How IVF Expands the Circle of Family

It's been said the queer people are the only minority that face rejection from their own families of origin. Indeed, the very distinction "family of origin" – as opposed to "chosen family" or "found family" – has been lent cultural force by the way LGBTQ+ people find their "logical" families, as celebrated "Tales of the City" author Armistead Maupin put it, to fill in when their biological families have fallen short.

When it comes to fulfilling the essential human need for children, queer families increasingly turn to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, a fertility treatment that allows LGBTQ+ couples – or even individuals looking to go it alone as parents – to share a biological tie to their kids. IVF (and also IUI – intra-uterine insemination) entails bringing together the three essentials for pregnancy: Sperm, egg, and womb. In the case of IVF, sperm and egg are united under controlled laboratory conditions, creating an embryo that is allowed to develop for several days before being implanted in the uterus, or womb, of the pregnancy's carrier. This might be a surrogate helping a couple by carrying the embryo, or it might be the very IVF patient who has come to a clinic for help in achieving a dream of parenthood.

The providers of The Prelude Network – North America's largest and fastest-growing network of fertility providers, with more than 95 clinical locations in the U.S. and Canada – take a special joy in helping LGBTQ+ families welcome children into their lives. "It's super rewarding to help patients with their family building journey," Aminty Arthurs of the third-party team at Advanced Fertility Center of Chicago says. "It's the best!" As the head of the Center's third party team, Arthurs oversees the clinic's efforts to guide patients to their best options for gamete donors and surrogates.

The inclusion of a third party – especially a close friend willing to donate sperm or eggs, or a surrogate who will carry the pregnancy – brings with it the possibility of expanding the family.

The person who donates sperm or eggs to prospective parents undergoing fertility treatment could very well be – and often is – an "anonymous" donor, someone who has provided their gametes to a sperm bank or an egg bank so that their gametes can be used by others in the cause of bringing new life into the world.

But sometimes "known donors" contribute to an individual or couple's family-building process. A known donor could be a family member – a brother, a sister, or a cousin who donates the needed gamete in the stead of their relative – or they might be a friend that is essentially considered part of the family. The donation of gametes, and the arrival of baby through their help, can make those bonds even deeper, with the donor assuming the role of "uncle" or "aunt" to the child.

For Conor Weiss, being asked to donate sperm to a close friend and her wife was a decision requiring careful thought and close examination of his feelings before he agreed.

"They had mentioned it years ago as sort of a joke in passing, like, 'Oh, if we ever want to have kids, you're the one we'll ask,'" Conor says. "And I had been flattered back then, but when it was real I had to think about it fair amount, with the knowledge that I would be open to having my own child with my own partner, should I ever have a partner, and [also] knowing that they definitively didn't want me to play a parental role."

Just the idea of being genetically related to a child that he would not be parenting was, Weiss admits, "a little bit of a head-spin.

"But I ended up asking myself the question, 'Do I want these people to have a child?' And I did, and I thought that was more important than any of my worries," he adds.

"There's this beautiful child in the world," Conor goes on to say, "and there's this really lovely queer family in my circle that I'm so happy exists, and I got to help with it. That's really special. It's not possible to think negatively about it."

More personally, his connection to the baby is "[not] necessarily that different from my sister's child. Yes, there is that blood connection, and I feel a special bond with that child. I love getting the emails with the pictures every day. I don't feel like I made the wrong decision at all."

While the new arrival has bolstered his bond to the child's parents, there are also ways in which nothing has changed.

"I was close to them," Conor says. "We really liked each other and valued each other, and now it has this forever quality, right? We agreed to do this, and that means that we want this to last for a long time. And on the other hand, it didn't really change things. I live in a different city. I'm very bad at being in touch with people," Conor admits with a laugh. "Those things haven't changed." That said, though, "emotionally, it's clarified how I feel, and it's been really meaningful."

While an egg or sperm might come either from anonymous or known donors, and those donors might be, or become, part of a familial relationship, gestational carriers inevitably forge a more personal bond with the families they help. For couples in which neither partner possesses a womb – or for whom medical reasons make carrying a pregnancy impossible or inadvisable – surrogates are the only way to gestate an embryo. A surrogate's role takes nine months to complete, and in that time it's to be expected that close personal bonds will develop.

Single father Egan Orion speaks glowingly of his "amazing surrogate," a woman who helped him realize his dream of parenthood after he'd entered his 50s. Their bond remained so strong after the birth of Orion's son that, he says, "She came over a couple months after he was born to help take care of him.

"Her family are part of my family, and we stay in touch on a regular basis," Orion adds. "There's a lot of trust that goes into that process, and there's a lot of love that's generated through that process regardless of financial compensation for the surrogate. It's a very personal, intimate, loving act to carry a child for somebody else."

Now contemplating a second child at the age of 53, Orion goes on to note, "All of us are creating family in different ways, and they are not better or less than the way others create families." That extends to found family, as well as family that share a blood relationship.

Orion cites the example of drag mothers and their drag daughters. "If you know them and know the ways they take care of each other, it's quite beautiful," he says.

As for his own family, "I may be technically single, but I have a whole community of people helping me to raise this kid," Orion notes. "What I've found is I can take what I've learned from being gay and apply it to being a parent.

"I have a big, beautiful family that my kid can experience and appreciate as he grows up."

While perhaps not as close as blood kin or even found family, the fertility care specialists at the clinics that comprise The Prelude Network play an important role of their own, and not just in terms of their scientific expertise. Respectfully supportive of queer families, the network's doctors, nurses, and counselors provide guidance that's tailored to each family's needs. If it takes a village to greet a new child, The Prelude Network's dedicated experts are a key part of that community.