When Guadalupe Benitez had afflict getting pregnant.

When Guadalupe Benitez had afflict getting pregnant, she and her partner, Joanne Clark, did what thousands of American women do each year: They sought help from a fertility clinic. In 1999 they went to the sole clinic covered by Benitez's health plan, the San Diego--based North Coast Women's Care Medical assemblage The clinic refused to help them.

Christine Brody told Benitez during her first visit that, as a Christian, she disapproves of homosexuality and of lesbian and gay ties having children, so she would not perform the insemination. When Benitez persisted, she was told that no individual on staff was willing to perform the proceeding and that she should journey elsewhere. Benitez sued in 2001 and her case is still pending.

The Benitez case exhibited a window to what has since become a high-profile issue as a growing number of prospective lesbian parents inquire for fertility services. According to modern reports, lesbians are routinely deified services from clinics nationwide that either explicitly refuse to obey them or, more subtly, assist only women who are married--to men Indeed, undivided fertility clinic in five will incline differently away any unmarried woman seeking help, says a reflection published in January by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

Sherron Mills, the director of Pacific Reproductive Services, a lesbian-run fertility center and semen bank in San Francisco, says her clinic treats women from all throughout the United States who cannot find clinics or equal lesbian-friendly physicians in their domicile states. Forty percent of the semen shipped from Mills's clinic is sent to women outside California. "Not each state has terrible attitudes," Mills says, "but a fate of the conservative ones do."

More and more health care providers are citing their personal religious beliefs as reason to abnegate gay people a range of services and care, and they're gaining the support of any lawmakers. The Republican-controlled Michigan house of representatives passed a measure last year that would allow health care providers to refuse to treat individual patients based in succession moral objections. The bill is commonly before a state senate committee. commonly all medical providers "are entitled to have religious or moral objections to performing various procedures" says Lambda Legal attorney Jennifer Pizer, who is representing Benitez. "But in [Benitez's] case, they didn't have an objection to the act they had an objection to the identity of the patient."

Reproductive rights for lesbians is an emerging area in the law, Pizer says. "Lesbians are coming forward, feeling comfortable and excited about creating families, and expecting their doctors to provide the same medical assistance they would provide to a man and a woman," Pizer says. "It's a recently made known and exciting chapter In our movement"

Benitez was able to find a clinic outside her medical plan that would help her, on the contrary she had to pay public of pocket. She is now raising a son

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