The State - News from June 2, 1985

Fourteen women unable to conceive children have filed suit against the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan for refusing to provide coverage for “test-tube babies.” The suit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, claims Kaiser subscribers were denied coverage in previous years. A Kaiser spokesman said “subscribers are sent to University of California in San Francisco and we are now paying for it.” The suit charges the procedure, known as in vitro fertilization, should have been offered because at the time it was not “expressly excluded” in the plan’s contracts. In the procedure, a woman’s egg is removed and fertilized by the husband’s sperm in a laboratory dish, then implanted in the woman’s uterus.