Ron and Greg Poole-Dayan are the fathers of Elinor and Tomer. The twins were conceived in vitro with Ron’s sperm and eggs donated from Greg’s sister and carried by a surrogate.
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By Erline Andrews
Friday, September 14, 2007
Eight years ago, Ron and Greg Poole-Dayan began having a conversation typical of a couple marking five years together. They wanted to have a child.
But that seemed like a very distant, even impossible goal for the couple. They were not only gay, but also immigrants—Ron’s Israeli, Greg’s Canadian. And they weren’t satisfied with what was then the main means to achieve fatherhood—adoption and surrogacy through artificial insemination.
Then Ron and Greg joined a support group in New York for gay people planning families with their genetic input, and the gateway to possibility opened. They could have their baby, and in a way that felt more comfortable to them.
“It was inspiring and encouraging,” says Ron, 44, describing one support group meeting. The Poole-Dayans are now the doting parents of an aspiring ballerina, Elinor, and a Little Leaguer, Tomer, six-year-old twins conceived in vitro with Ron’s sperm and donated eggs then carried to term by a surrogate.
Seven years ago such tripartite baby-making was rarely used by gay men. It’s since become the reproductive method of choice for those who can afford it, reducing as it does the possibility of legal or emotional tangles that comes with adoption and biological-mother surrogates.
The Poole-Dayans have themselves become inspiring and encouraging.
They share their family’s experiences on a web site of images, videos and articles at poole-dayan.com and youtube.com/rondayan. Ron now facilitates the support group that did so much for him. Planning Biological Parenthood for Gay Men meets once a month at New York City’s LGBT Community Center.
Since 2005, The LGBT Center has held an annual seminar on the topic of “Men Having Babies,” inviting the public to listen to and question a panel of reproduction specialists. This year’s seminar will take place on Sunday, Sept. 16.
Stories like the Poole- Dayans’ have been fueling not only a demand for egg-donor or gestational surrogacy but also for information on the process, which has its own possible pitfalls.
“When The Center began doing a biological parenting group maybe 15 years ago or so, there would be one to five couples that would show up,” says John Weltman, founder and president of Circle Surrogacy, gay-parent specialists who worked with the Poole-Dayans and co-sponsors of Sunday’s seminar. Events like this can now attract up to a hundred people, Weltman says. The Boston-based Circle participates in similar seminars around the world.
Weltman explains the attraction of gestational surrogacy, which now is the only surrogacy method used by Circle clients.
“There’s never been gestational carrier who’s been allowed to keep a child,” says Weltman, a gay man who used the traditional method of surrogacy for his and his partner’s two children. “In adoption, women change their minds 30 percent of the time.”
Melissa Brisman, a lawyer specializing in reproduction issues who will be on the seminar panel, says her practice has been attracting an increasing number of LGBT clients. She estimates they’re now 20 percent of her clientele.
She speaks at mass education events at least once a month. They help, she says, to dispel some possibly harmful notions, one of which is that money can be saved by cutting out expert help.
“A lot of times it can end up being a lot more money and a lot more heartache,” says Brisman.
A financial analyst was one of the first professionals the Poole-Dayans sought out.
Having a baby under any circumstances isn’t cheap. For gay men and infertile couples, the added expense of lawyers, intermediary agencies and medical intervention raise the ante. Add a surrogate and an egg donor to that, and the cost can exceed $100,000.
Fortunately for the Poole-Dayans, Greg’s sister volunteered to be egg donor. But it required two attempts—and therefore additional cost—for the in vitro process to result in a pregnancy.
Minette Trent, a Texan mother of three and one of Circle’s surrogates, thinks the specter of the Baby M custody case still haunts even the minds of those who pursue gestational surrogacy. She’ll address the fear at Sunday’s seminar. Professional surrogates are women like her: socially conscious, eager to help, comfortable being pregnant and with supportive partners. They are carefully screened to make sure they aren’t motivated by the fee, typically $20,000 excluding medical expenses.
A post-birth concern for gay parents might be what to say to their in vitro-conceived, surrogate-carried child about why his origin and family are very different from most people’s.
Not enough study has been done to come to a conclusion on the psychological effect of this, says Andrea Braverman, a psychologist with the New Jersey-based Reproductive Medicine Associates, another seminar sponsor.
But there is some research to suggest, she says, that employing extraordinary means to have children makes for better parents.
“The advantage to gay couples,” says Braverman, “is that they are going into parenthood fully embracing it.”
“Men Having Babies,” 1–4 p.m., Sunday, Sept 16, The LGBT Center, 208 W. 13th St., 212-620-7310, $10, proceeds benefit Center Kids, gaycenter.org, menhavingbabies.com.
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