Marine and Ana-Luiza are Oscar’s mothers. Thanks to the ROPA conception method, they were both able to participate physically in the conception of their son. However, if this method was able to allow their family to exist happily, it is still not authorized in France for lesbian couples.
On June 7, 2021, the bioethics bill is back in Parliament. Under debate in particular, the authorization for couples of women to have recourse to a MAP. Marine and his wife Ana-Luiza were able to do so by going to Spain. She recounts their experience, in order to bear witness to what their family is and to the luck that all couples of women should be able to have. Marine and Ana-Luiza used the ROPA method in IVI clinic in Valence, in Spain, where the technique is authorized. It consists in inseminating the fertilized oocyte of one of the women of a lesbian couple, into the uterus of the other woman.
“My name is Marine, I am 32 years old and I carried Oscar; my wife is called Ana-Luiza and she designed Oscar. She is Brazilian, I am French, we live in Paris and we we met in France. We wanted to have a family life; I have brothers and sisters but Ana doesn’t. When you’re gay, you know that the day you have a child, at best ‘one of the two will be the mother, but not both. In our South American friends, however, we have been informed that this ROPA method exists in Spain on which we have very little information available in France. so been planted in the heads of a lot of our girlfriends! We are the first couple to have done it, but you should know that there are three behind who are going or have embarked on this adventure.
We wanted to go through this method to have a blood link with the child.
We both happen to be in very good health, we both have jobs that allow us to free up time. We also had the means since we are supported by our families to conceive this child. All the conditions were met so that we could give ourselves the time to try this method, which requires a little more than a simple IVF. We tried and it worked on the second try, so we had a lot of luck! Today, we have two embryos left, it seems to me, we will see what we do with them later.
Lucky to have been well surrounded
The support of my family was extremely important because from the moment we talked about the project of starting our own family, we felt that everyone was very keen on it! That in an LBGT course means that you save time, when you don’t have to fight against your parents. They are a little bit old but they were very curious about all these design techniques that we were familiar with! We spent evenings talking about how it worked, and they were also learning from their side. Suddenly it almost becomes a collective family project. Normally a child is conceived in the privacy, but in our case the process is so long, we are so marginalized in France that the support of relatives helps a lot.
We also had the financial support of our parents, because to conceive a child, in our case, it was 15,000 euros for our various attempts and this is only the first! Without the investments that we were able to unlock and without the help of our parents, we knew that we had very few possible attempts. In fact, the moral support of the parents, their curiosity and the financial support allowed us to live it very quietly and that is pleasant.
What we liked is that with this method we both contributed to making this baby; our friends have the same motivation.
We could have done a classic IVF where I who wanted to carry the child would have been and the surrogate mother, and the biological mother but since we had the time, the support and the money, we wished we could both live physically. this adventure. We each wanted to have a bond with the child, because we actually found it nice! And then it was important to us to be able to explain to Oscar that he is the result of our two genetic heritages. Physically we both matched well because we have the same blood group, the same rh, we also found a hyper compatible donor so the embryos held fast.
We are lucky, I repeat, to be in good health, to have time and money. So we were able to afford to invest in a ROPA method, which takes more time because we have to match the two bodies, but we were very well supported. Today, we no longer have a single girlfriend who would do otherwise!
Late legislation
In France, when you are a lesbian, you have the right to nothing: no right to have a child, no right to have a parentage link with him … We are hyper hypocrites on the subject. We saw it very badly. There I am writing to you from a cafe downstairs from the notary who refused to accompany us on the adoption procedure, for example. I just got all our documents to go see another notary who specializes in the defense of LGBT couples. We do not have the same rights when we pay the same taxes … but that is another debate.
Legally I am Oscar’s mother and I am married to my wife who is also Oscar’s biological mother, but under the law it is as if I was a single woman married to someone. It’s been 8 months that we wanted to unblock the adoption procedure and we realized that we were already putting sticks in our wheels when we were only at the beginning; we know that the adoption procedure will be very long, 2 or 3 years at best. We have a file that is rather “simple”: we have been in a relationship for 8 years, married, we live together, we have a job, we have the label of the small model family so that can pass. The only difficulty is that we do not have the same nationality. Legally, I’m Oscar’s only mother. “
Today, Oscar’s moms are aware that the luck they may have had is not given to everyone. Marine and Ana-Luiza were accompanied to Valencia by the IVI clinic, which has 65 clinics in 9 countries. IVI welcomes and supports French patients in their parenting journey through various treatments such as, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization (IVF), egg donation, intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), diagnosis preimplantation and vitrification of oocytes.
Mathilde Wattecamps
Missions: Mathilde is an expert in subjects related to women’s rights and health. Addicted to Instagram and Twitter, never stingy with a good …