Not Every Income Situation Has U.S. Surrogacy as an Option
I saw an anonymous post on a queer fathers Facebook group that emphasized why more queer men are turning to having children via IVF and surrogacy outside of the United States.
The Facebook poster shared that he has wanted to be a father ‘basically his entire life.’ He described himself as a 34 year old, single, gay, cis man, who has paid off his student debt and now has a stable job earning about $65,000 a year.
He was asking the queer dad hive mind how to go about having a child through IVF and surrogacy.
The replies were honest but also captured the reality of his situation:
‘Truth pill, not every income situation has surrogacy as an option…USA agency surrogacy will be unaffordable.’
This is the truth, and it’s a hard pill to swallow. A hardworking, debt-free, full-time employed man earning this amount of money cannot have a child with the help of an agency in the U.S without incurring significant financial debt.
While someone in this situation can have a child via IVF and surrogacy in the U.S., it would require an independent journey with a gestational carrier (GC) who is willing to accept less compensation than what is standard. This could be a family member or a close friend, but those situations are exceedingly rare.
More and more insurances and companies in the U.S. are offering inclusive family planning benefits to cover portions of IVF and surrogacy. This is an area I am passionate about in order to expand access to queer men having children via assisted reproductive technology (ART), and I have written about my experience trying to expand benefits at my own company (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/expanding-fertility-benefits).
However — another truth pill — these benefits are currently only at select employers and cover a fraction of the costs for a journey in the United States. This leaves many men, like our Facebook poster, without the financial means to pursue surrogacy via an agency in the U.S.
This made me want to explore more what the costs are for a journey abroad. I have written about my husband and my decision to pursue a ‘guaranteed’ package with an IVF clinic and agency in the U.S. (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/beginning-surrogay-journey).
I feel very strongly about the ‘ethical surrogacy’ that is offered in the U.S. Strict medical, legal, and regulatory regulations ensure that intended parents (IPs), GCs, and children are all respected and treated with the utmost care. We feel incredibly privileged to be able to pursue this through leveraging our savings, grants, and our own incomes, but it will still cost at least $225,000 to have one child.
As has been made clear with the above example, this is not an option for all men. BabyMoon Family was founded to support all queer men having children through IVF and surrogacy. With this in mind, I want to expand and discuss the realities of IVF and surrogacy abroad.
In the future, I may compile a full database of international IVF clinics and surrogacy agencies that work with queer men, but for this first discussion, I wanted to focus on one agency that works in a number of countries around the world where commercial surrogacy is viable.
The agency is called Vireo (https://vireo.agency/). Full disclaimer: I have not researched this agency’s reputation or talked with queer fathers who have used them, but I wanted to highlight them because they give full transparency to costs for different packages around the world.
Vireo’s packages are offered in Albania, Armenia, Cyprus, Georgia, Mexico, and Ukraine and include the following options for intended dads (1):
Frozen embryo transfer (Є39,000): This option would not include finding an egg donor, retrieving eggs, and making embryos. The intended dads would have to arrange the shipment of their embryos to the destination country, but this would cover the implantation and GC costs.
Own eggs program (Є44,000): This program would cover egg retrieval, embryo creation, and surrogacy, all done in the destination country. However, this option would be less viable for queer men, unless you had a friend who was donating eggs and willing to travel with you to the destination country for the stimulation and retrieval.
Egg donation program (Є47,000): This starts to cover all aspects of a journey for queer intended dads, with egg donors through their database, embryo creation, and surrogacy.
Guaranteed program (Є54,000): This program includes unlimited IVF cycles and embryo transfers to ensure a successful pregnancy while covering the GC as well.
Premium program (Є60,000): This program is most comparable to the U.S. program my husband and I chose, as it covers unlimited IVF cycles and embryo transfers until a successful live birth is achieved.
Double guaranteed program (Є130,000): This is not even offered by my U.S. program. It is higher risk for GCs to carry twins, and so this is not traditionally offered by U.S. agencies as a ‘guarantee’ program. However, this could be done by certain agencies in the U.S. with additional costs and the willingness of the GC to carry multiples.
It also has to be mentioned that these clinics and programs claim to employ modern scientific approaches to IVF such as preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).
With all that, it’s kinda mind blowing that our U.S. program of $225,000 would cost Є60,000 (or about $66,000) in a country like Mexico. The U.S. is more than three times the cost, and so it becomes even more apparent why our Facebook intended dad above would be pushed to pursue ART abroad. He has wanted to be a dad ‘basically his entire life.’ He’s not going to give up because the U.S. options are too expensive and/or challenging with regard to finding egg donors and GCs. He can have an agency help with all that for a fraction of the cost.
I have discussed before how surrogacy journeys in countries outside the U.S. are more complicated once the child is born and the parent(s) want to return to their home country. Birth certifications, translations, getting identifications and passports for the baby all can be challenging, and there have been stories of new parents being stuck in Mexico (2) or Cyprus (3) waiting for the documentation to allow them to travel home.
However, even with these post-birth challenges, the journey to fatherhood can still be accomplished outside the U.S. with finances that are much more suitable to the ‘average’ queer intended father.
What is the future for queer intended dads pursuing IVF and surrogacy outside the United States?
I would like to see the world adopt more universal regulations around IVF and surrogacy. As I stated above, the ethical, medical, and legal protections for commercial surrogacy in the U.S. are the most stringent in the world. I believe that these regulations should be adopted by all countries who are engaging in commercial surrogacy in order to level the playing field from an ethical perspective.
It would be ideal if all queer men who want to become fathers through IVF and surrogacy could pursue their dreams, even if they don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars of savings and high paying jobs. If this means pursuing ART outside the U.S., queer intended dads should be able to do so with the knowledge that the journey will be ethical and safe for all parties, and they should embark on this international path as a first choice, not a last resort.
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