More than nine years ago, the long and winding road toward marriage equality had a landmark moment when the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in the Obergefell vs. Hodges case on June 26, 2015.
In a small but very significant way, the road toward real “parental equality” also had a watershed moment a couple of weeks ago.
That’s when the mayor announced that tens of thousands of New York City employees will be eligible for new “Family Building Benefits.” The new benefits, which will be administered to employees in the Management Benefits Fund, will provide up to $10,000 in reimbursement for costs associated with adoption, surrogacy, and egg or sperm donation.
For those of us in the LGBTQ community, having children presents its own, unique and daunting obstacles, including biased laws, lack of medical insurance coverage and the tremendous cost — both financial and emotional — of adoption or fertility treatments.
The new benefits will make one of the most basic and primal decisions of many people’s lives — whether to have children — a little less expensive.
But for gay male couples in particular, like David and his husband, it will finally address a patently discriminatory insurance coverage practice in this city that has been a barrier to parenthood.
Currently, New York City health care insurance covers up to three rounds of in-vitro fertilization, or IVF, for employees who can establish demonstrated infertility — the inability to get pregnant after a set amount of time, either naturally or through intrauterine insemination. But for obvious reasons, same-sex male couples are unable to meet this criteria, and thus receive no IVF benefits.
So same-sex male couples who work for New York City and want to start a family are forced to either adopt a child or hire a surrogate who could have a fertilized egg implanted. In both cases, this means a fraught process of navigating conflicting state and international laws, hiring lawyers and agencies, waiting years for bureaucratic approvals and shelling out expenses that often exceed $100,000.
That’s why we have been pushing to change IVF benefits for employees, regardless of their demographic status. Our advocacy began with a piece of legislation introduced by Lynn earlier this year, which led to a conversation with her and the mayor’s office.
As a result of her advocacy with so many colleagues on both sides of the aisle, this new Family Building Benefit goes beyond just covering IVF treatments without requiring proof of infertility. It will cover expenses that include legal fees, adoption or surrogate agency fees, cost of donor material, preparation of donor material for use, and transferring of an embryo to a surrogate and others — expenses that are not covered under the current medical health plan.
This is the first time a major U.S. city has provided these benefits to its employees — and we believe it’s just the beginning. Family Building Benefits can and should be expanded to the remaining 350,000 unionized city employees, though it must be done through collective bargaining.
The subsidy could be increased to help couples defray more of the astronomical costs of surrogacy and adoption. And this could compel more private companies to offer more equitable healthcare benefits as they compete to attract and retain the best talent.
It’s also good public policy to incentivize, rather than discourage, more couples to have children. According to the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, women in the United States are having babies less often, and the fertility rate reached a record low in 2023. Low fertility rates not only have devastating consequences for the economy, principally the labor market, but fewer and smaller families also reduce the quality of community participation and undermine social capital.
There are an untold number of LGBTQ couples who work for our city and want to start families, but discriminatory insurance coverage and the exorbitant costs of becoming parents are barriers too big to overcome. And with the uncertainty surrounding the cost and coverage of reproductive care and IVF services, this new initiative is a game changer for LGBTQ couples and everyone else seeking to start a family.
Schulman, a Democratic City Council member from Queens, chairs the Committee on Health. Carr is a Republican City Council member from Staten Island. Both are members of the Council’s LGBTQIA+ Caucus.
https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/12/01/lgbtq-families-win-equal-benefits/