Surrogacy - the Solution

There are many causes of infertility in men and women around the world. Whether those causes be environmental, the result of childhood or adulthood illnesses, or mysteries of epic proportions many couples find that they are unable to conceive through traditional methods of conception.

Many of these couples have gone the route of attempting in vitro fertilization and met with no success in this endeavor. There was a time when this failure meant the end of the road for couples seeking to bring a baby of their own into the world. Over the last few decades we have discovered another alternative for couples to have a child of their own, even when the female partner is unable to sustain the fetus within her own body. This method would be through the use of a surrogate.

With surrogacy you can use the sperm and egg from the couple attempting to conceive or accept egg or sperm donations as well. In case you are wondering what a surrogate is, she is essentially a substitute body for the gestation, labor, and delivery or your baby. There has been a fair amount of bad press in the past where couples have been taken advantage of by surrogates who changed their mind or had no intention of ever going through with the handing over of their baby.

As a result of these incidents there are many agencies that handle surrogacy in a completely professional and legal manner. These agencies help protect you as the biological parents (if you are the supplier of both the egg and the sperm) by putting potential surrogates through a rigorous physical and psychological screening process in order to best insure that there will be no problems down the road.

It is important if you are considering surrogacy as an option for fertility problems that you go into this with open eyes. There are sometimes tragedies that simply happen. Enlisting the services of a surrogate is no guarantee that the baby will make it to full term. There are no guarantees that any pregnant will have a successful outcome. However, if you are having difficulties carrying a baby to term it is likely that the odds are in your favor by selecting a surrogate.

There are also no legal guarantees. This is an area that our courts were not initially designed to handle as surrogacy was nowhere on the horizon when our constitution was written. Legal matters in this area are still somewhat gray areas though precedence is being established around the country all the times from which future trials can refer for answers.

The good news is that the vast majority of surrogacy pregnancies are a success. Only the failures tend to make news and there have been relatively few cases that have made the news in the last few years. Surrogacy is becoming more common and doctors as well as the legal system are becoming much better prepared to deal with the medical and legal implications that surrogacy brings to the table. More importantly to those childless couples however, is the fact that surrogacy can grant them a miracle they are not likely to have on their own.