Egg Donor and Surrogacy FAQ for Gay Men | Starting a Family

For same-sex male couples, planning a family starts with a lot of questions—about getting an egg donor, surrogacy, and other fertility treatment options. Some of these questions can be answered by you, while others require input from professionals.

Fertility clinics that are committed to successfully serving same sex male couples—and all LGBT couples—make staff available to answer your questions thoroughly, sensitively, and knowledgeably. At InVia, we have a personal concierge service to make sure that happens.

Often the male couples we work with are unsure of where to start. The six most common questions we hear in the beginning often include:

• Should we find a surrogate first or an egg donor?
• Should we start by getting a lawyer?
• Whose sperm are we going to use?
• What genetic testing needs to take place, and when?
• Can embryos be tested for aneuploidy and gender?
• Should we transfer one embryo or multiple embryos?

All of the above questions and more can be discussed with your fertility physician—if this doctor doesn't have the answers, he or she can guide you to the best sources of information to help you answer them.

You can get a start on your research by reading my post on same-sex parenting, which lays out the biggest choices facing same-sex male couples and gives some of the most common paths these couples take.

At InVia, some of the resources we provide to help couples do their initial research include an in-house egg donor database of medically screened,  egg donors to choose from. Not many clinics in the U.S. offer an in-house egg donation program; instead, they work with outside agencies. We are proud to provide an ethically and medically sound service to the intended parents we work with. If you don't find your perfect donor in our exclusive database, you can look at donors from other agencies.

We can also put couples in contact with reputable gestational carrier (surrogacy) agencies that match them with the perfect surrogate for them. We also have long-standing relationships with many of the Chicago area reproductive lawyers who can help couples with their contractual needs.

To work with a fertility clinic with a strong record of success working with same-sex male couples, make an appointment at one of InVia’s four Chicago area fertility clinics.