The Together Fertility Clinic is dedicated to social justice and child welfare. Their policies aim to make assisted reproductive technologies accessible and ensure any resulting children are cared for. Gamete donors are compensated for their time and medical risks, and donor anonymity is not offered to allow potential children access to biological family medical histories if desired. While prenatal testing is provided, clients are not pressured on termination decisions and connect with disability rights groups for support. Designer babies are rejected in favor of medical selection only to promote equality.

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Together Fertility Clinic
Supporting all families and children.
Firmly dedicated to furthering
social justice.
By Lindsey Brown
WGS 470
Professor Reis
June 8, 2015

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MissionStatement
At the Together Fertility Clinic, we are dedicated to social justice and child welfare, and
all of our policies will reflect that theme. Assistive reproductive technologies are a new and
exciting resource for women and families and we are honored to get to play even a small role in
helping build and foster new families. The introduction of assistive reproductive technologies
has brought so many wonderful possibilities to women and families, we do believe there is the
potential for negative repercussions if the technology is not used safely and ethically. We truly
wish to inform a balance in helping families bring their future children into the world and
furthering acceptance for families and people who don’t necessarily fall in the category of
traditional family.
Note from the Together Fertility Clinic Founder
I am grateful for the introduction and accessibility of assistive reproductive technologies,
but I am fearful that as the focus on them grows and as our use of them rises, we are losing sight
of the person that is hopefully to result from the intervention of our services. We get excited
about the prospect of the technology and accept the relationships that may become complex as a
result, but I do not take these complexities lightly. It is important to me that every client we see
has proof of a potential guardian for their child and goes through the often lengthy, detailed,
contract polices we have in place to try to foster greater safe guards for the child. I want to be
clear, when I am talking about the child, I am speaking of the person who is to result from a
successful intervention by my clinic, I am not referring to the fetus at any time along the process.
There is not any one right way to be or create a family, but because my clinic and I will play a
role in the creation, I believe I have a responsibility to act on behalf of the resulting child. My

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advocacy for children will also be made apparent in the adoption specialist center and non-
traditional family counseling services offered in my clinic. This is what sets us apart from other
fertility and reproductive service clinics, I believe in enhancing every option our clients have to
start a family with focus being paid to the children. This policy is also intended to play against
the standards that the introduction of assistive reproductive technologies have reinforced in that
family, motherhood, and therefore womanhood is only achieved through biological reproduction.
This is not the only way to build an incredible family and is absolutely not a definition of
womanhood. We respect the decisions of women and families who choose not to have children
and value all forms of healthy family creation.
You will notice the use of the term client rather than patient throughout our policy and
clinic description. This is because I do not view infertility as a fully medicalized issue. Infertility
can be the result of a medical or biological problem, but I do not feel we should treat the result of
the medical problem—the infertility or the inability to naturally have a biological child—as an
illness or something in need of a cure. Many women and families choose not to have children or
to build non-traditional, non-biological family connections, this does not make them ill. Because
assistive reproductive technologies have made the prospect of having biological children a reality
for so many people who thought they couldn’t, having children could become an even greater
norm than it already is. I truly wish to honor the choices and abilities of all families and reduce
the stigma currently associated with infertility.

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Policy and Regulation
Availability of ART
Unfortunately, the current insurance climate does not allow room for assistive
reproductive technologies and the services continue to be expensive. We have worked very hard
to reduce our costs as much as possible but we cannot feasibly offer them at the prices we feel
would be most accessible. Although this is the reality, out of our dedication to social justice, we
believe it is our duty to make our services as accessible as possible. The Together Fertility Clinic
has worked to ensure grant funding that our clients can apply for based on financial need to help
reduce the expenses of the services and we have established payment plan options that all of our
clients may opt into if they choose.
Gamete Donation
The Together Fertility Clinic has services for both egg and sperm donation. All egg
donors will be compensated $5,000 dollars to cover the time commitment and medical costs as
well as the emotional commitment to the process of this kind of gamete retrieval. Egg donation
differs from sperm donation in that it is a process that involves a 6 week hormonal therapy
treatment where the clients must inject themselves with hormones in order to facilitate the egg
retrieval, which entails a slightly invasive procedure. The retrieval procedure allows the client to
return home a few hours after the procedure is finished, but we do not want to underplay the
process or bodily commitment required by the client. This is why we ensure what we believe is
fair compensation, and why we only allow clients to donate eggs a maximum of three times.
Every egg donation process comes with an increased level of health risks and we will provide

