Over the last year or so, an increasing number of my LGBTQ+ friends have started having kids through assisted reproductive technology (ART). Thus far, none have yet ventured to surrogacy but I don’t think that will last. But as a queer person born via traditional surrogacy, I’ve become increasingly alarmed by the lack of insight around donor conceived people, the lack of focus on the rights for the resulting children/humans that are created, and the lack of interest in doing better. Anecdotally, this stands in contrast to talking with heterosexual couples who struggle with infertility about ethical and moral concerns with sperm donors, egg donors, and surrogates. I recognize that I’m speaking in extremes and anecdotally but these are conversations I’ve had more than the average person. I’d love to see studies done on differing paths to surrogacy.
For LGBTQ+ couples who don’t have the right equipment (don’t forget that some do!), using a sperm donor, egg donor, or a surrogate is the starting point. For heterosexual couples who reach the point of these methods, especially surrogacy, it’s the end of the line. This creates wildly different head spaces: a starting point vs an increasingly narrow end of the road. Add in the broader hate thrown at LGBTQ+ people for just existing let alone getting married or having families and you can see how concerns around ART usage feel like just another hurdle to overcome. For heterosexual couples, the desperation at the end of the line in a fertility industry that’s trying to make as much money as possible comes with its own set of resistance to the reality of donor conceived people.
It’s been helpful to recognize these differences in pathways to surrogacy as they are worlds apart: a gay male couple starts with surrogacy whereas a heterosexual couple gets there as their last step. Read ‘We are expected to be OK with not having children’: how gay parenthood through surrogacy became a battleground from Guardian and you can see this difference on full display:
Poole-Dayan is the father of 21-year-old twins conceived using eggs donated by his husband’s sister and gestated by a surrogate. “Surrogacy is a gay issue,” he tells me. “It’s not just that we are more visible when we do it, it’s that we’re more dependent on it. The surest way to ensure that gay men don’t have children is to be against surrogacy.”
From We are expected to be OK with not having children’: how gay parenthood through surrogacy became a battleground
The above quote sums up why I’m finding it to be so hard to have conversations with LGBTQ+ folks about family building. By questioning the one option they have to have “their own kids” (other than adoption which is another can of worms), it threatens their entire dream whereas a heterosexual couple never wanted to get to the point of needing to use surrogacy to begin with (usually unless we’re talking about the very rich single men who want kids or women who don’t want to “ruin their body”).
Poole-Dayan sees the “situational infertility” gay men face as equivalent to medical infertility. “We define infertility as not just a condition or a disease but also a status that defines our inability to procreate with our partner.” It doesn’t matter if you have healthy sperm, eggs and wombs; if you can’t make a baby with your chosen partner, you are infertile, by this definition. “Situationally, we are the most infertile, by measure of the level of intervention that is required to achieve a pregnancy. We’re also expected to be OK with not having children. This is the kind of discrimination we’re trying to fight the most.”
From We are expected to be OK with not having children’: how gay parenthood through surrogacy became a battleground
This last part is fascinating to me–associating not having a kid with discrimination when no one has the right to a child. Let me say that again: no one has the right to a child. When it comes to heterosexual couples, there’s often an awareness that what they are doing is very much different and more of a Hail Mary than something they demand. At the same time, the desperation is usually pretty intense if they’ve reached this point and haven’t given up. I’ve had quite a few tearful conversations with heterosexual couples whose infertility journey ended without a child and the grief that came was overwhelming.
Ultimately, I worry that surrogacy is going to increasingly become a “LGBTQ issue” when it’s not one. If it ever does get banned, I fear it will be done so by pointing to LGBTQ+ families rather than by talking about everyone who has used the method, including the majority heterosexual couples who paved the way. The questions, concerns, and ethical issues I raise are the same, regardless of whether someone is LGBTQ+ or not. This gets lost in the media though with right wing sensationalist stories about queers having families. On the flip side, liberal leaning outlets don’t seem to raise a single concern around family building within LGBTQ+ couples, despite the many that exist. It’s not serving anyone but, most importantly, it’s not serving the people who are the “products” of this method.
I know how loaded these conversations can be. As a queer person too, raising ethical concerns around queer family formation can feel like giving fuel to the wrong side. But if we don’t have these conversations, we risk repeating harmful patterns—just with rainbow flags on them. If we don’t have a larger conversation with everyone wanting to use these methods, we risk very unnecessarily demonizing a group of people that already get demonized enough (LGBTQ+ folks). Let’s not push the blame to queer people at the cost of accountability for everyone, including heterosexual couples who have used these methods much longer (and likely more frequently).
I didn’t choose to be born through traditional surrogacy, but I live with the reality of that choice everyday, complete with dark suicidal periods and impossible questions about my existence. Today, I believe it is extraordinarily rare for there to be a traditional surrogacy arrangement that works well and I can recognize people are going to continue down this path regardless of what I think/what my lived experience is. People don’t care, especially when they just want a kid.