More evidence that California is “governed” by lunatics.
There’s a bill in the California legislature, AB 460 that will require health insurers to offer infertility treatment for gay couples. Refusing to do so will be a crime.
The bill was introduced by State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), an out homosexual and an LBGT rights activist.
“But, but,” you say. “I don’t understand this bill! Gay couples cannot reproduce! It’s not a fertility problem but an anatomy problem. No amount of fertility treatment can make a man and a man reproduce, or a woman and a woman reproduce. Only a man and a woman can reproduce!”
You’re being way too sensible.
Wesley J. Smith reports for The Weekly Standard, April 15, 2013:
Current California law requires group health plans to offer coverage for infertility treatments with the exception of in vitro fertilization (IVF). If such coverage is purchased, benefits must 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.” Thus, under current law, diagnosis of a physical reason for the inability to conceive or sire a child is not required. It is enough that a couple tried to get pregnant for a year and failed.
According to the fact sheet supporting AB 460, the trouble is that some insurance companies “are not complying with current law that prohibits discrimination” based on sexual orientation. Instead, they are denying infertility treatment benefits “based on [the policy holder’s] not having an opposite sex married partner in which to have one year of regular sexual relations without conception.” AB 460 would amend the law to add the following language:
Coverage for the treatment of infertility shall 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.
[...] Under the proposal, then, every gay individual or couple—remember, no discrimination on the basis of marital or domestic partner status—could be construed as infertile, with group insurance required to pay for the individual or couple to have a child.
Read the rest of Wesley Smith’s article here.
~Eowyn
