Fertility options for transgender and non-binary people
Female to male
Before starting your gender reassignment journey, you may want to consider freezing your eggs for an eventual fertility treatment in the future. Hormone therapy will most likely suppress your fertility function and will lead to a complete loss of fertility over time. The longer you are under hormone therapy, the more your fertility is likely to be permanently affected.
If you would like to have biological children, or if you are not sure yet, preserving your fertility is the best way to keep your options open. If you already have been through puberty, you may be able to freeze your eggs and store them. This will ensure that eggs are available if you require a fertility treatment in the future.
If you already have started your hormone therapy or hormone blockers treatment, it may still be possible to temporarily reverse the effects that these drugs have on your body. Our fertility consultants will probably recommend you to briefly pause your treatment in order to start your fertility preservation journey.
Fertility treatments
If you have stored eggs, those could be later fertilized using intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). This is a fertilization technique which allow a sperm to be directly injected in an egg. The resulting embryo will then be transferred in someone’s womb. This someone could be your partner or a surrogate if yours has been removed.
Screenings
One of the first steps towards freezing eggs/embryos is taking a blood test for various infectious diseases (HIV, Hepatitis C and Hepatitis B).
If you were to be positive for one of these diseases, it would not mean that you can’t go ahead with your fertility preservation. It would only mean that your eggs/embryos will be stored in a special tank.
If you wish to have your eggs transferred into someone else’s uterus – a surrogate or a partner – extra screenings will be required. Under current UK law, the person providing the eggs who is not going to carry the pregnancy is required to be screened the same way as a donor. Therefore, they must first undertake some screening tests involving genetic and infection testing, and following a period of quarantine screening tests need to be repeated.
Storage
You can store your eggs for a period of up to 55 years; you will need to actively renew your consent every ten years and you will be contacted about this accordingly.
Consent forms
We will provide you with the adequate consent forms before the start of your treatment. You will have time to go through these forms and you will have many opportunities to ask questions to our nurses and doctors.
Support
We will make everything possible for you to feel safe while in treatment with us. If you have questions before, during and/or after your treatment, we will always make time to give you a call back or to accommodate you when you come to the clinic.
We also have fertility counsellors working at King’s fertility. They are all accredited by the British Infertility Counselling Association (BICA). You will be given their contact details should you need extra support.