Clinics selling IVF packages for throuples*
*That’s a relationship between 3 people – and they can have baby with 3 parents
POLYAMOROUS ‘throuples’ are being offered IVF at clinics.
The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), which now provides fertility treatment as well as terminations, says it is being contacted by people who want to start a family with three parents.
Care Fertility, one of the country’s largest IVF providers in the UK, is also happy to oblige.
Would-be parents may benefit from IVF, rather than conceiving naturally because it allows a baby, technically, to have two mothers.
Care Fertility says that a woman can supply an egg, fertilised by a man’s sperm, so that she is the baby’s biological mother.
In a clinic, the embryo can be put into a second woman, who carries the baby and gives birth and therefore becomes the child’s legal mother.
Another option, says Care, is for a child to have a biological father, who provides their sperm as a donor through a fertility clinic, and a separate legal father, who is named on the birth certificate.
However, lawyers say that if relationships end there could be problems over custody. Victoria Maxwell, a specialist in family and fertility law at Bishop & Sewell, said: ‘We often assist in disputes where two people don’t agree on decisions bringing up a child.
‘That is difficult enough – three people would bring a raft of further problems. People in a polyamorous relationship looking to have IVF should also be mindful that only one or two parents can be recognised as a child’s legal parents.
‘Although courts can make a variety of orders regarding who a child should live with or spend time with, there is unlikely to be a satisfactory outcome for anyone in a polyamorous relationship.’
BPAS Fertility raised the subject of polyamorous parents at a meeting of the Progress Educational
Trust, an infertility charity. Marta Jansa Perez, director of embryology at the trust, said: ‘The meaning of a “partner” needs to be reviewed. We have patients coming to us in polyamorous relationships – how do we deal with the welfare of the child through that group of patients?’ YouGov figures suggest only about 2 per cent of British people are or have been in a relationship with two partners at the same time.
In Canada last year, three fathers won the right to get their names added to a birth certificate, but this is not allowed in the UK.
BPAS Fertility has not yet treated people in polyamorous relationships, but said it would consider doing so ‘case by case’.
Dr Jansa Perez wants the fertility regulator to rethink its guidance on ‘patients’ and ‘partners’, and a change in fertility law, which is governed by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act.
She said: ‘We have received inquiries from individuals who are in relationships not reflected within the language of the Act.’ Clare Ettinghausen, from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, said that it was looking at the law ‘to see how it could be more relevant to the reality of fertility treatment for patients in the UK today’.
Dr Debra Bloor, of Care Fertility, said: ‘We firmly believe that family is for everyone and we do everything we can to support those seeking our help. This includes women who are in a relationship with a partner who does not intend to be involved in their treatment or the upbringing of any future child, and those who are in open or polyamorous relationships.’
‘Support those seeking our help’