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resources and counseling at every client’s visit with information about the potential risks so they
are able to make as informed a decision as we can feasibly ensure.
We keep detailed client records and will no allow a client to donate more than three
times, but unfortunately, we cannot control their donation history or future outside of our clinic.
Ideally, we would love for federal standards and procedures be established to create a national
client database so we can monitor donation histories and manage the associated health risks to
the best of our ability.
Sperm donation happens to be a much simpler process with less medical or invasive
components. Sperm donors will be compensated $50 dollars for each donation and may make up
to two donations per week. We will not accept donors over the age of 60 and will screen for
viable sperm throughout the donation process.
Anonymity
Our clinic does not offer anonymous gamete donation for either sperm or egg donors. It is
our feeling that first and foremost, the introduction of the internet and the information readily
available through it doesn’t make anonymity truly feasible even if we were to do our best to
provide it. Secondly, anonymity is not something we believe is necessary or healthy for either
donor or recipient.
We adhere to the system established by countries like Sweden, Austria, Germany, the
Netherlands, Norway, and the UK where “new sperm and egg donors must put information into a
registry, and a donor-conceived child is entitled to request and receive their donor’s name and
last known address when they reach the age of 18” (Cohen, 13). Not every child will request this
information and not every family will want this information, but in the interest of the potential

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child resulting from the donation we feel we need to make sure this information is available
should they wish to access it. This information can be important for identity purposes but also for
hereditary, biological, or medical needs. We screen for all available and relevant diseases and
abnormalities in the donated gametes but we cannot guarantee or screen for all possible
biological variations and it may be important to inform a child’s medical history to have access
to the donor’s information. By law, all donors are protected from formal parenting
responsibilities and have no legal responsibility for the resulting child. This does not change in
our clinic and all legal protections will stay in place, but any resulting child will have the ability
to access the donor when they turn 18 if they choose to do so.
Prenatal Testing for Disabilities
Prenatal testing is offered through our clinic. We will screen for all of the diseases and
genetic abnormalities that are standard for this kind of screening. We will provide the service and
walk clients through all available options following the results of the screening. We have a great
dedication to furthering social justice and work to play an active role in shifting cultural norms
and ideas around family and ability. This mission has allowed us to partner with several
disability rights activist groups who have provided our clinic with incredible resources regarding
the realities of living with many of the disabilities often screened for through our prenatal testing
services. If potential disabilities or genetic abnormalities are detected, we are able to connect
parents with people living with the disability as well as families with children with the disability
so our clients can form connections and gain an understanding of the kind of life they are capable
of leading with a child with a disability.

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Although we are partnered with some disability rights organizations whose mission does
not agree with our prenatal testing services and who are active in the fight against aborting
fetuses found to have a potential disability, we will not pressure clients to make a decision one
way or another. We are dedicated to choice and feel it is our responsibility to provide clients with
as much information as possible so they can make as well informed a choice as possible for
themselves and their family.
DesignerBabies
We are not a clinic that selects for any traits, and will only participate in selecting against
very specific traits only for medical purposes. We have an interest in furthering social justice and
equality and firmly believe that selecting for traits is the antithesis of this goal. Selecting for
certain traits contributes to a society that gets to discriminate against and one day eliminate traits
they don’t find aesthetically pleasing. The social and cultural consequences of assistive
reproductive technologies being used for this kind of service are too potentially catastrophic for
our clinic to involve ourselves in.
We view sex selection as an extreme form of trait selection or designer babies. We will
not perform this service for any reason. There are a lot of dangers associated with sex selection
including the potential for skewing sex percentages favoring one sex over another, and
reinforcing the gender discrimination that is already rampant in society. Sex is not a disease, one
sex should not be valued against another, and we will not participate in this kind of behavior.

