As you read through our informational articles on surrogacy for same-sex couples, you may see frequent usage of the terms “gay surrogacy,” “gay parents” and others that may not represent your preferred language or individual gender identity. To you, you’re just regular intended parents like everyone else, and your sexual orientation isn’t the only thing that identifies you.
At American Surrogacy, we understand that completely — and you’re more than just “gay parents” to us. Like all of the people who hope to complete a surrogacy through our program, you’re just someone who desperately wants to add a child to your family. We’ll be proud to help you make that dream come true.
However, in our informational articles, we do use terminology that may seem odd to you in its specificity. It’s important to understand that we have reasoning for this.
As there has always been in history, different people have different preferences for the terms they use to describe themselves. We know that some LGBT individuals are completely comfortable with labels like “gay” and “queer,” while others prefer more politically sensitive terms like “LGBTQ+.” Throughout the articles on our site, American Surrogacy uses terms like “gay,” “LGBT” and “same-sex” interchangeably to address a larger community of intended parents, surrogates looking to work with LGBT parents and the general public, which may not always understand the nuances between these terms.
While this content is directed towards LGBT intended parents, we also recognize that it serves as an educational resource for surrogates and families of all types and with all different levels of education regarding LGBT issues and terminology. By using terms like “gay surrogacy” and “gay parents,” we aim to meet these people at their own working knowledge of this terminology.
A primary part of this community is prospective surrogates. American Surrogacy has access to the terms that prospective surrogates search on the internet when they want to find intended parents like you and, overwhelmingly, they type in “gay surrogacy” or “gay parents.” Therefore, to more effectively find matches for LGBT intended parents, we use the terminology they do so they can more easily find our surrogacy program. In fact, some surrogates even search “gay surrogacy” because they themselves are gay. American Surrogacy is happy to work with surrogates of any sexual orientation and gender identity.
Still, we completely empathize if the terminology that we use on our website is not your preferred terminology for your surrogacy process and how you view yourself as a person. We want you to know that the language we use in our website content is not the terminology our surrogacy specialists use; as mentioned before, to us, you are just a hopeful parent dreaming of the day you can bring home a child of your own — and your sexual orientation is only a small part of that identity. Our surrogacy specialists will help you find the surrogacy process that works best for you based on your preferences, recognizing some of the differences inherent in a same-sex surrogacy but not letting those dictate the entirety of your surrogacy journey.
While there are slight differences in the LGBT surrogacy process versus a surrogacy process for opposite-sex couples or individuals, the process is generally the same. Therefore, LGBT intended parents should not feel limited to our specific “LGBT surrogacy” information on this site. Many of our other surrogacy articles will be helpful to you for learning more about the surrogacy process, as the content was written for intended parents of all sexual orientations and gender identities. The articles in our “LGBT surrogacy” section are simply supplemental information that specifically address the slight differences in surrogacy for same-sex couples and should be used in addition to our general information.
To learn more about our surrogacy program, you can always contact our surrogacy specialists at 1-800-875-2229(BABY). We stand ready to help you build the family you’ve always dreamed about — no matter your sexual orientation or gender identity.