Lesbian couple fighting discrimination by insurers in New Jersey

In 2011, a lesbian couple Erin and Marianne Krupa decided to have a baby.

For this, women moved from conservative North Carolina to the city of Montclair, New Jersey, writes The New York Times.

They decided that 33-year-old Erin would carry their first child, but difficulties arose - the girl found out that she was infertile.

Despite the doctor's assurance that the insurance company would pay for the fertility treatments, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield refused to cover the procedures. Under the state's insurance mandate, passed in 2001, all women under 35—regardless of their sexual orientation—must certify that they are infertile for two years, during which time she must have “unprotected sex.”

Now the Krupa family has sued the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, when homosexual women are essentially forced to pay for expensive infertility treatments.

According to the insurance mandate, infertility, for the treatment of which insurance companies pay, is the inability of a woman to become pregnant or carry a child after a year or two years of unprotected sex. Such a definition, in itself, limits the right to insurance for non-heterosexual women.

Payment by the insurance company of infertility treatment is mandatory in 15 states, some of them at the legislative level have changed the wording of what is infertility and insemination in order not to discriminate against any social group. But the definition of these concepts in New Jersey is one of the most unique in the United States.

After the failure of the insurance, Erin decided not to give up and paid out of her own pocket three cycles of artificial insemination for $ 6 thousand, but none of them was unsuccessful.

The next step of the couple was artificial insemination, which is a more efficient, but more expensive procedure. They paid $ 11 thousand, and Erin managed to get pregnant, but over time it turned out that the pregnancy was ectopic and had to be interrupted.

After that, Marianne tried to get pregnant. At the moment, both women are undergoing artificial insemination procedures, despite the fact that they cost them dearly (the couple has already spent about $ 50 thousand), and are awaiting a court decision on insurance, hoping that it can help other women.

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