Facing reality: the Pregnancy Discrimination Act falls short for women undergoing infertility treatment.

Having a child is a major life event around which most Americans build their lives. For millions of couples in the United States, finding out that they are unable to conceive is a crushing emotional blow. 1 Increasingly, infertile couples are placing their hopes of having a child in infertility treatments, most commonly through in-vitro fertilization (IVF). 2 Women who choose to undergo IVF, however, face two risks in the employment setting. The first is that insurers or employers will deny insurance coverage for the treatment and, thus, make IVF impossible to afford. Second, and worse, is the risk that the potential mother’s employer will terminate her for taking time off to undergo infertility treatment. Do women have legal recourse to combat refusal of insurance or adverse employment actions? The answer to this question remains unclear despite a significant amount of litigation and scholarship in this area. 3 Even so, it seems that women have some protection against adverse employment actions, but they still have no legal means of requiring employers to provide insurance coverage for infertility treatments. 4