Like many young girls, Mara Berton and June Higginbotham both knew from an early age they wanted families and to become mothers. But as lesbians, they were excluded from accessing the same fertility treatment insurance benefits offered to heterosexual peers. Instead, like many other same-sex couples, Berton and Higginbotham, who live in Santa Clara County, had to pay $45,000 out of pocket to conceive while heterosexual colleagues with the same insurance plan had many of those costs covered.