I am the Director of Growing Families and a dad via surrogacy and egg donation
Its Sunday 24 October and I am in Sydney Australia on Day 9 of 14 days hotel quarantine.
Why am I here you may ask?
I’ve just returned from two weeks of face-to-face meetings with parents, surrogates, doctors, surrogacy professionals and embassy staff from the US, Canada, Ukraine, Australia Ireland and the UK
Along with the regular work assisting hundreds with embryo and sperm transport, provider selection, problem-solving, travel and paperwork, this international trip has given me extra-ordinary insight the problems now affecting cross-border IVF and surrogacy.
No country has escaped some impact, but that impact is different around the globe.
Egg Donor availability in countries such as Australia is at an all-time low, leading to increasingly creative solutions.
Vaccine hesistancy amongst surrogates is an issue everywhere, but nowhere is it so problematic as In Ukraine, where most simply don’t believe in getting vaccinated.
Given the high risks to a growing child if Covid is contracted in pregnancy, In the US, many IVF clinics simply wont do transfers to unvaccinated surrogates
Meanwhile In Colombia, providers are unable to take on any further cases, given the system has reached capacity.
For Georgia, paperwork requirements for heterosexual defacto couples have become far stricter, causing increasing delays
There are answers to all these issues, and whether you have already commenced or at the start of your journey, its vital that you understand these
Growing Families has a face-to-face event in Sydney on 14 November to discuss the issues in depth and to give you the chance to meet one-on-one with parents, surrogates and providers.
And if you cant get to this, there is an online event a day earlier that will cover many of these same issues, though with many different parents, surrogates and experts speaking.
Go to Growingfamilies.org to learn more.
Sam Everingham
