Tina Diop and her husband Brian have been trying to change how the nation looks at pregnancy and early delivery.

“It is absolutely shameful and very unfortunate that anyone in any profession has to go through.”

“This has made us really, really angry,” she said. “It made me not want to be pregnant.”

The Diop family and their lawyer have been calling for several years to change the rules on how much time providers can keep paying for non-medical care, saying it violates their rights.

They also want to have the option to go on strike to force a change.

But now they may have a chance to push the issue.

In a hearing Monday, a Washington Superior Court judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging the state law, which says providers can continue to make regular payments for “medical treatment and services to pregnant women or to women who wish to terminate the pregnancy.”

The law also says hospitals cannot raise fees for delivery-related costs and that insurers must cover any out-of-pocket expenses before an employee can be called to work.

But the doctors who argued in the case said the “services” in question do not include prenatal care, and they say the $500-per-care bill they’re facing for delivering a 6 lb. baby does provide medical services.

An attorney representing the Diop’s said her firm has filed another suit challenging other restrictions on payment for medical care.

Washington State Health Commissioner Mary Mayhew last week had said her department could not support the law — which was passed by the Legislature in 2011 — without changes.

A bill introduced to the Legislature earlier this year would have required insurance companies to cover all in-patient costs, except when they were associated with pregnancy or delivery.

The bill died on the House floor.

But in February state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said his office would review current rules to determine whether they comply with state law.