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Radio host Joël Legendre exuberantly announced the pending birth of twin girls last week, sounding like any expectant father. “I am excited right now,” he wrote to his Facebook fans. “I have a secret to tell you.”

But because Mr. Legendre is gay, the conception of the twins due in July was anything but straightforward. It is thanks to “exceptional technological advances” and the “extraordinary woman who decided to welcome two tiny embryos inside her” that he and his partner can fulfill their dream of parenthood, he wrote.

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His subsequent boast that he had persuaded Quebec’s health insurance board to cover the roughly $5,000 cost of the medical procedure — in a province where the law discourages surrogate motherhood — has transformed his joyous announcement into a controversy over whether Quebec’s publicly funded IVF program has gone too far.

Université de Montréal law professor Alain Roy, a family law expert, said Quebec’s health insurance board was “completely premature” in agreeing to cover the procedure for Mr. Legendre and his partner of four years, Junior Bombardier.