Catholic hospitals deny same-sex couples fertility treatment

It’s one of the first instances in the United States of an employer explicitly excluding workers from health coverage not because of objections to a particular treatment or service but because of the employee’s sexual orientation.

Photo: OSF HealthCare Foundation

A Catholic hospital group in Illinois and Michigan has adopted a new fertility policy that explicitly discriminates against same-sex couples.

Illinois-based OSF HealthCare, owned by the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, a Roman Catholic organization based in Peoria, IL, changed language in its fertility treatment policy to explicitly refer to opposite sex-couples only. Employees in same-sex relationships would not be covered.

BlueCross BlueShield of Illinois administers the hospital group’s health care plan.

Under the new policy, OSF HealthCare, which operates 15 hospitals and 132 other facilities in Illinois and Michigan, redefines infertility as “the…

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