Laboring to Conceive: Reducing Barriers to Fertility Care for Same-Sex Mothers Pursuing Parenthood

Abstract

Infertility clinics and providers in the United States have made efforts to become LGBTQ-inclusive, yet patients in same-sex partnerships continue to face disproportionate barriers to accessing fertility services when pursuing parenthood. This narrative case study of a same-sex couple’s “labor to conceive” illustrates some of the structural barriers to family building that lesbian mothers face when seeking fertility care, including insurance coverage of fertility treatments, federal regulations for sperm donation, and legal definitions of parenthood. Exclusionary medical and legal systems are discussed, as are the informal strategies that this same-sex couple utilized to negotiate and circumvent these barriers. A patient-centered model of advocacy that facilitates access to and protection of same-sex partners seeking (in)fertility services is presented. Intervention points at the (1) Logistical and (2) Societal levels are considered with respect to three domains of same-sex reproduction: (A) insurance; (B) sperm donation; (C) legal adoption.