The BabyMoon Family Vision: A Comprehensive Reproduction Center for All Queer People
While BabyMoon Family is in its early stages as a company, I want to share what I believe the ultimate vision of this enterprise is.
This article is meant to describe, at a high level, what the future of BabyMoon Family could look like, and to get any feedback on what could be changed or added to this vision. At its core, BabyMoon Family is a community meant to serve and help queer families all over the world, and so queer intended parents and current rainbow families are the target demographic. If this describes you, please read on, comment, and share any info or suggestions you have via email to bryan@babymoonfamily.com.
The Current IVF and Surrogacy Landscape
Currently, LGBTQ+ clients are an ‘add on’ or ‘bonus’ for IVF clinics and surrogacy agencies. A research article published in 2018 investigated how welcoming the IVF and surrogacy industries in the United States are to gay men. This was done via a content analysis of patient/client recruitment on infertility clinic and surrogacy agency websites. The results from 547 websites indicated the following:
The majority of infertility clinics (62%) and 42% of surrogacy agencies do not directly advertise or appear to be welcoming to gay men.
A minority of gay-friendly clinics and agencies actively recruit gay men, creating a limited but niche market.
The unequal recruitment of gay men as infertility clients reflects how normative ideas about gender, sexuality and social class are reproduced in the infertility industry.
This may impact gay men’s procreative consciousness and decision-making about parenting, and exacerbate inequalities around their access to intentional genetic parenthood (1).
This study was several years ago, and there are now more clinics and agencies that actively recruit and cater to gay men as well as other queer intended parents. However, there are none that are completely and wholly dedicated to servicing this population.
The Idea
While conducting my own research for my husband’s and my first journey, I was surprised to not find a clinic or agency that felt as if it was ‘for us.’ There are incredible organizations such as Men Having Babies (https://menhavingbabies.org/) that connect queer men all over the world to clinics and agencies in the U.S. and Canada. However, none of these are LGBTQ+ only and specifically for this population.
I believe there is a need for this. As I have written before, rainbow families and surrogacy are under threat, especially by the current Italian government (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/italy-attacks-surrogacy-rainbow-families and https://medium.com/@babymoonfamily/why-every-lgbtq-person-especially-intended-parents-ips-should-be-furious-at-italy-right-now-cfb8a4382532). It is challenging to navigate this world, especially as international intended parents. Having a clinic and agency that is specialized in working with LGBTQ+ clients would be an incredible feature, for myself and I imagine many queer people around the globe.
How to Actualize the Dream
While there is no shortage of queer men and women who are having children, as evidenced in my previous article on the growth of rainbow families (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/rainbow-family-planning and https://medium.com/@babymoonfamily/from-stonewall-to-surrogacy-the-lgbtq-community-and-family-planning-bc981cd27e47), there are resource limitations on several aspects of the journey. These limitations include sperm, eggs, and gestational carriers.
However, I believe the LGBTQ+ community, a community who has historically come together to successfully fight for rights since the Stonewall riots, is also capable of coming together to solve this challenge.
BabyMoon Family could become the epicenter for the LGBTQ+ community’s reproductive ambitions. The thought struck me even more when I read a recent quotation from a lesbian who became the gestational carrier for a gay couple, stating:
‘I matched immediately with two guys. I really wanted to do it for them, because we’re two women and without our sperm donor, we wouldn’t have our son; without me and the egg donor, they wouldn’t have their baby. So it felt like a good trade off’ (2).
This is the solution. We, as a community, offer and share our own limited resources with each other. Queer men can provide sperm. Queer women can provide eggs and/or be gestational carriers. This would not necessarily be a ‘free trade’ as it is clearly not an equal share of resources for what men and women provide to this scenario. However, I feel the ability to work together in this shared experience is what would drive the collaboration.
I believe this would create more rainbow families, and the journey of doing so would be even more incredible. The bond and communication between donors, gestational carriers, and intended parents would be grounded in a common, shared experience of being queer. From this, the BabyMoon Family could continue to grow to include more families from around the world.
Next Steps
While there are many steps to get to this final vision, the immediate plan is to continue researching, writing, posting on social media (give us a follow on Instagram, X, or Facebook), building the community through the newsletter (sign up on www.babymoonfamily.com) as well as the app (available for iOS and Android on the respective app stores).
Once the community is growing, the process of gaining funding, ideally through LGBTQ+ focused venture funds such as Gaingels (https://gaingels.com/) would be how to proceed. This would help build up the medical team, surrogacy coordinators, and lawyers, ideally all a part of or staunch allies of the LGBTQ+ community.
This is my dream for BabyMoon Family. A place for every queer person to find community; support; as well as the medical, legal, and logistical resources to have a family of their own through IVF and surrogacy.
If you have any suggestions, please feel free to comment on Medium or email me at bryan@babymoonfamily.com.
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