For Joy Wright, “not being a mother was not an option.”
But by the time she reached 34, she was, as she described in an essay for Buzzfeed, “single, lesbian and feeling desperate.”
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“The path to parenthood as a queer person can be a marathon ― it takes stamina and determination,” she wrote. “Just the mention of wanting children seems to confuse friends, family and medical professionals who are used to parents being non-queer. It’s much better than it was when I began my process, but LGBTQ people must still push to be seen as potential parents. Each road ― whether it’s insemination, IVF, surrogacy or adoption ― is an uphill battle.”
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Wright began her quest to become a single mother by choice first by going the standard route: seeking a sperm donor through a fertility treatment program. But she continued to find herself not pregnant, and now with a lot less money. Frozen sperm is expensive, and after several attempts, she simply couldn’t afford it anymore.
She tried “a series of crazy ideas” after that, which she wrote included “a sexy dress, a six-pack of beer and an old co-worker who left town the day before I got to him; a gay friend who then tested positive for HIV; and a wild women’s weekend with drums and goddess chants that was followed by two missed periods but no pregnancy.”
Then one day at an intuitive healing workshop with a friend, she met a man who offered to be her donor. They lived two and a half hours apart, and with the need to drop everything when she was ovulating, they quickly stopped meeting at his home and instead met at a Burger King in between their houses.
“Coolly, without the least bit of awkwardness, Drake walked out of the men’s room, handed me a Burger King cup full of his semen, smiled, and headed out of the restaurant,” she wrote of her first experience inseminating herself at the fast food giant. “Looking around, I took the cup into the women’s room and used my little syringe to inseminate in one of the stalls.”
They tried this several times at their Burger King meeting spot, but unfortunately, she still wasn’t pregnant. After that, she endured infertility tests to discover she had blocked tubes and would need IVF if she wanted a chance at carrying a child.
A queer person experiencing infertility faces extreme challenges. “Medical and insurance policies, as well as adoption programs and legal procedures, are designed for the heterosexual user,” Wright explained. “Some policies leave queer folks out because our desire to be parents never occurred to the writers. Others are intentionally discriminatory. “
While adoption also provided large hurdles for LGBTQ+ people, Wright decided that route was more likely to make her a mother than trying IVF.
And it did.
Now in a committed relationship, Wright has two children.
“I became a mom in a two-mom family,” she wrote.
Wright is far from the only LGBTQ+ person who has struggled to afford sperm – and far from the only person who has been forced to get creative in her quest to build a family as LGBTQ+ parenthood becomes increasingly common. Services like IVF, surrogacy, and adoption can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and insurance companies often deny coverage to LGBTQ+ couples due to stringent definitions of what qualifies as infertility.
In fact, as the cost of using sperm banks rises, an increasing number of people are turning to Facebook groups to find their own donors without the middleman.
Last year, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) Practice Committee announced they were updating the definition of “infertility” to be more inclusive in hopes that insurance companies would follow suit.
And in a historic win for the LGBTQ+ community earlier this year, Aetna reached a settlement that included the company’s commitment to providing equal fertility coverage to LGBTQ+ people. The case marked the first big step toward ending fertility-based medical discrimination for LGBTQ+ couples.
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