Category: Column

Legal and ethical issues are the less exciting, but a very important part of surrogacy. I thought this would be a very dry article until my recent experience. Despite my research I was in for a surprise.

‘Legals’ as they are known, underpin any surrogacy process and UK law is restrictive. They cover everything from the payment of money to birth certificate names and legal rights. Implications can include a criminal record. At one end of the scale of ‘success’ you will find: a gay celebrity who has found a friendly lesbian, a clinic and co-parenting arrangements which seem very snug. At the other end are horror stories such as an everyday gay man having no access rights and having to pay maintenance for a child they will never see. This makes surrogacy in the UK decidedly unreliable. When dealing with bringing a child into this world, not to mention the money involved, for me, the more certainty the better.

So the ‘legals’ are important. It also brings into stark contrast where to look outside the UK: Ukraine is still a country with a subdued war zone, Thailand has just banned gay couples using surrogacy, Mexico has poor regulation, and places such as Russia and Georgia have very grey areas legally. The question isn’t so much what’s written in law, as what can be enforced and by whom?

People’s actions are governed by the perceived consequences of their actions, rather than what is written in law.

A second issue that is closely linked is ethics. So often it will be a culture’s ethical perceptions which are then interpreted into law. For example, who is ‘mum’ and if/what role does ‘mum’ play in a child’s upbringing? How important is it to have a female involved in child care? At one end of the childcare scale, you can point to studies which show that actually childcare is about time and attention given. Two men can be more capable than a heterosexual couple because they may give more time and attention to the child(ren). At the other end of the scale are the views of an everyday person based on their own experience (dad worked and mum raised the kids). We are all still influenced by our cultural history as this forms part of our identity. To break this is to go against the cultural mould, that is, to be an outsider. In the UK out gay men are used to being outsiders, but this takes it to a whole new level. This type of ‘outside’ is also where casual bigotry and sexism creep in.

A gay couple I know went to a children’s party with their kids. A friendly mum was chatting to one and then said hello to the other. She began by asking dad #2 who he was. He said he was dad as well. Embarrassed silence followed when she realised what the situation was. (This was a kid’s party in trendy south-east London. Imagine what it’s like somewhere a little less cosmopolitan?) In this respect for me, there is some relief, as I won’t have to explain who I am. ‘Mum’ will forever be, ‘in America’.

Further ethical considerations include the implications for the surrogate. Emotional attachment has long been an issue. For example, a cardinal rule is not to let the surrogate breast feed directly. Breast feeding releases a hormone which binds a child to the milk giver. As a result because of this and similar issues, if you want to have a female who is both surrogate and egg donor you have to go to remote locations. The stark realisation that there are two females involved in surrogacy seemed surprising to the gay friends I’ve told. This means that ‘mum’ will be two people, a genetic mother and a birth mother. It makes it more clinical and easier to handle emotionally, but then you start to question the motivations of those involved. It usually links back to money and once money is involved, then it is legal enforcement, not what is written that is so important. Find yourself in a clinic in Russia where a genetic surrogate wants to keep the baby and disappears, and you can imagine the implications.

For this reason, evidence of lengthy ongoing practice (say over five or ten years) plus a legal framework which has been tried and tested in a culture which is sympathetic is very important. If you perform this ‘test’, it should be applied to both the culture, its regulatory framework and also to the fertility clinic, surrogacy agency and law firm. Remember, it only matters if enforcement has to be taken, but who will have your back and how, if enforcement is taken?

As a result I opted for the United States. It is the most expensive choice, but has a strong and experienced regulatory framework in the states of California and Nevada. Despite this, there are still issues. The concern is no longer ethical issues, but enforcement issues.

When I bought my legals, I bought an ‘unlimited’ package from a law firm in the United States, as part of my overall deal. This provided advice and a legally enforceable contract, not pro-active negotiation or litigation. This came to be significant, eight months after signing up to the surrogacy deal. We were at the stage of drawing up the surrogate’s contract, based on agreed terms. It was adjusted by me and sent to my surrogate. A week before the deadline, the contract returned. My surrogate, the lovely lady I met in the states, wanted more money.

Another agency had approached her, offering more. A recent scandal saw a surrogacy agency go under taking their surrogates’ money.

My surrogate wanted more money plus a buffer of $10,000 in the escrow account. Suddenly my bill had increased by $20,000, just a week before we were due to exchange contracts.

