The couple was ready to complete their family. They had one son, and were hoping for a second child. The mother, after a successful and healthy pregnancy, suffered complications during the birth of their first son that left her unable to bear additional children. This Maple Grove couple (names withheld for privacy), knew their lives could be a little fuller.
It was one year after their son, now a 3-year-old, was born that the couple discovered they couldn’t have more children. Knowing their family was always meant to be bigger than three, they began researching options.
Adoption was the most obvious choice. But they wanted a baby of their own. They began researching assisted reproduction, and learned about gestational carriers. People more often hear the term “surrogate” than “gestational carrier.” It’s a similar concept, but in its truest definition, a surrogate mother will provide the eggs for a pregnancy. In the case of a gestational carrier, the woman brings the baby to term, but the child’s genetics come from its biological parents—in this case, the Maple Grove couple. They used their own egg and sperm to conceive, and then the gestational carrier (in their case, a family member) took it from there. A healthy baby girl was born in 2014.
The complexity of the assisted-reproductive process cannot be easily shared in a short magazine story. For this particular family, it took three years of doctors, lawyers, soul-searching and advice from friends and family before they met their second child.
In some ways, the reality of assisted reproduction tis blurred by a lack of information. Often politicized and ethically scrutinized, surrogacy (a blanket term used to describe any form of pregnancy carried to term by someone other than the biological parents) can be hard on parents emotionally, and that’s before they even begin trying to answer the medical and legal questions.
For help, this couple turned to Steve Snyder, a Maple Grove attorney who has specialized in assisted reproduction cases for nearly 25 years. His job is to help families with the process, from finding a surrogate to working with doctors, insurance companies, contracts and legal documents. Quite simply, he serves as an advocate. “It is a very complex and legally uncertain landscape because Minnesota doesn’t have any law intended to apply to these third-party arrangements,” Snyder says. As in many states, Minnesota law gives parental rights to the woman who delivers the child. In surrogacy cases, the birth mother is not the biological mother, and assigning parental right to biological parents requires legal agreements between the parents and surrogates.
Snyder’s work is complex and varied, but at its core, his job is to help families secure parental rights and bring home a child. He has successfully worked more than 300 cases in his career, and although the process is long and tedious, it is often successful, given the right resources.
“Find the right people, because without them you wouldn’t be able to navigate the process,” says the Maple Grove father. He and his wife spent countless hours researching the process and say they couldn’t have completed it without Snyder’s help.
As one of the leading advocates of surrogacy in the United States, Snyder understands the benefits of assisted reproduction. Of the 15,000 surrogacy cases around the country since 2002, only 89 ended with complications or conflicts between the parties involved. That’s less than one percent.
Surrogacy is a good fit for many families. And, although the process is far from simple, a baby makes it all worthwhile. “Go with your heart,” the Maple Grove mother says. “Nobody but the two of you can make the decision that’s right for your family.”
Perhaps it’s as simple as Snyder’s philosophy: “Anything that makes more parents makes our society better,” he says. “I love my job.”
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International Assisted Reproduction Center
763.420.6700
