The old news is that a lesbian couple were denied fertility treatments by their doctors back in 2000. Guadalupe Benitez was trying to get pregnant. Apparently, after charging Benitez and her partner for 11 months of fertility counseling and treatment, the doctors, Christine Brody and Douglas Fenton, refused to do the insemination procedure for Benitez, who sued them. Five years later, the lawsuit continues.
The is that the California Medical Association filed an amicus brief in support of the doctors who refused to treat Guadalupe Benitez. Here?s the CMA rebuttal to the GLMA press release. Then - Lambda Legal rants up a storm right back at the CMA.
Whatever you think about gay marriage, assimilation, breeders, and people?s right to insurance coverage for IVF; put that aside for a moment and think about the California Medical Association defending a doctor?s ?free exercise of religion.? Doctors can?t legally refuse a patient based on sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or transgender status. But they can refuse a patient for not being married. Nice end run, fundie sleazebags!
Is this a ?right of conscience?? How come ?conscience? so often means ?control over women?s bodies? and fertility? You can?t have a baby? you have to have a baby? we won?t fill your birth control prescription because you?re not married? we?ll sterilize you because you?re not married. Oh, and by the way, if you?re already pregnant, remember that God meant you to suffer labor pain & hope that your anesthesiologist doesn?t have a religious conscience.
The world of IVF, fertility treatments, and IVF is brutal and strange. I began to intersect with it in 1998 or so, after having a miscarriage. Then I had an ectopic pregnancy and blew out a Fallopian tube. I found out why many women don?t talk about miscarriages. Everyone had an opinion on whether I should be pregnant, what was best, what was ?for the best,? what I should do and what I should feel. Another thing I hadn?t realized was that a miscarriage with complications was as expensive as private adoption; around $10,000. That?s also about what a hospital birth or an IVF treatment costs. My insurance wouldn?t cover any investigation of why I had miscarriages until I?d had three in a row, as if to keep getting pregnant and miscarrying were a minor inconvenience.
Fertility/infertility blogs like A Little Pregnant and The Naked Ovary give the bitter, witty, details of the insanity women go through: obnoxious things people say, horrible things their doctors do, and their own emotional rollercoaster, hopes, doubts, and fears. I think it?s interesting that the blogging world has opened up personal discussion of pregnancy and fertility issues; it?s something that hasn?t been done anywhere else. We should talk about our miscarriages, abortions, pregnancy scares, birth control, tube-tying, and all that messy stuff.
While I ramble all over the map, here?s another pregnancy tangent for your enjoyment: the Annouen archive of LOTR mpreg slash fanfic. Yes - you can fulfill your need to read Elrond?s diary as he agonizes over his own magical elfy uterus and what he and Frodo?s baby is gonna look like and what it means for his career as head of the Council. And when universes collide, and Galadriel knocks up Voldemort? what could be better? And what would the CMA say about it?
