(P-503) Preliminary Findings of Unforeseen Challenges and Issues Among Male Gay Couples Utilizing Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART)   73rd Annual American Society for Reproductive Medicine Scientific Congress & Expo October 28th - November 1st, 2017 Jen Rehbein, Kathryn Coyne, Emily Kemner, Jody Lynee Madeira, Ami S. Jaeger, Georges Sylvestre, and Steven R. Lindheim

Background Specific Aim Gay couples wishing to create families face challenges compared to heterosexual couples regarding: State laws on surrogacy and assisted reproductive technology Family policies and procedures designed for heterosexual couples Finances and Insurance Coverage Lack of support from friends and family Potential discrimination Specific Aim To assess the pre- and post-birth impact of social, financial, and legal issues among gay male couples utilizing ART and Gestational Carriers (GC)

Methods Inclusion Criteria Gay male married and unmarried couples that have had successful pregnancies using a gestation surrogate and occyte donor Study Design Quantitative online survey containing 46 items was distributed to gay male couples who had undergone ART using a GC (Figure 1) Statistics Statistical analysis performed using IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences database (SPSS version 18.0, SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL) Significance assessed at p <0.05 Figure 1: Quantitative online survey of 46 items with graded responses

Results

Conclusions Preliminary data suggest that gay male couples face unique challenges they did not consider before and after achieving a family Length of process: average response rate was a length of 1-2 years to achieve a completed surrogacy Purposefully transferring multiple embryos in an effort to reduce overall costs: patients were willing to accept known risks of multiples over the cost of the surrogacy Financial challenges: total surrogacy costs experienced by respondents were >$100,000 for 80% The financial challenges experienced by gay couples are great; large enough for couples to accept risks related to their children’s health regarding transferring multiple embryos Avenues to help and communicate to others considering this option need to be better explored