1. (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

2. 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)

3. 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

4. Results

5. 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 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