It’s National Infertility Awareness Week here in the U.S. For some LGBTQ and single people, “infertility” means needing outside assistance before even trying to reproduce—sometimes called “social infertility.” For others, infertility is a medical diagnosis indicating that conception will be difficult no matter what. Here are some resources to help regardless of how you may encounter fertility challenges.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) signed a bill last week permitting religiously based discrimination in adoption and foster care, his third recent anti-LGBTQ law. At the end of March, he also signed two laws targeting transgender youth.
The state of Michigan must continue contracting with child service agencies that discriminate against same-sex couples, according to the settlement this week of a long-running case whose outcome rested on a 2021 U.S. Supreme Court decision. The state’s Children’s Services Agency nevertheless reaffirmed its commitment to supporting LGBTQ people who want to foster or adopt or are already doing so.
I’ve been writing a lot about kids’ books—so for a change, here are some of the best recent parenting guides, memoirs, and social science studies for and about us LGBTQ parents.
A husband and wife in Tennessee are suing the state, saying that a state-funded foster care and adoption program turned them away because they are Jewish. To the best of my knowledge, neither is queer, so why am I writing about this on a queer website? Because discrimination in foster care and adoption is a very queer issue, and there is federal legislation pending that could end it for everyone, queer and otherwise.
November is National Adoption Month, so here’s a revised list of resources for LGBTQ people who are just starting to consider or plan for adoption.
Spain’s health minister has extended the country’s free fertility treatments to single women, lesbian and bisexual women, and transgender people who can become pregnant.
A lesbian who wants to become a foster parent for a child in a taxpayer-funded program for unaccompanied refugee children was unable to do so because the government is working through an agency that discriminates against LGBTQ people. Now she’s suing.
It is many a queer parent’s nightmare: your child’s sperm donor sues for paternity. When it happened to Robin Young and Sandy Russo in 1991, it precipitated a landmark four-year court battle that indelibly marked 9-year-old Ry Russo-Young and her 11-year-old sister Cade. Yet Ry, now an award-winning filmmaker, had never really been able to process her feelings about what happened. Her attempt to do so, and to understand the other side of the story, led her to create Nuclear Family, a three-part documentary that premieres this Sunday on HBO.
After a lawsuit by a queer mom, insurance giant Aetna has said it improperly denied her fertility coverage and will review similar cases. Whether this means a larger change towards equal treatment of LGBTQ people under their policies remains an open question.
