Thomas Jefferson University this week is hosting “When it Takes More Than Two to Make a Baby,” an infertility-counseling conference that includes a number of sessions focused on LGBT topics.
More than 80 people turned out for the second-annual conference, held May 13-15, nearly double last year’s participation, including international visitors.
“Infertility and assisted-reproductive therapy have been growing, growing, growing in the past few decades,” said Dr. Andrea Mechanick Braverman, one of the conference directors. “With that, there have been a lot more challenges in terms of supporting intended parents and other stakeholders as family-building options have grown. There are tons of conferences for medical professionals — doctors, nurses, lab folks — but we wanted to focus on the people on the front lines doing the counseling.”
The first day of the conference was an introduction to some of the mental-health issues regarding ART and infertility, such as the unique issues facing same-sex couples or single parents by choice. The second day featured advanced-counseling topics, including LGBT-focused sessions such as “Ripped from the Headlines,” a discussion about hot topics such as the needs of transgender patients and the changing legal and social contexts for same-sex couples, one of several sessions that looks at legal issues.
“Part of what we want our attendees to be educated about is that legal issues are very much an important part of education. They should have a real understanding of how law, medicine and psychosocial issues interweave and are intertwined,” Braverman said.
The conference wraps up Friday with a focus on ethics, including live “psychology labs,” featuring actors illustrating potential cases.
“The name of the game is information,” Braverman said about the conference’s overall goal. “If our mental-health professionals are better at informing intended parents, then that downstream is better for families, for kids, for people making informed decisions,” she said. “And we want them to know what research is out there, what the legal landscape is. These are things we need to be thinking of.”