Law hampers couple’s search
Ryan Dignan and his husband are looking for someone to have their baby.
They never knew it would be this hard.
“I equate it to an onion. You see this thing on the outside, but once you start peeling back the layers there are all these different aspects to it,” Dignan said.
He knew that since he and his husband, Ryan Prafke, could not give birth themselves, they would have to rely on a surrogate who would carry their child to term.
The woman, they planned, would be a gestational surrogate — meaning eggs harvested from one donor would be implanted in the surrogate before being fertilized through in vitro fertilization by one of the fathers’ sperm.
What they didn’t know is that because of strict Canadian laws, finding a surrogate is easier said than done.
“You have all these wonderful people saying, ‘Yes, it’s a possibility,’ but then when you get down to the nitty gritty, will you?” Dignan said.
Canadian laws prohibit anyone from being paid to be a surrogate. No intermediary can be paid to arrange a surrogacy, either, so matchmaker organizations like those that operate overseas and in certain U.S. states are outlawed in Canada.
People like Dignan and his husband must rely on the altruism of friends and social contacts.
Dignan already has an egg donor lined up. The couple also initially had a friend who was willing to become their surrogate, but after talking it over with her family, she backed out.
“It just seems like it would be easier if there was an organization where I could say, ‘You know what? This is what I am looking for and I have the money and am willing to do it,’ ” he said.
Karen Busby, a law professor at the University of Manitoba and one of Canada’s leading experts on surrogacy, agrees.
“You are working in a total grey zone when it comes to surrogacy. What a lot of people do is leave Canada,” she said.
Because someone can pay for a surrogate’s “expenses” during pregnancy — things like maternity clothes and medications and sometimes even work leave — surrogates here do get some compensation. On average it’s up to $3,000 a month, but it’s a precarious process that can end up exploiting surrogate women, she said.
Busby is an advocate for decriminalizing commercial surrogacy in Canada; she wants to make it legal for people like Dignan to pay women to have their babies, but under a heavily regulated system.
She said concerns about exploitation of women are unfounded in Canada and that the current laws that force people to travel abroad are far more exploitative.
“They are off-loading the issue onto vulnerable women in other countries.”
In countries like India, for example, where surrogacy is a growing industry, surrogates have few protections under the law.
Dignan said he and Prafke want to be close to the surrogate throughout the process. They want to be there for trips to the doctor’s office, and to help her out when she needs anything.
That’s why the couple is reaching out, hoping someone will make their dreams of parenthood a reality. “I’m walking on water here and ready to fall through the ice,” Dignan said.