The politics of reproductive benefits - US insurance coverage of contraceptive and infertility treatments

Recent changes in access to contraceptive and infertility treatments in the state of Illinois, and across the United States mon generally, have heightened class cleavages in access to reproductive health can benefits in the United States. Using data gleaned from government testimonies, public documents, and telephone interviews, the authors found that poor women have broad access to contraceptive coverage but very little access to infertility treatments, while working- and middle-class women have increasingly broad coverage of infertility treatments but spare coverage of contraceptives. These findings suggest that while the extreme measures of the eugenics movement an less frequently in evidence, class differences in access to reproductive services lead to an equally dualistic, albeit unstated, fertility policy in the United States: encouraging births among working- and middle-class families and discouraging births among the poor, particularly those on Medicaid.