Evening, I am Christian Lazerevski, a high school teacher and proud member of a gay relationship. I am here to discuss with the room an arising crisis that fellow gay people have to face, along with the discrimination that comes with being homosexual. To broaden actually, this is on the behalf of all infertile couples which is 1 in 6 couples in the world. While seemingly small, infertility is actually devastating problem for those wanting to be parents. I’m not here for your sympathy though, I’d like to propose to you food for thought on an infrequent topic.

As only high school children, you may not understand, but fast forward say, 10 years from now. Picture the joyous moments, occurring in preparation of having your first child. You and your loved one merrily discuss the intricate details of your future as parents, and bond lovingly over the prospect of starting your own family, a real milestone in one’s life. You go out to stores and buy things like, you know; blankets, clothes, soft toys, prams, bottles. You clear out space, so that your precious new family member will have a nursery to play in, and be able to live comfortably in a place you can call home. Being an infertile couple, options are narrow, and a surrogate seems the inviting answer.

However, you then realise that by Australian law, altruistic surrogacy is the only recognised surrogacy that has become legal, and any type of commercial surrogacy is unfortunately forbidden. This means that the surrogate has to voluntarily carry the child with no form of payment whatsoever. But what sane woman would want to go through the burden of carrying a child and the excruciating pain of labour for another for no personal benefit? In fact, for every 1 altruistic surrogacy made in Australia, there are over 10 commercial surrogacies made by Australians overseas. The will for a biological child well eclipses the law banning it.

So what can an infertile couple that are ready to start a family do? This is what my partner and I, as well as 48 million couples worldwide are asking themselves. My partner and I extremely disappointed that we do not have the right to start a family, even though we are financially and emotionally capable of doing so. Do we prefer a generation being raised on abuse and the dole? Why are we denied the basic right of having our own biological child? Especially when we are genetically positioned to want to reproduce and pass on our DNA to the next generation.

But, why don’t you just adopt another child, you may ask? Because we would deeply appreciate being able to see a reflection of ourselves when we look at our child, to be proud of what our genetics can create. There is an average of 27 couples waiting in line for every one adoptable child, whereas in surrogacy, this ratio is obviously 1 to 1. So why wait, months or even years when we can have something that is our own, sooner?

But as said