Heteronormativity in Health Policy: The Impact of Budgetary Demands on Lesbian Mothers

Clinical Commission Groups (CCGs) were established in England and Wales in 2012 as a direct consequence of the Health and Social Care Act and are the principle decision point of lower level, regional spending in the NHS. The combination of statutory instruments and budgetary demands in healthcare generally creates an uncertain regulatory scheme, and amongst the array of treatments and varying therapeutic need of their consumers, these bodies also face complex deliberations over a smaller number of ‘elective’ treatments such as the funding of IVF. As a result, a complicated list of requirements to be satisfied before access to treatment can be granted have developed in the years following the first test tube baby Louise Brown and are continually adapted and amended in line with technological advances. Despite these clinical developments permitting the biological extension of the term mother, however, the pervasive impact of heteronormativity in healthcare is of interest in this arena. Adding to the existing scholarly field, we confirm an inequality in attitude and access for the community and specifically identify the regional inequalities that additionally exasperate a disproportinate impact on this grouping. Lesbian mothers, who are on average older than their heterosexual counterpart, face the institutional legacy of a ‘father figure’ and shoulder the financial inequity in the demand for proof of previous attempts at artificial insemination.