Gay couple files lawsuit for surrogacy rights

Isn't this the plot to Handmaids Tail? Did the left just move the Overton window so far to the left they are now living in their own dystopia nightmare?

Remember "make my cake God boy". NOw they have moved on to "carry my child, bitch"

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We are expected to be OK with not having children’: how gay parenthood through surrogacy became a battleground

In New York, a gay couple fighting to make their insurers pay for fertility treatment have found themselves in the middle of a culture war. What happens when the right to parenthood involves someone else’s body?

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Corey Briskin and Nicholas Maggipinto met in law school in 2011, were engaged by 2014, and had their 2016 wedding announced in the New York Times. They moved to a waterfront apartment block in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with a bright playroom for families on the ground floor.

“We got married and then we wanted all the trappings: house, children, 401K [retirement saving plan], etc,” Maggipinto, 37, tells me in their building’s shared meeting room, tapping the table in sequence with the progression of each idea.

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That’s when they first became aware of the eye-watering cost of biological parenthood for gay men. Maggipinto reels off the price list in a way that only someone who has pored over every item could. There’s compensation for the egg donor: no less than $8,000 (£6,600). The egg-donor agency fee: $8,000-10,000. The fertility clinic’s bill (including genetic testing, blood tests, STD screening and a psychiatric evaluation for all parties, sperm testing, egg extraction, insemination, the growing, selecting, freezing and implantation of the resulting embryos): up to $70,000. And that’s if it all goes well: if no embryos are created during a cycle, or if the embryos that are don’t lead to a successful pregnancy, they would have to start again.

Then there’s the cost of a surrogate (called a “gestational carrier” when they carry embryos created from another woman’s eggs). Maggipinto and Briskin were told agency fees alone could stretch to $25,000, and the surrogates themselves should be paid a minimum of $60,000 (the advocacy group Men Having Babies says a typical fee was $38,000 in 2020; in the UK, it is illegal for surrogates to be paid, but their expenses are covered by the intended parents). Maggipinto says: “That payment doesn’t include reimbursement for things like maternity clothing; lost wages if she misses work for doctors’ appointments or is put on bed rest; transportation; childcare for her own children; [or] lodging.”

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They couldn’t afford it. Maggipinto earns a corporate lawyer’s salary but is saddled with student debt. Briskin used to work for the City of New York as an assistant district attorney, earning about $75,000 a year. His employment benefits had included generous health insurance. But when they read the policy, they discovered they were the only class of people to be excluded from IVF coverage. Infertility was defined as an inability to have a child through heterosexual sex or intrauterine insemination. That meant straight people and lesbians working for the City of New York would have the costs of IVF covered, but gay male couples could never be eligible.

This isn’t an oversight, it’s discrimination, Briskin says. “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 was working alongside colleagues who were happily availing themselves of the benefits he wasn’t entitled to. One of his co-workers – an older, single woman – became a mother using donor sperm, IVF and surrogacy. “It was hard,” he tells me quietly. “You want to be happy for people.” Their frustration at not being able to have their own children turned to anguish. “My sister – who is more than six years younger than me – just gave birth to her second baby,” Maggipinto says, twisting his wedding ring. “I was OK with not being a parent at 30, I felt that was very normal for our generation and the current work-life balance ethos. But seven years later, I’m really not happy.”

 High-profile gay men from Brian Dowling to Tom Daley have been accused of exploitation, ‘womb rental’, even ‘child abuse’ for using a surrogate

In April, Briskin and Maggipinto filed a class action complaint with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against the City of New York, suing Briskin’s former employers for unlawful workplace discrimination. If they win, employers and health insurers across the US will be under pressure to change their policies to give gay men the same access to fertility benefits as anyone else. But their case has become much bigger than one couple’s drive to start a family: they have become figureheads in the battle for fertility rights for all gay men.

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