Infertility treatments have made all the difference for countless couples, but they can also deplete life savings.
David Chisholm and Carly Weiner have spent about $25,000 on in vitro fertilization treatment to try to get pregnant and haven’t had any success so far. A childhood cancer – bone lymphoma – left Chisholm with infertility issues and as a result he and Weiner have been spending thousands in hopes of conceiving a child of their own and they’re almost at the end of their rope.
“You have to have a ‘walk away’ point and I think everybody does. I mean otherwise you could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and we know people who have, people who have gone into 6 figures,” said Chisholm.
It wasn’t always this way in Ontario. Fertility treatments like IVF used to be funded by OHIP. Some people saying funding IVF is a human rights issue and as it stands now, some say there are only babies for the rich.
“Does everyone have the right to a child?” said Kerry Bowman, a medical ethicist at the University of Toronto. “If they do, that right is contingent upon what kind of income you have.” It wasn’t always this way. Before 1994, IVF treatments were funded in the province of Ontario. Now, the funding is limited to women who have two blocked fallopian tubes. Amir Attaran, a professor of Law and Medicine at the University of Ottawa, says providing funding for some people, and not all, is a violation of human rights. He and his wife tried IVF and have launched a Human Rights Tribunal challenge.
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“It’s discrimination,” said Attaran. “If a woman has a problem with her uterus or ovaries, then tough luck. She has to pay for what other women are getting for free,” he said. “That is discriminatory.” Not only is there little accommodation for female infertility when it comes to IVF funding, there is absolutely no accommodation if it’s the man having the fertility issues. There’s a precedent for winning this fight. Back in 2006, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled in favour of a member of the military, saying denying IVF treatments was discrimination on the basis of disability and sex.
For Kelly Laverdure and her husband, Bill, the wheels of justice turn too slowly. They’ve been trying to have a baby for years, without success, and now they’re about to pack their bags and move to Quebec where three cycles of IVF are funded by the government. It’s so-called medical tourism within Canada, but Kelly and Bill can’t live with themselves if they don’t give it a try.
“You don’t want to move across the river and think it’s a 20-minute drive, 15-minute drive that prevented us from having a family,” explained Kelly. “It’s just too close to not take advantage of that. We don’t want to look back and regret not making that move.”
The human rights challenge is making its way through the courts.
– With files from Beatrice Politi
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