My law firm effectively washed their hands and said ‘just accept it’. There was no attempt to fight my corner. If at this stage, they weren’t fighting my corner, then what happens if we get into contract enforcement? All of the surrogacy agency’s talk of ‘doing it for a good cause’ washed away.

I questioned if I could trust my surrogate. Also, as my father said, “you understand a law firm once the going gets tough” -and mine couldn’t run fast enough. In the end I negotiated with my surrogate. I agreed to some increases, and we signed a contract. To really add to my issues, my law firm got my surrogate to sign a different copy of the contract to the one I had notarised. We have yet to resolve this. I now have two surrogate contracts each with different signed parties. Enforcement could be an issue.

The US maybe more regulated but the issues are subtler. Good strong communication by all parties is needed.

Next time I’ll look at: how you choose the agencies involved, the egg donor, and surrogate. Who do you pick and why? Please also help me to raise funds, any contribution is gratefully received: http://www.gofundme.com/simonhill

About five years ago I went on holiday to Benidorm. I met a gay couple from Berkshire, one of whom had been a long term employee at one of the world’s largest banks.

After a few nights we got very drunk and started one of those deep conversations about life. Recounting his time at the bank and his life since, he said ‘until you’ve really encountered some s**t, you don’t really appreciate life’. His encounter was leaving the bank he had worked for, for 15 years, during the recession. It made me think about what I really appreciate in life, the proverbial that life had thrown at me, if I really appreciated what I had and what sort of person I am. In the last issue I asked, what does £1000 mean to you, and now I ask, what sort of person do you think you are and what’s important to you?

The first person I spoke to about it was one of my oldest (15 years and counting) best friends. His reaction was a mixture of shock, anger at what he saw was my irresponsibility and disbelief.

My answer at the time, to myself, was multi-faceted. Firstly I have been through st: from ten years at boarding school from which I will never recover, but which essentially has defined me as the person I am today (it’s hard to deny what you are); through to significant but minor stuff like: being so poor I couldn’t pay for food in the supermarket and being on the verge of bankruptcy and losing everything for several weeks in 2008. On the plus side, I’ve come from a very privileged background: I was one of the 7% that went to boarding school, educated alongside royalty. Growing up I never went without, had plenty of opportunities and a happy childhood until 8. I’ve worked in the profession I wanted to work in, and today I am a Director at both the business I work for and a charity. So, I’d say I’ve been through some st and what’s most important to me is family and friends. Everything else is important, but a nice to have, because when the proverbial hits the fan, what is important? For me my family and friends aren’t just complex, but are probably the most important part of my life.

This was part of my reasoning behind having family when ‘we’ started to evaluate what we wanted in life (with my now, ex-partner). So, having been to the shows and conferences, I began to explore the topic with friends and family. You would think that the prospect of having children would fill friends and relatives with joy, hope, happiness and good will. But, in some cases, not a bit of it.

The first person I spoke to about it was one of my oldest (15 years and counting) best friends. His reaction was a mixture of shock, anger at what he saw was my irresponsibility and disbelief. Having been to Tate Britain, we spent an hour perched on a wall where he preached about why I shouldn’t and couldn’t do it. So I knew then that if someone so very close to me, could react in such a way, that I would need careful management of everyone else.

Indeed as I hadn’t sold the house at the time, this was one of the reasons why I placed everything on hold until last year.

Based on that experience I have told very few friends and none of my extended family. Thankfully the reactions have been mixed from the positive (good for you, you can do it), to as I said, the negative. So far out of the ten individuals or couples I have told, seven have been supportive and three have been virulently against. My parents for their part swing from good to bad, and my brother is very supportive.

Understandably I’ve studied the negative reactions in some detail and I’ve come to conclusion that it is a mixture of worries and fear for the future, tied into the respondents own background issues, and worries about my capabilities. It’s also a reflection of the wider gay community. So often we are on the fringes of society and what binds us together can be what makes us different (and quite often cutting edge), but not what is considered ‘normal’. One of my friends who reacted negatively, was abused as a child and you could understand his worries about security for the children I would bring into the world. Another is older and never had the opportunity to have children and you can see his thoughts lined with regret and resentment. The third person of concern is my own mother.

