In progress

What is the experience of parents of donors or surrogates? How do grandparents whose grandchildren are born through sperm, egg donation or surrogacy develop their grandparental identity? Who is the donor or surrogate for these grandparents? Very few studies have explored these questions, and this project is the first of its kind in Canada and one of the few globally to investigate the experience of parents of donors or surrogates, as well as grandparents in receiving families.

This project aims to document, from an intersectional perspective, the experiences of LBP women and QTNB people in accessing PMA services or seeking sperm donation through socio-numerical networks. It will enable the development of tools (videos, summary sheets, practice guides) to improve services for these populations and better support the people concerned.

The Contact project aims to examine situations in which a gamete donor is directly contacted by a donor offspring, whom they did not previously know. The study will help better understand the consequences of the progressive expansion of donor conceived people’s access to information about their origins. It will provide pathways for people working in the field of assisted reproduction with regard to supporting users and could be mobilized by lawmakers interested in the issue.

While the media describe a vast range of positive and negative experiences on the part of women who act as surrogates in Canada, we know very little about the way the surrogacies they are involved in actually function. Surrogates’ Voices is the first large-scale Canadian study to examine the ways surrogacy agreements are experienced, as well as the difficulties that surrogates face. The results will support the development of social practices, public policy and legislative frameworks that are more in tune with their needs.

Donor conception has become democratized in recent years, with a growing number of sperm banks. Certain abuses related to this assisted reproduction procedure continue to be the subject of debate, such as the overuse of specific sperm donors for the conception of numerous children within different families and the problem of doctors’ deliberate substitution of donors at the time of conception. This project aims to document the experiences of people born from instances of such abuses, among other things in order to inform decision-makers on the repercussions of such cases and the need to better regulate donor conception.

The My Mother’s Surrogacy project is a Canadian study that looks at the subjective experiences of surrogates’ children when it comes to the surrogacy processes in which their mothers are engaged. More than sixty children and teens have been interviewed for this project.