The Assisted Human Reproduction Act and LGBTQ Communities

A Paper Submitted by the AHRA/LGBTQ Working Group

The AHRA/LGBTQ Working Group is a group of Toronto-based service providers (physicians, nurses, fertility counselors, midwives, community development workers, lawyers), researchers (university, institutional, community-based), and consumers of reproductive technologies who, collectively, have decades of experience working with and on behalf of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer) individuals and communities.

Collectively, this group is connected to thousands of LGBTQ people who are planning families, often involving the use of AHR technologies. Some fertility clinics estimate that as much as 30% or more of their clients are members of LGBTQ communities (statistic cited by Toronto-based fertility clinics at joint session of Dykes Planning Tykes/Daddies & Papas 2B, 2007). As such, the AHRA/LGBTQ Working Group has followed with keen interest the development of the AHRA and see ourselves, our clients, and the communities of which we are a part as key stakeholders in the implementation and enforcement of the Act. 

In the article available for download below, the AHRA/LGBTQ Working group has compiled some of its key concerns and recommendations in relation to the Act, including input on the two areas for which regulations are currently being written.

The complete Word document of this article is available for download through our Resources section here.

For the Canadian Bar Association's article, referred to in Appendix D for the AHRA/LGBTQ Working Group paper, which comments on the Assisted Human Reproduction Act in terms of the reimbursement of expenditures related to the use of Assisted Reproductive Technologies, click this link.