Fertility Fairness for the LGBT+ Community

‘For my wife and I, starting a family as an LGBT+ couple was a difficult journey fraught with worry, physical and mental anxiety (as it is for many). Over the last decade, we have spent in excess of £40,000 to have our three miracle children. At times, the costs were crippling, but we did what we had to working extra hours, cutting back on holidays and saving fiercely.

We had to pay for private treatment because our clinical commissioning group (CCG) did not provide LGBT+ people access to NHS-funded treatment. We appreciate how incredibly lucky we are to have our children and to be able to afford private treatment; however, there are many in the UK who aren’t able to.

Extra hurdles for LGBT+ community

There are extra and expensive hoops to jump through in order for LGBT+ people to access fertility treatment. LGBT+ people must prove their infertility in order to access help and in order to do this, you have to pay for between six and twelve rounds of intra uterine insemination (IUI). Only if this doesn’t work, will you be considered for NHS-funded IVF. And having home inseminations for two years with a ‘known’ donor does not count.

So for many LGBT+ people desperate for a family, you can see how the current system fails us. It is discriminative, based on who you are and who you love. But the discrimination doesn’t stop there. Because so many people do not have the finances to be able to fund these kinds of numbers, they may be forced down alternative routes to parenthood which may not be their first choice, such as the home insemination route.

In addition, unless you are married or civil partnered, if you are the non-biological parent, you will not be on the birth certificate. This means you have to apply for second parent adoption, get the donor to waiver his rights, acquire additional costs and wait to be considered your child’s other legal parent.

Fertility funding should be means-tested

While many of us would love to see the NHS provide free fertility treatment for all, the system is currently under an incredible amount of strain and doesn’t have an ‘endless pot of gold’. At The LGBT Mummies Tribe we feel access to funding should be means-tested – providing access to those who cannot afford it (heterosexual & LGBT+), so they can have the children they dream of.

We are passionate that every person has the human right and deserves to have a family by their first, chosen route. If as a nation, we can come together to do that, equality would be acquired. But for now, those who cannot access free funding or afford private treatment either cannot have children or do so by alternative and sometimes more dangerous routes that do not protect them, their future children or the donor. Inequality at best.’