Gay Times on HIV+ gay and bisexual men

The Gay Times has featured a piece by Philip Baldwin, an HIV+ gay man who recently attended a presentation our founder Natalie Gamble gave at the British HIV Association national conference. Natalie addressed the conference on family-building as an HIV+ intended parent, and talked about the unfairness of the current rules which exclude HIV+ parents from being able to conceive children through surrogacy in the UK (even though they can use fertility treatment to conceive safely, and are allowed to do so in many other non-surrogacy situations).  It is in issue which affects many HIV+ people who are gay or bisexual. As Philip says:

“As Natalie Gamble, one of the UK’s leading surrogacy lawyers explained to me, the specific issue in relation to HIV positive parents is that the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority (HFEA) regulations only allow eggs or sperm to be transferred to a surrogate at a UK fertility clinic if they meet the screening standards for donors. At the moment, that automatically excludes anyone who is HIV positive, even if the viral load is undetectable. In practice, most HIV positive parents conceiving by surrogacy go to US fertility clinics, or they use the sperm from the HIV negative partner if they are not both positive. The HFEA rules require updating, as they have failed to keep up with medical innovations/understanding around HIV.”

You can read the article in full here.