Ann Bailey
Two women can now “have a baby together.” Yup, it’s a brave new world. And guess what, if you live in California, lesbian couples now will get financial assistance to acquire that baby and it will be underwritten by you. I’m still not sure how this is supposed to play out for gay couples.
On Tuesday, California Jerry Brown signed into law AB 460 which requires that insurance companies to pay, not only unmarried heterosexual couples to receive fertility treatment, but for same-sex couples as well. AB 460 mandates group insurance coverage for gay and lesbian “infertility.” “Infertile same-sex couples” – talk about repeating yourself! Biology and common sense have been ordered to take a back-seat to gay rights activism.
A summary of the AB 410 reads:
Requires coverage, under Knox-Keene Health Care Service Plan Act that provides for coverage for the treatment of infertility be offered and provided without discrimination on the basis of age, ancestry, color, disability, domestic partner status, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, national origin, race, religion, sex or sexual orientation. [emphasis added]
Formerly, California law required group health plans to offer coverage for infertility treatments with the exception of in vitro fertilization (IVF). If that type of coverage was purchased, however, benefits had to be paid whenever “a demonstrated condition recognized by a licensed physician and surgeon as a cause for infertility” has been diagnosed—or upon “the inability to conceive a pregnancy or to carry a pregnancy to a live birth after a year of regular sexual relations without contraception.” Under AB 460, we must conclude that diagnosis of a physical reason for a couple’s inability to conceive or sire a child is not required. A couple is only required to try to get pregnant for a year; if they fail, they qualify – be the couple heterosexual or homosexual.
There shouldn’t be any question on the intent of the legislation. When ethics expert, Wesley Smith, asked the spokesperson for Tom Ammino, the sponsor of the now successful bill, about the legislation’s intent regarding same-sex couples, the spokesperson stated:
“Anything that is covered by an insurance plan must be covered for everyone. . . . If a plan covers egg donation costs for a heterosexual couple unable to conceive without it, it would have to cover those costs for a gay male couple as well.”
You also have a situation where, now, California is forcing insurance companies to subsidize heterosexual out-of-wedlock childbearing. Go figure!
But, the most distressing aspect of this type of politically-correct madness is that once again children’s needs take a back seat to “needs” of adults. The California legislature has forced upon its citizens a system that encourages adults to strip children of their innate and crucial right to be born to and reared by their mother AND their father. Every child certainly has both. Then they expect other citizens to underwrite this “infertile gay couple” fiction. The insanity of it all defies description.