She has the right. That does not mean it reaches her.
Inspired by Marli Ehrman
Fourteen of the eighteen subtopics are not driven by the legal citation alone. They also turn on specific eligibility criteria — 472 of the 789 rights carry one. Across those subtopics there are 71 distinct criteria, falling into eleven categories.
In New York, the law is on her side: her insurer must cover it. But the right comes with conditions. She qualifies after twelve months of trying without a pregnancy — six months if she is thirty-five or older. The coverage runs to three cycles. And once she qualifies, her age alone cannot be used to turn her away.
Now move the same woman across a state line. In Texas, the right exists in a weaker form: the law only requires insurers to offer IVF coverage, not to provide it, so her employer can simply decline it. In Florida, the right does not exist at all.
Accessing rights is difficult because it has to be done in her context, and three things set that context — the
jurisdiction, the type of right within the topic, and the eligibility criteria.
Take Texas. IVF coverage exists in the law but only as a right to be offered, not a right to have. The insurer must put the coverage on the table; her employer decides whether to take it. And beneath the state law there is no federal floor at all. No federal law requires IVF coverage for anyone.
So at one employer in Dallas she has the benefit, and at the employer next door she has nothing. Same state, same statute, different right.
She is thirty-three, fourteen months trying to conceive, working for an employer of around four hundred people on a fully insured plan. Nothing about her changed. Her employer declined the offer in writing, and that alone decided it.
The strongest single asset in this landscape is the definitive state-by-state map of abortion law. But abortion is one of eighteen subtopics, and it is the only one anyone publishes state by state. The other seventeen exist for a woman only as scattered statutes she cannot find.
We add what is missing. The 789 legal citations and 71 eligibility criteria behind this study are that missing layer — already researched, already structured. With it, any organisation working in this field can answer an individual woman in her own context: her state, her type of right, her eligibility, across all eighteen subtopics.
First — Illinois, 89%
Second — California, 83%
Third — the floor, 17%
Which state is strongest for women's reproductive health?
Which states are weakest?
Which states give the best protection for pregnancy and motherhood?
Which states give a woman the most control over whether and how she reproduces?
Where should funding go first?
Which right has no federal floor at all?
How much of this has anyone mapped before?
With this built