Increasingly infertile couples are considering surrogacy as a route to parenthood, but objective surrogacy education that is not sales-focused can be tough to find.
Based on the ongoing demand for consumer-run education, the non-profit Families Through Surrogacy group is hosting its first seminar series in UK & Ireland. In other countries these seminars are really popular, given they provide consumer and professional advice in a 3 hour evening or weekend afternoon format.
Running in London and Dublin, the series aims to assist intended parents and surrogates to make crucial decisions about domestic and overseas surrogacy options. They focus on panels of parents and surrogates providing honest accounts of their recent experiences.
This is supplemented by a handful of talks from key experts, tackling the complexities of legal, medical and surrogate matching issues.
Across the series ten UK surrogates will discuss their experiences using either independent or agency-facilitated arrangements. Host surrogacy, where a surrogate also provides her eggs, is quite common, and this along with gestational surrogacy will be explored.
A diverse mix of UK and Irish parents who used the UK, US, Canada and Ukraine will provide insight into what they would do differently, and common traps for those new to surrogacy. It is common for intended parents to look at one country option for months or years before turning to another.
Sometimes a surrogate arrangement falls through, or IVF transfers are unsuccessful. In every case, much emotional and financial effort goes into surrogacy, so its important to be well-informed.
Led by Families Through Surrogacy’s UK team, these seminars build on the ever-popular annual FTS conferences in continuing to assist infertile singles and couples to make some of the most important decisions of their lives.