For couples that decide to start a family but can’t take the traditional path of pregnancy and childbirth, surrogacy is one alternative to adoption. This is where another woman medically evaluated as suitable agrees to become pregnant on behalf of the hopeful parents. When the baby is delivered, the newborn is then united with the couple so that a new life can begin as a family.
Many couples choosing to take the surrogacy journey often do so by finding a clinic in another country. There are plenty of good reasons to do this, including being more cost-effective. However, one concern that some may have is ensuring that even if surrogacy occurs in another nation, the medical center that handles surrogacy is reliable. How do you ensure that if you take your surrogacy journey to another country, you find a medical center there you can rely on?
Know Your Needs
The most important step in finding a reliable medical center is clearly understanding your surrogacy needs. Different needs will require different kinds of support from a medical center, with more involved, elaborate needs requiring more advanced medical infrastructure and staff: the simpler your needs, the broader your choices.
For example, if you’re seeking a traditional surrogacy, you’ll be using the egg of the surrogate mother herself with a sperm donation. This is a simpler method and requires little in the way of extra medical consideration, so the need for a minimum level of quality is much more accessible across many different medical centers.
On the other hand, if you want in vitro fertilization or IVF, this requires an egg and sperm first be fertilized in a lab setting. Once fertilization is complete, the egg is then implanted in the surrogate mother. This requires much more extensive access to medical laboratory facilities and a wider range of medical skill sets. On top of this, there may be additional needs, such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, if there’s a concern about avoiding congenital disorders that may run in the family, such as cystic fibrosis or sickle cell anemia. Additional expertise is required if the sperm or eggs used are in cryogenic storage because they were saved for future use before surgery. This means safe medical transportation and on-site preparation are required before they can be used for IVF procedures.
As can be seen, the type of surrogacy required can quickly raise both the cost, medical environment, and expertise necessary for a successful surrogacy. The more elaborate the need, the narrower the field becomes for clinics truly experienced in reliably handling a safe, secure surrogacy procedure.
Communication Is Key
As you research different countries and medical centers, communication ability is one of the most important factors you should consider. Surrogacy can be an extremely complex procedure depending on needs, so it’s crucial that there is an ability to be understood and understood by medical center staff. In many cases, there may be medical care of equivalent quality, but at lower cost, in a country, you are looking at; however, that lower cost comes at the sacrifice of communication since the staff will only speak the local language and will be unable to understand you or your needs.
A reliable medical center will indicate that they have experience dealing with foreign couples, and you must ensure that this experience includes your preferred language. English is widely used as a “lingua franca” worldwide, and if you’re comfortable with using English, this opens up your options. However, other facilities may cater to other languages, such as French or Mandarin.
Legal Experience
Another crucial factor for reliability is a medical center’s legal experience. This is critical for hopeful couples who are engaging the surrogate services in another country as this complicates an essential aspect of a newborn’s life; citizenship. A child born in the country of residence is automatically granted citizenship in that country.
However, a child born in another country may not be granted citizenship, especially if it was not a traditional biological birth between the returning parents. Every country has different requirements for giving citizenship to an incoming newborn. In the worst case scenarios, if proper legal preparations haven’t been made before the child returns to the intended country of residence, citizenship may not be granted at all, rendering the newborn “stateless” and thus unable to enter the country. This means the hopeful parents must either abandon the child if they wish to return home or stay with the child and find another means to get citizenship granted.
A reliable medical center will have the knowledge, experience, and existing legal contacts to be able to anticipate the needs of different countries will have. This lays the groundwork for doing the necessary legal work so that when the time arrives to return home, that new family can return with a new citizen.