Supreme Court Ruling

Parenting Opportunity for Unmarried Persons and GLBT at Laurel Fertility Care

On August 18^th the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously, that based on a state law prohibiting businesses from discriminating against customers because of their sexual orientation, physicians who have religious objections to gays and lesbians must treat them as any other patient or find a colleague in the office who will. According to the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the ruling is the first in the nation to address doctors’ religious objections to treating gay or lesbian patients and should make health care more accessible.

As outlined in the Report from the Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) published entitled: ‘Access to Fertility Treatment by Gays, Lesbians, and Unmarried Persons’:

• Unmarried persons and gays and lesbians have interests in having and rearing children.

• There is no persuasive evidence that children raised by single parents or by gays and lesbians are harmed or disadvantaged by that fact alone.

• Programs should treat all requests for assisted reproduction equally without regard to marital status or sexual orientation.

Currently in the United States, there are an estimated 6 to 14 million children being raised by at least one gay or lesbian parent and we are proud to have been a part in bringing these children to this world. We at Laurel Fertility Care support these families and support the decision by the California Supreme Court as we have always believed that it is our ethical duty to treat persons equally without regard to race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, religion, or marital status. We have a dedicated, compassionate team whose goal is to assist all our patients, through established relationships with several highly regarded donor and surrogacy agencies.