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Reductions
The Together Fertility Clinic does provide reduction services up to 20 weeks for any
reason. We strongly believe in choice and because of that we will both provide as much
resources and information to our clients as we can, and respect any decision our client makes
after having processed that information. We offer reductions for multiple births down to a
singleton, including 2-1 reductions. In these reduction scenarios we will not make the reduction
based on sex or other apparent genetic characteristics, the decision will be made out of the best
interest of the health of the mother and the potential resulting child. If both fetuses appear
equally viable, the decision will be made at random. This policy reflects our commitment to
choice and our foundation in understanding the fetus as a fetus, not yet a child.
Post Menopausal Pregnancy
We offer post-menopausal pregnancy options through IVF only on a case by case basis.
Our general policy is not to perform assistive reproductive services to women who have reached
menopause because there is an increased health and safety risk for both the potential mother and
potential child. There are circumstances however where women reach menopause very early in
life or for medical purposes and we are willing to meet and counsel women who have reached
menopause in order to make a decision that will be safe for everyone involved.
Our policy is in place mostly in regard to the health risks associated with pregnancies that
occur later in life, but it is important to note that our policy will apply to men over 60 years old
as well. Again, we will make exceptions on a case by case basis, but we do believe we have a
responsibility to the potential child that would be conceived as the result of our services and we
have a general concern about the level of care that could be given by an older potential parent.

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Surrogacy
The Together Clinic offers a full surrogacy program that includes a surrogate registry and
matching services with intended parents and surrogates, a legal facilitation counselor, and family
counseling services provided through the full process. We do have a non-negotiable policy that
all potential surrogates must have had at least one successful pregnancy prior to applying to be a
surrogate. They do not need to have kept the baby or raised it themselves, but it is important
potential surrogates have experienced a successful pregnancy because it is in the best interest of
the surrogate. We want to minimize any potential emotional or legal hardships that can result
from an often intimate experience like surrogacy. Too many cases have left mothers, families,
and children in familial and social limbo and have resulted in extreme hardships for everyone
involved in the process. Our pregnancy policy is intended to be one attempt to reduce that kind
of harm. We also require our clients, once they are matched with a surrogate, sit down with that
surrogate and our contractual legal team to work out the details of their surrogacy agreement by
going through an extensive list of potential “what ifs” so the clients are all on the same page and
have a contractual agreement they can refer to if a difficult situation arises in through their
surrogacy process.
Family Counseling
We want our clients to be able to make the most informed choices they can and it is our
responsibility to make sure they have that information. Our clinic provides mandatory counseling
services for all new clients and a continued counseling program for clients pursuing surrogacy.
The counseling is not an added expense for our clients and is instead an expense funded through

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our outreach efforts and relationships with social justice and child oriented non-profit
organizations. We feel we have an important role to play in ensuring the health and safety of
everyone involved in our services, which includes the client, their family, and the resulting child.
We have worked hard to ensure the counselors we have working on site are the best in
the field and we have been fortunate to work with some truly special individuals. Our counseling
mandate is not meant to scare clients, deter them from our services, or undermine their autonomy
in their decision to build a family. Instead, our staff is trained in a manner that is not to assert
judgment and instead to make sure all parties involved in the assistive reproductive process are
emotionally healthy and prepared for the process our services entail. We fully believe it is for the
true benefit of everyone to have a third party counselor evaluate and discuss a client’s options
fully.
Adoption Specialists and Services
What truly sets the Together Fertility Clinic apart from other fertility services is our
onsite adoption specialists and service providers. We have partnered with an adoption agency
who has office space available in our clinic. As special as it is for us to be involved in the
creation of children, our commitment to non-traditional families and to the lives of children
extends beyond that service. We believe in informed decision making and being aware of and
having access to the full range of options available to our clients.
We also recognize that the decision to visit our clinic or any fertility clinic is a difficult
and personal decision for anyone to make and we do not wish to undermine or minimize that
decision with assumptions made that they haven’t yet considered their options. By working

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closely with the adoption programs we are trying instead to make the option seem real and
accessible.
Final Note
The Together Fertility Clinic is dedicated to the health and happiness of our clients and
wish to promote the same health, happiness, and equality in the greater society at large. The
options we have now around fertility and making the dreams of parents come true are incredible,
but we recognize it is a great responsibility on our part to ensure the services are provided in a
fair and ethical manner because the implications for our work extend beyond family borders and
affect the greater social systems. It is our great wish that everyone has access to the available
means of building a family that is right for them, and we will help them make that happen,
Together.