Our Petition for Change

Fertility is a journey that is different for everyone. But currently, your experience of fertility treatment will also be impacted by where you live. Did you know that in Wales, ALL females regardless of sexuality get TWO free IVF attempts funded by the NHS. In Scotland, ALL females get THREE IVF free attempts funded by the NHS. In Northern Ireland, ALL females get ONE attempt. Yet, in England, same-sex couples need to have had SIX failed cycles of IVF or IUI (or 12 artificial insemination attempts) before getting one NHS funded round of fertility treatment. Unjustly, heterosexual couples in England get one attempt for free if they meet certain criteria. In some areas of the country, limited funding is available for IUI (intrauterine insemination) for same-sex couples but you have to tick a lot of boxes and it is a postcode lottery depending on the Clinical Commissioning Group (they are the people who control the NHS money in the local area). Whilst this offers some opportunity to some lucky couples in search of parenthood, there clearly exists a huge and unfair disparity in England around fertility. And, in light of our fertility experience, I think it’s about time England caught up.

Danielle and I are blessed. We started our fertility journey four years ago and were lucky enough to be successful in our first IVF attempt. And we have the most amazing and beautiful little human as a result. However, our quest to extend our family has been fraught with heartache and disappointment. In October 2019, we had a failed IVF cycle with the remaining frozen embryo from our first cycle. In April last year, 7 weeks into pregnancy, we were told we had suffered our first miscarriage after another full round of IVF. This was during the first few weeks of lockdown #1 and so to add to this devastating loss, I wasn’t able to be in the room. It took us 10 months to work through the pain and decide we were ready to give IVF another go. Last week, unfortunately we suffered a second miscarriage after a successful frozen embryo transfer in February. As you can imagine, we are absolutely gutted and heartbroken. What makes it harder is that I read that only 2% of women have 2 miscarriages in a row. There are really no words to describe how we are feeling. What we can say is that the issue of fertility, particularly for same-sex couples, has a huge emotional and financial impact, and represents a logistical nightmare.

Our struggles have led to a lot of reflection and a search for information. There are things we would have done differently. There are things we know now that we wish we had known at the start of our journey, particularly around the financial impact on us as a couple. In total, we have spent somewhere around £17k on procedures, sperm and drugs in our 4 IVF attempts. I didn’t choose to be gay, but because I am, my experience of fertility treatment is inherently different. Whilst the thing we want most is another baby in our family, regardless of the cost, there is no doubt that if we were a heterosexual couple, or if I was a single woman wanting to conceive a child, we would have had more financial help and support. Whilst we cannot go back in time and tell our younger selves to buy extra sperm, or to tell me to keep the eggs that I donated around the second failed cycle, what we can do is try and educate others. We can shout about the inequality of our experience and hope that we may help the many other same-sex couples who want to start a family. 

That’s why we are starting a petition. The petition won’t lead to any changes for us, we are lucky that we have one amazing little girl. But I am hoping that we can change things for hundreds of couples going through this process in the future. We deserve to have the same rights as other females, regardless of our sexuality.

Please join us in our fight to get this petition to parliament. The link is below. Please share far and wide to help us fight this inequality.

https://www.change.org/p/the-government-funded-ivf-for-same-sex-couples