A California bill that would expand fertility services to homosexual couples is set to be voted on in early 2024.
Senate Bill 729, sponsored by State Sen. Caroline Menjivar (D-San Fernando Valley), would redefine infertility to require most health insurance plans to provide coverage for in vitro fertilization, or IVF, to a single person or a same-sex couple.
“Until now, most insurers have defined a couple as infertile if they don’t conceive after 12 months of regular, unprotected sex,” Emma Waters wrote for The Heritage Foundation in June. “By definition, then, a ‘couple’ means a man and a woman.”
The proposed redefinition, however, “allows a single person or same-sex couple (or throuple?) to be entitled to infertility treatment,” Waters said, not “because their bodies are infertile, but because their relationship is.”
For years, homosexual groups, like Men Having Babies, have been pushing for homosexuals to become “fathers,” and have been promoting the commercial surrogacy industry which allows homosexual couples to “rent a womb.”
According to Waters, the proposed California bill would effectively “mandate baby markets, since it explicitly requires insurance companies to cover IVF for virtually everyone – and those who aren’t biological women will require surrogates for their IVF.”
The use of commercial surrogacy is not new in California. In 2017, World published an article, entitled “Rent-a-womb,” describing the practice and noting that the United States was “one of the few countries to allow commercial surrogacy” and California was “the state with the most-surrogacy-friendly laws.”
That 2017 article also highlighted the experience of an Arizona woman who began renting out her womb for others. In one pregnancy, the child’s genetic mother urged the woman to abort the baby she was carrying because of a perceived health defect in the baby.
The proposed California bill would require most major insurance companies to expand fertility treatments to Californians, thus making it financially easier for homosexuals to rent out wombs and legally purchase babies.
Regardless of the expanding access of IVF to homosexuals, the general practice raises concerns for many.
Jon Speed, who serves as a pastor at By the Word Baptist Church in Azle, Texas, and conducts outreaches outside IVF clinics, told The Lancaster Patriot that the practices of IVF are “extremely immoral and unethical,” noting that human lives are created – many of which die by attrition – and then kept frozen at commercial IVF clinics for years, sometimes decades.
“In vitro fertilization – fertilization under glass – has become an accepted practice within most churches,” Speed said.
SB 729 was originally supposed to be voted on in 2023 but concerns over the cost of the bill caused legislators to convert the measure into a two-year bill.
Menjivar expressed disappointment about the delay but remains optimistic the measure will pass.
“SB 729 progressed farther in the legislative process than any similar bills attempting to decrease inequities in fertility care coverage, which is why I am optimistic and will not give up,” Menjivar said. “Californians who wish to build a family deserve equity and justice, not the current discriminatory law that withholds the safest and most reliable methods of fertility care from many of them. Soon, we will make California the true leader in reproductive justice.”
The bill can be considered again as early as January 2024.
