Canada's test-tube baby regulations need to be rewritten, critics say

Sitting at their dining table in their Regina home, Joey Tremblay and Cory Beaujot video chat with their Winnipeg surrogate, Christine English.

After a little weekend small talk the nervous parents-to-be ask about their baby girl.

She's been"kicking around lots," English tells them, addingthat at the beginning of her third trimester she is starting to feel more Braxton Hicks contractions.

Their fall due date is starting to feel increasingly real for the Saskatchewan couple who have been trying to have a baby since 2015.

"Family is a big part of what I'm accustomed to and what I value, and contributing to that mass and mess of people, it's always kind of been a big thing for me," Beaujotsaid.

Tremblay says he thought a lot about being a parent in his 20s but had given up on that dream.

"I thought it's never going to be a possibility, so I kind of set that aside and then Cory reawoke that whole idea, but again, I come from a really big family it just feels like what you do," he said.

Tremblay and Beaujot are like more than eight million other families that have started through the use of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) since the first test-tube babywas born 40 years ago.

Legal regulations in Canada around IVF, which came into effect in 2004,prohibitpaying a surrogate mother for her services, but does allow reimbursement for certain medical and maternity costs when the surrogate mother is performing the service for altruistic reasons.

I loved the fact that I could do this to help somebody else build a family.- Christine English, surrogate mother

Criticssay Canada's rulescan push peoplewho want kids and needIVFand/or surrogates to jurisdictionsoutside of the countrythat have fewer restrictions.

Tremblay and Beaujot started trying to have a family using a surrogate in Mexico three years ago. After several failed attempts in Mexico and changes in the local laws regarding foreign same-sex couples using local surrogates, they shifted their efforts back to Canada and found an agency that paired them with English.

English, 32 and already a mother of two, loved being pregnant but didn't plan on having more than two kids of her own. That's when she started looking at surrogacy.

"I loved the fact that I could do this to help somebody else build a family." English said. "I'm done having children of my own, so I figure why not. I figure if I can help somebody else have a family and I'm fully capable of doing it, then I'm going to do it."

Despite coming into it with the right mindset,English says,it hasn't been as easy as she thought it would be. They have gone through four rounds of IVF, had two chemical pregnancies and one miscarriage. Despite the emotional and taxing process, English says, she was determined to give the couple whose profile was the first she reviewed a baby.

"They want this baby so badly so that's why I was like I have to do this I have to follow through till the end," English said.

Family vs finances

Though Tremblay and Beaujot haven't had to endure the same physical rigours English has to become pregnant, it's been far from easy for them emotionally and financially:To date their attempts to start a family have cost them almost $200,000.

Beaujot says it's hard to make decisions on having a family based on financial situations.

"It feels bizarre to be mixing up finances with your desire to have a family, and it's something that keeps you going and perhaps, maybe, dangerously so, and sometimes you have to stop and take sort of stock of where you are at in the process."

It's a thought echoed by prospective mother Allison Storseth.

Storeth and her husband started trying to have a family four years ago when she was 26. Struggles getting pregnant led to tests that revealed she had premature ovarian failure, which meant if she was going to get pregnant it would take a donated egg.

Multiple rounds of IVF, an anonymous donated egg and $60,000 later she's to be 12 weeks pregnant but frustrated at the difficulties of navigating difficult and costly procedures with a lack of financial support.

"It's frustrating to see that things like liposuction and fertility are put into the same category for insurance and coverage," she said. "They just don't compare at all. Fertility is something that your body is not able to do that it should. Liposuction is something that is a want that is frivolous. It's not hindering to have smaller boobs or a smaller butt, it's just not the same as having children."

Storseth has been blogging about her road to parenthood because she also wants to see more people understand and talk about infertility in Canada.

"I think it would make it easier if people were more open to discussing it," Storsethsaid.

Clearing up legal grey areas

According to the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society only two per centof IVF cycles performed in Canadian fertility clinics are to gestational surrogates women carrying a baby from a donated egg. The demand in Canada is estimated to be much bigger, and many advocates claim Canada's reproductive law is preventing people from having families.

"The current law doesn'twork for anyone," saidLiberal MP Anthony Housefather, who has been working with donors, doctors, surrogates and lawyers on a private members bill that would clarify and decriminalize payment for surrogacy, among other things.

We import 97 per centof our sperm from the United States," he said. "The majority of our eggs are from the United States. Parents with the means go to the U.S. to meet surrogates and hire surrogates there because they are afraid of the Canadian criminal law."

While the bill is unlikely to pass before the next election, lawyer Robynne Kazina says with infertility on the rise and an increase in same-sex couples wanting to start families, the laws governing fertility issues need to be updated.

"It's definitely time to discuss it and talk about it and draft some more regulations around it," she said, adding "people need to understand that even though it's decriminalized [if the bill is passed] at the federal level it's going to be left up to each province to regulate it."