My mother is the living embodiment of a conventional parent, and a 1950’s housewife. She left a job as a manager at International Computers in the 70s, married my father and life for her became having children, cooking, ironing and keeping the house clean. I have to give credit to my mother as she has a hatred of the last three, but as one of my friends said, entered into and stuck to, an agreement with my father, where they had clearly defined roles. She has raised two decent, productive, contributing members of society; despite the bumps along the way (my homosexuality and my brothers psychological crash with drugs).

Her reaction has been the most worrying. In part it’s down to the baggage my mother brings.

When I was young, we were due to have a sister, a child my mother dearly wanted. Unfortunately (now thanks to the genetic testing I have undertaken) we know that I and (therefore most probably) my mother carry a gene which contributes to miscarriages. My mother’s own miscarriage, is never spoken about and amazingly, the sheer pain after all these years is still there. So, one Saturday a mild conversation about choosing gender turned into a fraught conversation based on my mothers pain. (I’ve decided for that reason not to choose the gender.) On top of this my mother goes from highs to lows: “What names should we think about,” to, “I’m too old to raise a child,” and “How will you work with the crying at night”. The last is a decent point, but with the help of hefty pay from my job, I will be able to afford child care and expect to have time off following birth. I wish that my mother, who is usually so practical would offer calm, collected, thoughtful advice. Instead as with three of my friends I quite often have hysterics management. I now avoid the friends, one of whom I have stopped speaking to entirely and the other two rarely. In some ways it has accentuated what is important to me: family and friends.
Next time I want to take a helicopter view over the ‘legals’ and some of the ethical issues that prospective gay parents have, from: ‘who is mum’, to which jurisdiction, to sexism.

Please also help me to raise funds, any contribution is gratefully received: www.gofundme.com/simonhill

by Simon Hill | @SimonXHill

A man once told me a story about money, it went like this: The board of a FTSE 100 company is meeting at lunchtime. As they start to debate the next item, an investment of £10bn, there is a knock at the door, and Liz, the sandwich lady comes in. Picking out a sandwich, drink and crisps, the FD hands over a £5 note. “It’s £5.50, John”, says Liz. “Eh?!” John looks up, “It was £5 yesterday and has been since I’ve been here.” “Well”, says Liz, “prices have gone up and it’s now £5.50.” There then ensues a long debate over the price of sandwiches and subsidising the canteen. The debate ends; John looks up and says “Let’s vote, whose in favour of the investment?” All raise their hands and the business agrees to spend £10bn. The point is that it’s very easy to pay for something, when you don’t appreciate the amounts of money involved. But, when we are asked to pay for something which, we can relate back to time spent in our day job, it really brings home how much something costs.

Paying for surrogacy is a bit like the £10bn investment. It involves cutting edge science, which we have only heard about on TV and is paid for by sums of money we will only deal with a few times in our lives, let alone actually see laid out before us on a pallet. Add to this the emotional time and personal investment and it goes from being a risk to something we can’t fully get our heads around.

At the parenting conference we attended in August 2012 there was a presentation by an agency; let’s call it ‘Agency A’. At the end of the presentation, there were questions. One of the questions was, ‘how much is it’? To which the reply was, ‘about 100,000 dollars’. Clearly the speaker didn’t want to alienate his audience. A quick calculation of 1.5 dollars to the pound and it works out around £66,000. Hmm, I thought, £66,000 doesn’t seem so bad. That’s a quantifiable figure.

At the time I was also attending counselling. I asked my counsellor, how could I get £60,000? His response was quite clever. He told me to take a white sheet of A4, and half way up draw a line from left to right. Next he told me to mark a start point at the left edge of the line. Then he asked me, what I could afford to save a month? “About £1,000”, I said. “Okay,” he said, “£60,000 divided by £1,000 is 60. So that’s 60 months. At the right edge of the line mark your end point: month 60.” And there laid out before me was a five year timeline to pay for surrogacy. This way I was able to start to quantify what it might cost me to have a child. For £1000 a month I could: lunch every working day for £50 or go out each weekend and spend £200. What does £1000 mean to you? £60,000 is a lot of money.

Two years later, I started to investigate it further and in July of 2014 I agreed to meet Agency A. When I got to their offices, you could tell that there was money, but decorative taste was clearly harder to come by. I met a very nice lady who during the course of our conversation confirmed it was ‘about $100,000.’ She said to contact them once I had the money ready.

