In a major win for equality, the U.K. government has announced that female same-sex couples will no longer have to pay for expensive rounds of assisted insemination to prove infertility before accessing in vitro fertilization (IVF). The country’s leading LGBTQ advocacy organization has clarified that this will also apply to trans people.
For many LGBTQ people, getting pregnant is done with planning worthy of chess masters. Yet LGBTQ people who have been pregnant are also more likely to have had unwanted or mistimed pregnancies and to need abortion services than cisgender heterosexual women—meaning the end of Roe v. Wade will have an immediate negative impact on LGBTQ people, whether or not it leads to the erosion of additional rights.
May is National Foster Care Month, so before it ends, I’ve updated my list of resources for LGBTQ people considering becoming foster parents—useful all year ’round!
Four recent books (two just out today!) are here to guide LGBTQ prospective parents of all genders and sexual identities (and their health care professionals) on the start of their parenting journeys.
In 1989, I was part of the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, DC, as abortion rights were at risk of being overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. I was still recently out as a lesbian, with no thoughts of parenthood yet on my mind, but the idea of the government forcing people to carry unwanted or life-risking pregnancies was as anathema to me as it telling me who to love.
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.
