Womb for Rent: Gay Canadian Teacher Files Human Rights Complaint Over Insurance Not Covering Surrogate

Preparation for childbirth. Cropped close up shot of young expectant surrogate mother hug
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Chris Tomlinson

A gay male teacher in Canada filed a human rights complaint against his insurance provider for not covering drugs for a woman whose womb he rented in order to have a baby, claiming he is being discriminated against.

Ottawa, Ontario teacher Greg Mountenay, 33, is filing the complaint against the Ontario Teachers Insurance Plan (OTIP) and an insurance provider because it will not pay for drugs for a woman whose womb he has rented in order to have her birth a child as the insurance company does not consider a surrogate an eligible dependent.

Moutenay has argued that the move by the insurer is discrimination against him as a gay man and he has filed an appeal to the Ontario Teachers Union, OTIP and the insurer Manulife along with filing the human rights complaint, broadcaster CBC reports.

Mountenay and his partner Sean O’Meara have spent around $20,000 on various tests treatments and drugs after finding a woman willing to rent her womb to the pair and undergo procedures including egg retrieval.

According to CBC, the province of Ontario has already subsidised the surrogacy for the two men to the tune of $3,800 but the pair claim it is not enough to cover the costs. So far, a hearing date has not been set for the case in the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal.

While surrogacy is legal in Canada, the practice is widely condemned in many other western nations and is also outlawed in some countries, like Spain, where the country’s supreme court ruled last year that the practice exploits women.

The court commented on the mother and child in surrogacy saying, “both are treated as mere objects, not as persons endowed with the dignity proper to their condition as human beings and the fundamental rights inherent in that dignity.”

Last week, Catholic Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI) reiterated the Catholic church’s condemnation of surrogacy, calling it “unacceptable” and saying that it risked “commodifying” women and their ability to have children.

“As the Pope said, there is a risk of the commodification of women, especially the poorest women, and of transforming the child into an object of a contract,” Archbishop of Cagliari and secretary general of the CEI Giuseppe Baturi said.

“Recognizing the family institution in its originality, uniqueness and complementarity means protecting, in the first place, children, who can never be considered a product or the object of an understandable desire,” he added.

 

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