Same-sex couple uses in vitro to achieve pregnancy

She was pregnant.

Josie Izaguirre cried tears of joy at the news and called her partner.

“We’re going to be mommies,” she told her excitedly.

That statement is true, biologically and emotionally, for both women, thanks to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, in which a woman’s egg and a man’s sperm are joined in a laboratory dish. Izaguirre is carrying a fertilized egg from her partner, Oralia Elizondo, giving both women an intimate connection to the baby before he or she is even born.

“It goes back to how we both feel like there’s that bond there,” Izaguirre said. “We like to think of it as the baby’s a little bit of both of us, because we both got to carry them at one point.”

“It’s the most ‘us’ it can get,” Elizondo explained.

In vitro fertilization typically involves removing several eggs from a woman’s body. They are then fertilized with sperm in a laboratory, after which the embryos are transferred to the birth mother’s uterus.

The process was not simple for Izaguirre and Elizondo. The McAllen couple first tried intrauterine insemination, which deposited donor sperm into Izaguirre’s uterus to get her pregnant using her own eggs. After three unsuccessful tries, the women found out their insurance covered IVF and decided to go for it. A minor surgery to remove polyps from Izaquirre’s uterus and $10,000 to $12,000 later, Izaguirre told her partner they were going to be parents, making all the sacrifice and stress worth it.

Dr. Esteban Brown, who runs the Valley’s Fertility Center, performed the procedure for Izaguirre and Elizondo. The physician said he sees a few cases like Izaguirre and Elizondo’s each year.

It’s important to get “this out to the community so they know these services are available to same-sex couples who want to establish a link between their partner and children,” Brown said.

SOCIETAL CHANGES

Raising children has become more common for gay and lesbian couples nationally as well as in the Rio Grande Valley because society is changing, said Eli Olivarez, president of the Valley chapter of the Stonewall Democrats, a network of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Democratic activists.

Movies such as “The Kids Are All Right” and TV shows such as “Modern Family” show that people of the LGBT community are a part of society, he said, adding that President Barack Obama’s recent determination that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional shows his support.

In largely conservative Texas, however, the nation’s broader acceptance of the LGBT community generally has not been reflected in state law. In 2005, Texans voted to make same-sex marriage unconstitutional, although same-sex couples do have some rights when it comes to raising children.

In Elizondo and Izaguirre’s situation, Izaguirre will be considered the legal parent because she is the birth mother, said Houston attorney Connie Moore, who specializes in legal rights for parents in same-sex relationships. Even though the child is genetically Elizondo’s, because the couple is not married, she initially will not have legal rights to the baby. But the couple can go to court to change that.

Many same-sex parents choose to do a second-parent adoption, so both parents have legal rights, Moore said. The couple could also establish a contract recognizing Elizondo’s maternity, but a second-parent adoption is probably a better option because it is recognized everywhere, Moore said.

STATISTICS

In the 2000 census, significantly more people reported being in a same-sex relationship than in the 1990 census, said Gary Gates, a demographer at The Williams Institute, a component of the University of California Los Angeles School of Law that advances sexual orientation law and public policy through research. Adoptions for same-sex couples also have risen.

In San Antonio, 34 percent of all same-sex couples are raising children, but many of these children come from previous heterosexual relationships, Gates said. He thinks more same-sex couples will begin adopting children and using reproductive technology, however, as homosexual, bisexual and transgender individuals gain wider acceptance and come out earlier in life.

Statistically significant local-level demographic data on same-sex couples is not available, Gates said. Nor did he have any statistics on couples who use reproductive technology such as IVF.

Nationally, the use of assisted reproductive technology, which includes IVF, has doubled in the last decade for people, including heterosexual and homosexual couples, who cannot conceive on their own, according to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 1 percent of infants born in the U.S. are conceived each year using the technology.

Izaguirre and Elizondo are grateful to Brown and the Valley’s Fertility Clinic for helping them become one of the many couples across the country to achieve a pregnancy through reproductive technology. The couple plans to have two more children and want to use the same sperm donor for all three. They bought multiple specimens from the same donor so that would be possible.

“It’s cool that way, I think, because all of the kids are going to be related in one way or another, if she carries one of my mine and if I carry one of hers,” Elizondo said of their eggs.

Both women commented on how fortunate they are to have supportive families who are looking forward to their new relative, but they still worry a little about how the pregnancy and their child will be received.

“What do you tell your child? We’re so petrified because not everybody’s OK with the gay lifestyle,” Izaguirre said.

Still, no matter what happens, they are confident the child’s life will be filled with love.

“It’s not so important for the baby to have someone of their gender to look up to — it’s the right person to look up to,” Elizondo said. “You know the baby’s going to have two parents, and regardless of what they’re saying about the same-sex, it’s going to have two loving parents.”