66 months is a very long time and I wanted to have children while I was in mid-life, so, I sold my house and moved in with friends. Three months later, following completion, I had £66,000 in the bank. I put £16,000 to one side for a new deposit and prepared to transfer £50,000 into dollars. It took a lot of thought. Was I really going to make this commitment? At this sort of price, even a slight fluctuation in the exchange rate could mean losing thousands of pounds. The pound had been at 1.7 dollars, now it was 1.64 dollars. Should I wait for it to go back up? I decided to take the plunge and get on with it. Today I am very thankful. The dollar got stronger a few weeks after and still today is trading around $1.50 to the pound. I could have lost out on a lot of dollars. For weeks after my father said to me “transfer it back, you will make two or three thousand pounds” –yes, but then I won’t have any dollars!

I contacted Agency A again and spoke with my proposed project manager. My ‘professional head’ kicked in, “I need to pin down the costs before I sign contracts,” I said. “Well,” he said, “we tell our couples to budget up to $150,000 just in case, but hopefully it’s less.” “Hang on a minute”, I replied, “that’s not $100,000”. Suddenly I had gone from $100,000, ‘up to $150,000.’ I now needed £100,000, not $100,000. However, I decided to push on and see what the details looked like. I asked to visit their offices once again to work through the different costs. “We still wouldn’t be able to give you firm costs” came back the reply.

READ THE ENTIRE Journey To Fatherhood series

I went through the outline costings, budgeting $119,000 and $130,000 for worst case. New costs were added, and the budget became $150,000 and worst case $170,000. Since selling the house I had gone from $100,000 to a worst case of $170,000 which couldn’t be guaranteed. It was all too much of a gamble for me. So I left it.

This gives you some idea of what I am up against. Transparency is available if you ask the right questions. But as this is such an emotional and new process, knowing the right questions is often not possible. In February this year I was offered a fixed price deal at $120,000. This gave me some surety and peace of mind. It is roughly £80,000 of which I already had £66,000, meaning I only had to find £15,000. The package included project management, surrogacy and fertility agency fees, egg donor fee, surrogate fee and US legals. All that remained were deductibles such as maternity clothing, three month maternity leave salary compensation (if applicable) and UK legals. Interestingly without the fixed fee deal I calculated these costs were about $153,000, not far from Agency A’s pricing. So I signed on the dotted line.

Today my costs are now closer to $138,000 (about £90,000). What’s changed is small additions to the fixed package, such as: add $2,000 for ‘unlimited’ US legals, $1,500 for a contract enabling your children to legally contact their egg donor, $5,000 for the surrogate salary compensation, deductibles increasing by $2,250, counselling $299, surrogate’s lawyer and travel $3,358. And still, I’m confused, e.g. is surrogate travel part of deductibles? No one seems to be able to tell me, least of all my project manager! So I rely on my own spreadsheet, which I regularly review. And now this means I will dip into the house deposit money.

As a result I now have a GoFundMe page. If you like my story please do contribute to my fundraising campaign, so that I don’t finish with too much debt to the detriment of raising my children. Any contribution is valuable to me, so please contribute what you can at: gofundme.com/simonhill.

Next time I want to cover off family and friends. We live inside very complex social networks and mine isn’t an exception to this, how do you tell friends and family? If you have any questions, please contact me on twitter.

@simonxhill

“Click”, and with that I had spent twenty thousand dollars.

But, I didn’t feel anything. Is this what the super-rich feel when they spend twenty thousand dollars, nothing? What if I did it again, would I feel ecstatic, excited at what was about to happen, a sheer sense of relief after all the months of agonising, or just more nothing? I still had four thousand five hundred pounds to spend on the surrogacy agency… At this rate, I might have to spend a lot more money before I felt something. If spending this type of money doesn’t garner a reaction I wondered, how much does?

The only other time I have spent this sort of money was when I bought my first house and had to put a deposit down. No, hang on, that was the bank of mum and dad, so actually, this is the first time I have spent this kind of money. Which sort of gives you an inkling of the kind of background and money that you need to have, to go through having your own baby as a gay man. It’s a bit like buying a house, except not as easy.

