The Ontario government wants to support Ontarians in growing their families. To this end, it has announced it will fund one cycle of in vitro fertilization for up to 400 Ontarians.
According to Health Minister Eric Hoskins, this plan promotes
“family-building for those who couldn’t otherwise have the opportunity
to have children.”
But, of course, procreation is not the only
way to have children. Many people – including myself – have children,
their own children, but these people have never procreated. Rather they
have adopted children.
Like many people who turn to
assisted-reproductive techniques to have children, many of us who choose
adoption pay thousands of dollars to build our families. That’s even
true of some people who pursue public domestic adoptions, as opposed to
private domestic or international adoptions.
Some of these folks pay privately for an
adoption home study, for example, along with the parenting training
required for an Ontario adoption, because the wait lists in their area
for public versions of these services are too long. They are sometimes
even encouraged by their local Children’s Aid Society, because of the
wait, to pursue a private home study or private parenting classes.
In addition, people who choose public adoption
often pay for post-adoption support for their families, support that is
frequently needed in parenting children who were Crown wards.
Government payments for therapy or other forms of support that these
children received when they were wards of the state usually stop when
the children are adopted.
To be fair, the Ontario government provides
some post-adoption subsidies to people who complete public adoptions.
But these subsidies are limited to families who adopt either a child
over the age of 8 or a sibling group, and also to those whose annual
income is $94,000 or less.
Then, of course, there are people who pay
thousands of dollars for private or international adoptions. They fit
different profiles. For example:
What is Ontario doing to help these families with the high costs of their adoptions?
The answer is: not nothing, though not nearly
as much as what it’s offering to IVF patients. Currently, Ontarians who
succeed with an adoption are eligible for a small provincial tax credit
and a larger federal tax credit. In 2015, the most one could get from
the two credits combined is $2,846, and that amount is available only to
people who spent $15,000 or more on their adoption.
By contrast, the savings the government has
promised to individual IVF patients is much greater. It is a minimum of
$6,000 (the approximate cost of one cycle of egg retrieval,
fertilization and embryo transfer) and a maximum of this amount plus the
costs of transferring extra embryos if earlier transfers were
unsuccessful. Notice that patients will receive this amount regardless
of whether any treatment is successful. Yet with adoption, lack of
success means no government subsidy at all.
The new proposed funding for infertility and
adoption in Ontario is, in my view, clearly inequitable. The government
needs to go back to the table and hammer out a more equitable
arrangement. Otherwise, it will contribute to the view that adoption is
second best as a way of building families.
Government should never reinforce this view,
or worse forget – as the health minister seems to have done – that
adoption is even an option.
