A California woman pursuing artificial insemination is suing the federal government for the right to choose how she’ll get the sperm.
The unusual case was filed Monday in U.S. District Court. On the heels of the Supreme Court decision upholding the federal health care overhaul, the plaintiff in this case is challenging another area of federal health care regulation.
At issue are Food and Drug Administration rules that set standards for sperm banks — like requiring tests for communicable diseases. But the woman in the California suit doesn’t want to go through a standard sperm bank or other clinic. The anonymous plaintiff instead, according to the suit, wants to use the sperm of someone she knows — at no cost — without going through all the federal regulatory rigmarole.
She and her lawyers call the FDA rules an unconstitutional violation of her rights — that is, her right to start a family with whomever she wants.
“When you are regulating private decisions between two individuals in a non-commercial context that have to do with something so intimate and personal as whether they want to have a child together, then the FDA regulations should not apply,” Amber Abbasi , attorney in the case, told FoxNews.com.
Abbasi’s group Cause of Action filed the suit on the California woman’s behalf.
