It’s National Infertility Awareness Week here in the U.S. For some LGBTQ people, “infertility” is simply the inability to reproduce by ourselves or with a partner without medical intervention—sometimes called “social infertility.” For others, infertility is a medical diagnosis indicating that even with assistance, conception will be hard. Here are some resources to help no matter how you’re defining it.
Last week, the Michigan Court of Appeals recognized that both women in an unmarried same-sex couple, one the genetic mother and one the gestational mother, have parental rights. This is a clear victory—but the ruling also indicates what is still needed for even fuller protection of all families, no matter who’s in them or how they are formed.
A new service, founded by a queer mom and attorney, aims to provide LGBTQ parents and prospective parents with family building resources and a personally vetted directory of family lawyers.
Nina Willbach and her wife, a Philadelphia couple, have been trying to get pregnant since last June via assisted insemination. On March 13th, they were told that their most recent attempt didn’t work—and they couldn’t try again because COVID-19 had put a stop to “elective procedures” in Pennsylvania. “I know a lot of folks are going through much worse right now, but it feels like a big blow when every month counts and we’ve had this many no’s,” Willbach told me in an online message. They’re not the only ones to have family-making plans halted during the pandemic.
I’ve already highlighted some of 2019’s key news events for LGBTQ parents, but here are a number of other stories from recent weeks to round out and round up the year. Pull up some hot cocoa (or break out the New Year’s bubbly early) and have a read!
It’s not news that starting a family can be expensive for queer parents. Many of us have lived that. But a new report from Family Equality lays out the costs for different options; looks at how income variation among LGBTQ people impacts their choice of option; and offers suggestions for addressing the imbalances.
A U.K. couple has shared gestational duties in creating their child—the latest in a small but growing number of two-mom couples taking advantage of new technologies to do so. What does this mean for the future of queer family building?
Kim Bergman wrote her new children’s picture book about assisted reproduction based on “what I’ve been telling parents for 30 years to tell their kids. It’s what I told my own kids.”
Many of us have experienced them in our doctor’s office: a speculum is cold, awkward, and sometimes anxiety-producing and painful. A team of designers is working to improve both the speculum and the entire pelvic exam process, however, and to do so in a way inclusive of women, transgender men, and nonbinary patients who need them.
A few bits from round and about that I haven’t covered elsewhere, including family vignettes, information on fertility and family formation, and a child of same-sex parents left “stateless” after three countries have refused or delayed granting her citizenship.
