Finding An IVF Provider Near You with The Prelude Network

As queer families increasingly turn to IVF to fulfill their dreams of parenthood, they look at providers near – and far – to see who will treat them with respect, listen to their goals, and help them tailor an individualized plan.

With more than 90 fertility clinics, The Prelude Network is the largest and fastest-growing network of providers in North America. From Texas (where there are clinics in more than a dozen cities) to Florida (twelve clinics) to Pennsylvania (seven clinics), and even in Canada (clinics in seven cities), the clinics comprising The Prelude Network don't merely accept queer couples and individuals wanting to build their families; they celebrate them.

Read about just a few of the Network's clinics below.

San Francisco

San Francisco's Pacific Fertility Center offers prospective parents all the support and expertise they need, from egg donor programs and fertility preservation to fertility testing, genetic testing, and specialized care for the LGBTQ+ community. (PFC is "welcoming to all kinds of family structures and complex fertility cases," the clinic's website explains.) Cutting-edge expertise plus compassionate investment in outcomes for the families they work with has garnered PFC awards but also, more importantly, "a reputation for providing some of the best IVF treatment options [and] success in treating even the most challenging infertility cases."

All of the clinics in The Prelude Network take pride in their efforts to be informed and respectful of the family-building needs of queer patients. "We are set up to be able to receive patients of all family building types," explains PFC team member Daragh Castaneda. Daragh leads PFC's Third Party Reproduction team, which focuses specifically on matching patients with sperm donors, egg donors, and gestational surrogates to support them on their journeys.

Chicago

The Advanced Fertility Center of Chicago is one of the Network's most recognized locations, with nationally acclaimed providers and success rates that draw families from all around the Midwest.

"A lot of the LGBTQ patients that I've seen are not even just from Chicago," Dr. Tumi Kuyoro says. "They're from all the other states in the Midwest, and even as far as some of the states in the East. I think that's a reflection of the quality of services that we're able to perform here," including having their own donor egg bank, an asset that Dr. Kuyoro notes is a major draw.

AFCC is upfront with its philosophy that "Love Makes a Family," and proudly declares its commitment "to providing inclusive, personalized care to all individuals and couples, from the use of gestational carriers, to the special shared experience of reciprocal IVF, to the preservation of transgender people's fertility for family-building post-transition."

New York City

With three locations of the NYU Langone Fertility Center – one on the city's East Side, one on the West Side, and one in neighboring Westchester County – the Big Apple is a place for queer families to find help in being fruitful. "Since 1992, we've helped tens of thousands of individuals and couples to have children on their own timetables, using the newest and most advanced fertility treatments," the NYU Langone Fertility Center website reads.

Dr. Sarah Cascante of NYULFC notes that fertility preservation is a growing trend, not only among young women who want to access high-quality eggs into their late 30s and beyond, but also for trans people preparing for gender confirmation treatment.

"Prior to gender-affirming care, it is recommended that all transgender persons be counseled about the effects of gender-affirming care (both hormonal and surgical) on their fertility and options for fertility preservation and future childbearing," Dr. Cascante says. "Egg, sperm, embryo, ovarian tissue, and testicular tissue cryopreservation are all ways that fertility can be preserved before gender-affirming care. These treatments can help transgender people build families after they transition."

Houston, Austin, and Dallas, Texas

Respectful, inclusive family building can be found in abundance deep in the heart of Texas, where Aspire Fertility services thirteen cities, including Austin, Dallas, and Houston. But what Aspire chiefly serves are people – people looking to become parents.

"I think it begins at the personal level," Aspire's Dr. David Prokai says. "Establishing a very warm, open atmosphere. Presenting yourself as knowledgeable about having worked with LGBTQ couples [and] laying that groundwork of, 'I know what I'm doing, I respect you and what we're trying to do, and I've done this before.' "

That personal touch enhances the technical skills that Aspire's fertility providers bring to the process. Dr. Deborah Ikhena-Abel shares that "sometimes people [think option X] is the only way that, as a queer couple, they can move forward. They might not realize there [are different] options." Letting her patients know the wide range of family-building possibilities that exists equips her patients to make more educated decisions.

Nashville

Famed as the seat of country music and "the home of the Grand Ole Opry," the greater Nashville area is also home to Tennessee Fertility Institute, which takes pride in providing "board-certified reproductive endocrinology care for males, females and anyone else on the gender spectrum."

That broad acceptance doesn't mean generic care, however. TFI's top-rated providers proudly offer attentive, individualized services to queer families with their specific needs. "No two journeys are the same," the Institute's website notes. "That's why we focus on 1:1 care."

Tennessee Fertility Institute has two locations, in Franklin and Nashville, TN.

Boca Raton, Jupiter, and Miami

Only Texas has more cities with fertility providers belonging to The Prelude Network than Florida, a state with an even dozen cities where the Network's providers are helping queer families and individuals welcome their own biologically related children into the world. IVFMD, with its half-dozen locations, tailors its services with "customized treatment plans that consider each unique patient's circumstances and lifestyle."

Among those locations are clinics in Boca Raton, Jupiter, and Miami, as well as Viera, Naples, and Cooper City. As queer people build their families, IVFMD welcomes them into its own family. IVFMD has always been in the business of putting patients first. Dr. Jenna McCarthy recalls how Juergen Eiserman, IVFMD's founder – and a mentor to Dr. McCarthy – shared words of wisdom about the importance of centering the families the clinic works with.

"He said, 'Take care of the patients and everything else takes care of itself,'" Dr. McCarthy recalls. "That's very much the way the practice operates. [There's a] quality of care that carries through behind closed doors."

Philadelphia, Bryn Mawr, and More

Main Line Fertility serves greater Philadelphia with IVF, IUI, fertility preservation, and the innovative IVC, or Invocell, a cutting-edge "first of its kind device" that "holds the eggs and sperm in your body for fertilization and incubation," as opposed to the usual IVF method of fertilizing eggs under laboratory conditions and allowing resulting embryos to develop for several days before implantation. The clinic's website explains that Invocell "allow[s] you to be more personally involved in the process," with the embryos created given the same testing as those conceived in the lab before being implanted in the uterus.

Such complex, cutting-edge options are routine for Main Line Fertility. Dr. Allison Bloom explains that the team there works with couples in which one partner with a uterus might say, "I don't want to carry [the pregnancy] but we want to use my eggs," in which case, "IVF becomes more of a first line treatment." Similarly, IVF can be used for reciprocal pregnancies, in which two partners with uteruses may opt to carry embryos created with their significant other's egg, a parenting experience that deepens family bonds.

For more and more queer families, the route to parenthood lies through IVF – and the first destination is a fertility clinic belonging to The Prelude Network.