The women sitting across from us were not so lucky. Like us, they sat side by side in the dirty plastic chairs. But they were sobbing as if their lives were over. For them, thousands of pounds of private treatment was totally out of the question, and it was the end of the line. As Jenn and I left the clinic, holding hands and shellshocked, I could hear the women all the way to the exit – crying as their hearts broke.
More than a decade later, I was in the first weeks of my new job at Stonewall. The policy team was chatting about the priority issues for LGBTQIA+ women. I said, “Are the IVF rules sorted yet?” They weren’t. Years and years of pain and suffering later, the NHS was still applying discriminatory rules on access to fertility care. So the #IVFForAll campaign was born, eventually winning a commitment in the 2022 Women’s Health Strategy for England to remove financial barriers for LBQ+ women accessing NHS fertility care.
But in the two years since the Women’s Health Strategy for England was published, not a single Integrated Care Body (ICB) has changed its policy on access to fertility treatment. Only four of the 42 ICBs in England give LGBTQIA+ people equitable access to fertility treatment. Live in the wrong place and want to start a family? Unlucky.