Fertility clinic just for trans people set to open in 2024

A fertility clinic focused specifically on serving transgender clients is set to open in Pittsburgh next spring. The clinic will specialize in providing safe, affirming, and affordable care for trans and nonbinary individuals and couples looking to conceive.

“For a lot of our clients, they’ve had massive difficulty to access these services, both from an affordability perspective but also from a safety perspective,” Dr. Sheila Ramgopal, an OB-GYN at the Allegheny Reproductive Health Center (ARHC), told Philadelphia Gay News. ARHC is developing the clinic in partnership with Mate Fertility.

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Ramgopal continued, “Even the basics — going into a place where they feel safe and feel like they’re in an inclusive community, because a lot of providers don’t reflect those communities. A lot of the services are actually very tailored for, let’s say, affluent cis-white women and heterosexual couples. For the nonbinary and trans community, there’s a massive gap in terms of all of us accessing care for fertility services.”

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Ramgopal also emphasized that the clinic will work to provide services at one-third to half the cost of other fertility centers.

“Our goal is to make this extremely accessible for people no matter where you’re coming from and what your financial picture is. We know when we center the folks that aren’t able [to access] these services, everyone then gets the best care.”  

The clinic will provide standard fertility services like IVF, hormone therapy, surrogacy, and sperm and egg donation. PGN said it will also provide some gender-affirming surgeries.

One major goal of the clinic’s creators is to offer more education around trans people’s reproductive health, such as if/how various hormonal treatments affect fertility and what can be done about it.

“There’s a lot of different things that people aren’t getting educated on,” said Mate Fertility CEO Traci Keen. “I think that there are some real luminaries in the field right now that do a good job of providing more access to high-quality information. What we really want to be is that beacon for people where they can get information that’s tailored and appropriate for them.”