Content area
Full Text
Last week my daughter brought home a book that purported to answer that eternal question of four-year-olds: where do babies come from? With its bright illustrations and simple language, Cory Silverberg's What Makes a Baby made it seem pretty straightforward. Turns out, all you need is an egg, a little spermy guy, and a uterus. Perfect, right?
Unless you're a gay male couple pursuing surrogacy. Then you must add lots of money-anywhere from $80,000 to $160,000. There are the multiple trips across country, or even halfway around the world. Throw in a team of doctors, psychologists, and lawyers, too. To add some drama to the story, let's have these men also work to establish a relationship with the people who will provide the essential biological elements that gay families need to create their children.
Increasing numbers of same-sex couples and LGBT individuals are acting on longheld desires to be parents, and most of our families will use assisted reproductive technology (ART) in one way or another. For gay and "trans" families, surrogacy is the chosen path to biological parenthood. In my practice, most intended families and surrogates choose gestational surrogacy, which accords with the nationwide trend. This involves the creation of an embryo that is subsequently transferred to the uterus of the surrogate. The gestational carrier is not genetically related to the baby. Rather, the intended parents will have supplied the egg and sperm or obtained a donor egg, donor sperm, or donor embryo. (So-called "traditional surrogacy" is an arrangement in which the surrogate becomes pregnant by artificial insemination using her own egg for the purpose of giving birth to a child to be raised by the intended parents.)
But the law is not on the side of gay intended families. Same-sex marriage is recognized nationwide, following the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision, but marriage equality does not equal parentage equality. Almost...