Only married Germans to get fertility funding

KARLSRUHE, Germany, Mar 1 (Reuters) Unmarried couples in Germany have no right to artificial insemination paid for by public health insurance, the Federal Constitutional Court has ruled.

Only married couples have the right to be reimbursed for the procedure, the court said yesterday.

The distinction between married and unmarried couples is justifiable, according to the court's head Hans-Juergen Papier, who said the decision does not violate the fundamental rights of unmarried couples.

''The marital tie offers a child fundamentally more legal security,'' the court said in its decision. ''Married couples are legally bound to support one another and their family through their work and their assets.'' The ruling overturns a decision from a court in the city of Leipzig, which had deemed discrimination between married and unmarried couples unconstitutional.

The case began when a woman in the eastern German state of Saxony went to court after her public insurer refused to pay her claim for 1,300 euros for artificial insemination on the grounds she was not married to her partner, with whom she had lived for the past 10 years.

Under German law, couples have the right to be reimbursed for up to 50 per cent of artificial insemination costs, provided they are married and use their own egg and sperm. Women must be no older than 40 and men no older than 50.

REUTERS AKJ RK0832