Equal access to healthcare and reproductive rights are civil rights.

LGBT individuals are entitled to healthcare free of prejudice. NCLR’s advocacy is focused on eradicating barriers faced by LGBT people in accessing health care or protecting themselves and their family members in times of crisis. Whether making arrangements for living wills, entering senior or convalescent facilities, undergoing sex reassignment treatment, or planning a family, NCLR works to ensure all people are treated with dignity and respect.

1973’s landmark Roe v. Wade established that all people in this country have a fundamental right to reproductive freedom. Reproductive freedom encompasses a woman’s right to choose, a physician’s right to provide the care that he or she believes is medically appropriate and necessary to his or her patients without unwarranted interference from the government, and full and equal access to healthcare for all people, including equal access to assisted reproduction. The current United States Supreme Court has placed these freedoms in jeopardy; however, NCLR is working with other civil rights organizations to protect and advance these precious human rights.

As LGBT people create families, legal challenges arise, specifically around access to healthcare. Through our legal gains in family law over the years, we have made significant advances in securing our rights to adoption and parenting. The complementary legal gain to this advancement is reproductive freedom for everyone, regardless of LGBT or HIV status. The ability to create and have a family should be available to all.

Everyone is entitled to full and equal access to healthcare. NCLR’s case on behalf of Jenniffer Spencer exemplifies the devastating effects of discriminatory policies. NCLR, the law firm of Morrison & Foerster LLP, and the law firm of Stoel Rives, LLP is suing the Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC) on behalf of Spencer, seeking to ensure that she receives medically necessary care. Since 2004, the Idaho Department of Corrections has denied Spencer, a transgender woman, appropriate medical treatment for Gender Identity Disorder (GID). Spencer has made more than 75 written requests for evaluation and treatment, but the IDOC failed to follow its own policies for transgender inmates and displayed deliberate indifference to her serious medical needs. On July 27, 2007, the court granted Spencer’s motion for preliminary injunction and ordered the IDOC to immediately begin providing her with appropriate female hormone therapy.

NCLR will not stop fighting until this kind of injustice ends.