It all started some three years ago. I had met the love of my life: tall, blond, blue eyes and muscular, in a languid kind of way. In fact, easy on the eye, *Grrr* – if you know what I mean ;o) (Sadly he knew it too…) I’m no looker, so I have to try hard to get a man’s attention. He was easy to get along with and we sort of clicked. We met when I was having the car serviced. Having said hello on Grindr before (this was outside my usual haunts), and with time on my hands, I suggested we had a bite to eat. We started to meet up each weekend, then had the monogamy chat, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The first time we mentioned children was when we were talking about what we wanted to do with our lives. He wanted to work in finance, as for him it was like playing an instrument, music to his ears. I wanted to reach the top of my profession and one day get into politics. And then the ‘c’ word was mentioned. And what about having a family, children? I think it was me that said it. Lots of my friends agree that I have always talked about becoming a father. Both he and I were brought up in very traditional middle-class families, where, once we grew up, we would: meet a girl, get married, buy a house with a Labrador, park a Volvo in the drive and have 2.4 children. Well, obviously that plan hadn’t worked out for either of us. I had the house, a BMW, no pet, a new partner and was now thinking about children.

“Yes, I would” he said and we left it at that. I think a gay man’s biological clock does exist, but unlike a woman’s, it is slower and the alarm doesn’t sound until your mid-thirties. I think I only met someone once who was in their twenties, who wanted to have children. It was way off my radar. My twenties I spend shagging, clubbing, being thin, losing my hair, getting more muscular towards thirty and developing a career path. I lived in London, Manchester, Leeds (long summer nights spent in the courtyard next to Queens Court, steadily getting more intoxicated with the growing throng of gay men buzzing in the background, like a flock of birds preening on a South Atlantic Beach), London again, Bristol and the West Country. At the start of my thirties, I settled once more in London. I didn’t have as much sex as some, but perhaps a lot more than others. Now however, in my thirties, what I wanted was changing.

I didn’t want drink, sex and spending hours in an obligatory circle with friends in the middle of the dance floor till 5am. I wanted more ‘quality of life.’ I had reached a stage, where money wasn’t a struggle and more expensive holidays were the norm. (Think Italy, Barcelona, a Conde Nast Traveler top 100 hotel snuggled in the hills of Gran Canaria, half an hour from Playa Del Ingles.) I wanted to find a community (still do) a bit like Leeds, but down south, where I can pop for a pint after work and not just go through the endless cycle of work, home, bed, work, home, bed.

We came back from holiday in August and I saw an advert for the ‘Alternative Parenting Show’. I looked it up online and found out that it was at the Grand Connaught Rooms in Covent Garden. So, I suggested that we went along and have a look. Come late September, we headed out one summer Sunday through the tourists at Covent Garden tube, past the Mason’s Hall towards the Grand Connaught Rooms. As we got closer the butterflies in my stomach began to build. Unwanted thoughts started to enter my mind. “Oh no, we’re going to be identified as gay men in the middle of the day, out in the open!” and, “as a gay couple looking to start a family”. It felt like I was 18 and going through the process of coming out all over again. I had goose pimples and felt the hair standing up on my arms and back. As we approached the first step into the Grand Connaught Rooms, my mind shrieked out to, me, ‘run!’ Calm down I thought, I’m a 35 year old gay man and if I’m not old enough now to face life’s challenges, then, when will I be?

And that was how it started. Having children is a complex business, it is a journey of feeling. Until I started the process, my life was governed by hard fact and judgements based on outcomes. ‘If I want this, what will it cost me, what are the implications, how will this effect where I want to be, how will this affect those around me, what else do I need to do to make sure this happens?’ Thinking about having children, starting the process and getting underway for me, has been unfathomable, as it’s not possible to judge, quantify the impact, people’s reactions, expected financial outcomes when so much emotion is involved.

In Britain, as an LGBT community, we have attained so much, from equality in the eyes of the law for the age of consent through to marriage. However, the attainment of children and family life as well as established conventional norms, for what it is to be a gay family are still being designed and formed. In the next few issues, I would like to share with you my experience, following my own trail, as a gay man looking to have a baby through surrogacy. I will explore some of the key issues, such as: investigating where to start; the money; family, friends and your community; Health issues; politics and legal issues; and of course, the journey including taking the leap, and the various steps I encounter (sperm donation, choosing an egg donor, choosing the surrogate etc). So follow my experiences in THEGAYUK and on Twitter.

Next time, I want to take a look at the money. As the Thunderbugs once sang “It’s all about the money, dum, dum, de, de, dum.” At least, it is, to begin with.

Follow Simon’s journey on Twitter @simonxhill