Watching the erosion of reproductive rights now happening in the United States makes me fear that all those rights we fought so hard for when I was young could just be whisked away and we could find ourselves back again where the rights of women and the freedoms of LGBTQ+ people are denied.
When I was a medical student back in the late ’70s, the gay people in my class kept a very low profile. They lived in fear of being outed which could have terrible consequences harassment, blackmail even being dismissed from the program.
One of my classmates kept her secret very close in medical school, but when she went into practice as a GP, she took care of many lesbian women. After about 10 years in practice, she decided to go back to residency and become a specialist. She asked me if I could take some of her patients into my practice and so I acquired a cohort of lesbian patients. In the late ’80s gay women began to consider getting pregnant in much greater numbers. There were barriers of course. Many doctors (this was before legal midwifery) did not want these patients in their practices. My friend Lisa and I were the first accoucheurs in the city who routinely took pregnant lesbians for obstetrical care. Then there was the sperm issue. Some women had donors, often gay men with whom they could share parenting. Others did not want the challenges of creating a complicated family arrangements and wanted to use frozen sperm.
I approached the infertility clinics asking them if they would provide inseminations for my patients. “I’m sorry,” replied the head of one clinic. “I don’t think society is ready for this. Besides they don’t really have an infertility problem, they have a penis problem.” After I picked up my chin off the floor, I did some research. It turned out that sperm could be ordered from the sperm bank by any physician and be delivered to any address. So, we started ordering the sperm canisters for our patients, having them and the insertion kits delivered to their homes so that the inseminations could be done in the context of an act of love.
A year or two later, we had a lovely lesbian couple come see us. One partner was quite a bit older than the other so only one woman could carry the pregnancy. After our first attempt at insemination my patient got pregnant right away, but unfortunately had a ruptured ectopic. Another insemination led to another ectopic. “She needs to have IVF,” said the obstetrician who tried to rescue her remaining tube. “The risk of another ectopic is just too high.”
“Oh no,” I thought. “What am I going to do now?” I worried that I would not be able to access appropriate care for my patient. On the other hand, I hoped that now that she had a true infertility problem the specialist would agree to do his job.
When she arrived at the infertility clinic, she went up to the desk to register. Filling out the forms, she put her partner’s name on the form and handed it to the secretary. The secretary stared at the form. “No, no dear,” the secretary said. “I need your husband’s name.”
“That is my partner’s name,” my patient said, her voice hardening.
“What are you doing here?” said the secretary in a carrying voice. “We don’t serve your kind.” As every eye in the waiting room swivelled in her direction, my patient politely demanded to see the head of the clinic. When the chief of the infertility clinic came out, he explained to her that he did not believe that society was ready to accept lesbian motherhood and that he would not help her. “But, he said. “You are so pretty, you could have a boyfriend. I would never have guessed you were that kind of woman.” My patient turned on her heel and left, as every eye followed her exit.
She left the hospital and called me in tears. I promised I would find a way to help her. Then she returned to her office, where she worked as one of the top litigation lawyers in Montreal.
After her daughter was born following IVF treatment in Toronto, she filed a lawsuit against the doctor, the clinic and the university.
Soon after, the clinic found that society was now ready to accept lesbian motherhood, and while that worked for me, I never want to go back to those days again!