I recently heard the phrase "gayby" for the first time. Granted, I'm not always in the know, despite being a specialist in fertility acupuncture, but I love good lingo. So, I was happy to incorporate this one into my repertoire.
Here at Acupuncture Kitchen, we—alongside the greater San Francisco area—are celebrating Pride Month. I thought I'd kick it off with a post about pregnancy options for all of our patients who are building their families as either single mothers or fathers, or two-mother/two-father homes. Known as "biological parenthood," infertility clinics are able to give gay and lesbian couples an option over the traditional but more limited option of adoption.
So, here are the main menu items:
For the Ladies: Donor Sperm
The easiest solution is your basic intrauterine insemination (IUI). For a surprisingly low cost (starting at, say, a few hundred dollars), women can research donor demographics and purchase high-quality sperm alongside an IUI. Sperm can also be donated by a friend, but anonymously-purchased sperm has the advantage of not carrying emotional ties and not having to sort out long-term arrangements. If you decide to go this route, a clinic I particularly recommend is Pacific Reproductive Services (a lesbian owned sperm bank).
For Everyone: A Gestational Surrogate
Gay men or lesbians who aren't going to carry their own child have the option of hiring a surrogate to be impregnated via in-vitro fertilization (IVF). IVF, like IUI, can use either anonymous or known donor sperm and/or donor eggs (sometimes from one of the partner's eggs).
For Couples:
A uniquely San Francisco-style parenting option is for couples to agree to raise a child together. In this swinging scenario, one of the lesbians would be inseminated with the sperm of one of the gay men. The two couples then share parenting responsibilities and hope for one (really) big happy family.
There are various clinics in San Francisco that specialize in helping couples of all genders get their baby project in motion. I work most closely with Laurel Fertility Care and founded an Eastern clinic inside of this Western clinic so that patients seeking impregnation can supplement their treatments with acupuncture on-site. In fact, all of the acupuncturists here at Acupuncture Kitchen are on-call whenever one of our patients at Laurel is due for their embryo transplant. We show up and stick a few needles in you in spots that are well-known to increase the chances of successful implantation.
(If you'd like to read the scientific jargon about ACU/IVF, click here.)
Just for kicks, I got the following statistics from the Partners Task Force for Gay & Lesbian Couples (www.buddybuddy.com). This web site lists even more statistics and also some great breakdowns of state-by-state laws on parenting options for gays and lesbians.
- The American Bar Association, Family Law Section estimates that there are four million gay and lesbian parents raising 8-10 million children.
- The American Civil Liberties Union estimates that eight-to-13 million children are being raised by gay or lesbian American parents.
- Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund estimates there are from six-to-10 million lesbian and gay parents who are mothers and fathers to an estimated six-to-14 million children.
- The National Adoption Information Clearinghouse estimates there are 1.5-to-5 million lesbian mothers and 1-to-3 million homosexual fathers. As of 1990, 6-14 million children were being raised in homosexual households.
