Is a New York City lawsuit inadvertently settling the argument on whether men can get pregnant?
A wealthy gay couple in Brooklyn who say they aren't biologically able to have a child want taxpayers to foot the bill for a woman’s egg, the fertilization of that egg into an embryo, and to rent a woman’s womb to carry the baby to term.
Corey Briskin, a former assistant district attorney for the City of New York, and Nicholas Maggipinto are suing the New York City government because they do not qualify for fertility treatments under the city's current insurance policy, according to an Oct. 1 report in The Guardian.
Such is the state of a civilization on the brink. The ironies abound, but there is nothing funny about the impact on children affected.
In what some analysts say may stir a hornet's nest in the woke gender identity movement, the couple say that because both of them are male and are biologically incapable of naturally procreating, they meet the medical definition of infertile and are thus entitled to insurance that will cover the costs of using a woman to have a baby.
Both men have well-paying jobs and live together in a wealthy part of Brooklyn but neither wants to pay up the $200,000 to cover the necessary procedures, The Guardian report states.
Under New York City's insurance policy, infertility is defined as “an inability to have a child through heterosexual sex or intrauterine insemination.”
Even though it is physiologically impossible 100 percent of the time for Briskin and Maggipinto to biologically have a child, the couple say they are disqualified from receiving taxpayer-funded fertility assistance.
The couple claims this is discrimination and says they feel especially left out because lesbians and single women still qualify for some of the assisted reproductive technology procedures.
“The policy is the product of a time when there was a misconception, a stereotype, a prejudice against couples that were made up of two men — that they were not capable of raising children because there was no female figure in that relationship,” Briskin told The Guardian.
The Federalist's Jordan Boyd, responding to Briskin's comment, noted it is "not 'a misconception,' 'a stereotype,' or 'a prejudice' to say that children need mothers and fathers. Bragging about having a 'motherless family,' as Maggipinto does in the article, directly contradicts what plenty of studies suggest about parenthood: Children who are born and raised by their married biological mother and father are more likely to lead healthier, safer, and better-educated lives well above the poverty line."
The Guardian notes that if Briskin and Maggipinto win their lawsuit against New York City, “employers and health insurers across the U.S. will be under pressure to change their policies to give gay men the same access to fertility benefits as anyone else.”
Boyd notes: "It’s complaints like this one from Briskin and Maggipinto that fuel an industry that is comfortable erasing a woman’s role in the marvelous act of procreation and putting children at an automatic disadvantage in life."
Gay couples claiming discrimination have already won legal battles to commission the creation of children using other peoples’ biological matter. Earlier this year, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service began offering no-questions-asked, taxpayer-funded assisted reproductive technology to lesbians and single wannabe mothers after a lesbian couple sued the NHS for discrimination.
"Prior to the overhaul, women who wanted to create a baby using a sperm donor were required to try intrauterine insemination on their own dime six times before the government would consider them in need of taxpayer-funded assistance. Now, lesbian couples will no longer have to prove their fertility status before they can commission the creation of a fatherless child," Boyd noted.
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