Families come in all sizes - some have more than one mom or dad, some have none, and some have a whole team. The LGBTQ Parenting Network has a new initiative to recognize this - "I Heart My LGBTQ Family" cards for kids to give to all the special people in their lives on Mother's and Father's Day. But what if you're just thinking about becoming a parent? What do you need to know about starting your family?

The LGBTQ Parenting Network (LPN) at the Sherbourne Health Centre in Toronto can give you the information you need. It offers educational programs, social events, and an e-newsletter on the latest in LGBTQ parenting, as well as community events, research, and advocacy.

Lesbian, bisexual, or queer women considering parenthood can sign up for Dykes Planning Tykes, a 12-week course LPN hosts in partnership with the 519 Queer Parenting Programs, says Rachel Epstein, coordinator of LPN. It offers a similar course for gay, bi, and queer men called Daddies and Papas 2B. Participants in both courses explore the practical, emotional, social, and legal issues of becoming a parent.

"One of the exercises we do at the beginning of Dykes Planning Tykes is look at how supportive...your family of origin is to you in bringing kids into your life," Epstein says. "Some people's families are very unsupportive, but...kids are very evocative, and they are hard for people to resist. So I've seen lots of healing that can happen in families because of kids. If your family may not have originally accepted your queer identity, when you bring a kid into their lives, that can be a very healing thing."

Trans parents are becoming more visible and advocating for their rights to form families and have children. "We're seeing more trans men who still have the capacity to get pregnant, so we're getting men who are pregnant," Epstein says. This poses new challenges for fertility clinics, she notes; LPN offers training at the clinics to sensitize their members to the issues surrounding trans families.
Of all of the LGBTQ subgroups, it's easiest for lesbian women to start a family, says Dr. Marjorie Dixon, a fertility specialist at the First Steps Fertility Clinic in Toronto.

"You come into the clinic, you say that you're interested in starting a family, you're checked out and your ovaries are still working, your uterus looks fine. Then we say, great, all you have to do is obtain some sperm...You [contact a] compliant sperm bank, and find a donor that's appropriate for you, [as far as] age, education, height, race, and background," Dixon says. She notes that there is the option of "open ID" sperm, which means that when children reach 18, they can contact the donor if they want to. You can choose anonymous donor sperm or have a known donor.

Having a known sperm donor has risks attached, says Kelly Jordan, a family law specialist at Battista Jordan LLP in Toronto. "There's no difference between a donor and a parent in Ontario law...There's nothing that says that a man who donates sperm is not a parent, or is a parent. So in law, he could acquire parental rights, and also parental obligations. He might have a right to see the child, and he might have an obligation to pay child support. That's an unknown area. We don't have any certainty about that.

"So if you're a lesbian couple planning to have a child and your intention is that you will be the only parents, using a known donor is very risky...unless you want to give that donor some parental rights. He might have some obligations, so it's risky for him as well."

Gay men who want to become parents need both an egg donor and a gestational carrier because legally, a woman who donates her eggs can't be the same person who provides the uterus, says Dixon. "That way, the person carrying the baby has no genetic connection to the offspring," she explains.

Many unique arrangements occur. "I currently have a [gay male] couple where [one partner's] sister is the donor and the other partner, also an intended parent, is the sperm donor, so he'll be giving a sample, and they have [arranged for] a gestational carrier," Dixon says.

One thing everyone agrees on - the law on assisted reproduction desperately needs an overhaul. A legal prohibition on payment for donor sperm and eggs has had an extremely negative effect. "It disparately impacts on the LGBTQ community because we need third party reproductive material to have our families unless we adopt," Jordan says. Prohibitions on payment drive the market for sperm and eggs to the U.S., or underground, or to the black market, because "if you're not going to be able to pay donors, they're not going to donate," she notes. Availability of donor eggs and sperm plummets and their price then increases dramatically. "It means that only the wealthier people in our community can afford to [have children]."

Although prohibitions on payment were an attempt to prevent the commercialization of the fertility industry, Dixon says, the irony is that they ended up hurting the very citizens they were intended to protect.

-By Natalie Fraser, Media Committee Journalist