when they arrive in France.

Click here to read the entire article.

in In the News / Legal / Parenting / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Making a Child, Minus the Couple

February 8, 2013
New York Times
By ABBY ELLIN

Rachel Hope is 5-foot-9 and likes yoga, dance and martial arts. A real estate developer and freelance writer in Los Angeles, Ms. Hope, 41, is seeking a man who lives near her, is healthy and fit, and “has his financial stuff together,” she said. Parker Williams, the 42-year-old founder of QTheory, a charity auction company also in Los Angeles, would seem like a good candidate. A 6-foot-2 former model who loves animals, Mr. Williams is athletic, easygoing, compassionate and organized.

Neither Ms. Hope nor Mr. Williams is interested in a romantic liaison. But they both want a child, and they’re in serious discussions about having, and raising, one together. Never mind that Mr. Williams is gay and that the two did not know of each other’s existence until last October, when they met on Modamily.com, a Web site for people looking to share parenting arrangements.

Mr. Williams and Ms. Hope are among a new breed of online daters, looking not for love but rather a partner with whom to build a decidedly non-nuclear family. And several social networks, including PollenTree.com, Coparents.com, Co-ParentMatch.com, and MyAlternativeFamily.com, as well as Modamily, have sprung up over the past few years to help them.

“While some people have chosen to be a single parent, many more people look at scheduling and the financial pressures and the lack of an emotional partner and decide that single parenting is too daunting and wouldn’t be good for them or the child,” said Darren Spedale, 38, the founder of Family by Design, a free parenting partnership site officially introduced in early January. “If you can share the support and the ups and downs with someone, it makes it a much more interesting parenting option.”

The sites present what can seem like a compelling alternative to surrogacy, adoption or simple sperm donation.

Click here to read the entire article.

in Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

A Doubly Trying Tax Season for Same-Sex Couples

February 9, 2013
New York TImes

FOR Colette Hayward and Margaret Selby, the problem is this: Maryland recognizes their 2009 marriage, but the federal government does not.

The ramifications are maddeningly complex, no more so than when they deal with the Internal Revenue Service. Two years after taking legal action to assert their rights as a married couple, they are paying a price when they pay their taxes.

For Ms. Hayward, 47, a lawyer who owns two construction businesses, and Ms. Selby, 48, a Baltimore County police officer, a big issue involves insurance benefits they fought to achieve. They are paying taxes on those benefits, even though such benefits for spouses normally are not taxed.

For same-sex couples across the United States, an offshoot of being married is a dizzying set of complications in computing taxes. Although nine states and the District of Columbia have approved same-sex marriages — two others recognize marriages conducted elsewhere — the federal 1996 Defense of Marriage Act prohibits such unions from being recognized by the federal government.

Ms. Hayward, 47, and Ms. Selby, 48, have two children and three grandchildren. They were together for 18 years before they married in Massachusetts. Soon after their marriage in 2009, Ms. Selby filed a request with the Baltimore County Police Department to add Ms. Hayward to her health care coverage and to make sure she was eligible for other benefits available to officer’s spouses. She was turned down.

Lambda Legal, the gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy organization, filed an administrative grievance, arguing that denying benefits to a married couple, gay or straight, was contrary to Maryland law. It cited a 2010 opinion by the Maryland attorney general, Douglas F. Gansler, which noted the state’s longstanding law recognizing out-of-state marriages, including same-sex ones.

In 2011, an arbitrator ruled in the couple’s favor. But the victory came with a catch. Generally, health insurance benefits are not taxable, and adding a spouse or child to an insurance policy has no tax consequences. But because of DOMA, their insurance is treated not as a spousal benefit, but as imputed income, and thus subject to federal income tax. Ms. Hayward said Baltimore County told the couple that adding her to the policy increased the cost of the insurance by about $8,000 a year. She figures that it will increase their overall tax bill by about $2,500 to $3,000.

Click here to read the entire article.

in Estate Planning / Legal / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Foster kids do equally well when adopted by gay, lesbian or heterosexual parents

October 19, 2012 by Stuart Wolpert in Health

The psychologists looked at 82 high-risk children adopted from foster care in Los Angeles County. Of those children, 60 were placed with heterosexual parents and 22 were placed with gay or lesbian parents (15 with gay male parents and seven with lesbian parents). The age of the children ranged from 4 months to 8 years, with an average age of 4, while the adoptive parents ranged in age from 30 to 56, with an average age of 41. Sixty-eight percent of the parents were married or living with a partner. The psychologists studied the children two months, one year and two years after they were placed with a family. The children underwent a cognitive assessment by a clinical psychologist three times during the course of the study, and the parents completed standard questionnaires about the children’s behavior at each of the three assessment periods. The psychologists found very few differences among the children at any of the assessments over the two-year period following placement. On average, children in heterosexual, gay and lesbian households achieved significant gains in their cognitive development, and their levels of behavior problems remained stable. Their IQ scores increased by an average of 10 points, from about 85 to 95—a large increase, from low-average to average functioning.
Click here to read the entire article.

in Foster Care / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments