Gay male couples face more challenges, higher costs to start a family

Published by CNBC. Read the full article.

Bret Shuford and Stephen Hanna knew from early on in their relationship they wanted to raise a child together. But the married couple didn’t think a biological child was a possibility.

As freelancers in the creative arts, Shuford and Hanna don’t always see steady income, even when working on Broadway. The Houston-based couple, known as the “Broadway Husbands,” thought having a child with a donor egg and gestational carrier “seemed like it was something that was only available to people who were very wealthy,” said Shuford, 44.

It’s a safe assumption that having a child with a surrogate, now most often called a gestational carrier, is cost-prohibitive. While expenses vary widely due to a number of medical and legal factors, “the average cost of surrogacy in America has gone from $75,000 five years ago, to anywhere between $150,000 and $250,000 today,” according to Dr. Brian Levine, a reproductive endocrinologist who founded surrogacy matching platform Nodal.

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