It’s not a good week for the NHS. After last week’s news about the NHS failing lesbian and bisexual women, The Observer reports that many primary care trusts are discriminating against women who smoke by denying them fertility treatment.

Despite official recommendations that all infertile couples should get three cycles of fertility treatment free, many clinics are increasingly making IVF treatment conditional on not smoking. This applies to the women trying to conceive and also their partners.

The news is particularly relevant to gay women, many of whom use IVF to conceive. Lesbian and bisexual women are also more likely to smoke than heterosexual women.

While smoking can affect a couple’s chance of conceiving and smoking in pregnancy can damage the unborn child, tobacco use is officially listed as a ‘non-clinical access criteria’. This means that it quitting is not a medical requirement for treatment to work. Other lifestyle choices known to reduce fertility, such as drinking alcohol, do not affect eligibility for fertility treatment in the same way.

A spokesperson for Infertility UK told The Observer that while official guidance produced by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) say that infertile patients should be warned that smoking and drinking more than one or two units of alcohol a week could reduce fertility, “they are not actually supposed to be reasons for not giving you treatment.”

[Via The F Word]