Fertility Preservation

Fertility Preservation for Transgender Patients

We recommend seeking advice about preserving your fertility before you start any medical transition. Flinders Fertility strongly supports rainbow families, and we are happy to help families make choices that suit their particular needs. For more information about the full range of our services for gender-diverse patients click here.

For those assigned male at birth:

Sperm Freezing
Sperm freezing (also known as cryopreservation) allows sperm to be stored almost indefinitely. This allows a trans woman with a female partner a chance to have biological children in the future using their sperm to fertilise their partner’s eggs. Sperm collection is usually done at our clinic at Glenelg though in some circumstances this can be done at home if you are close enough to deliver the sample within an hour.

We recommend that sperm freezing is done before taking gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) as this has been shown to significantly lower total sperm count and increase sperm abnormalities making it less likely that they will be viable.

For those assigned female at birth:

Egg Freezing
As a trans man, freezing eggs may be a consideration if you’d like to keep the door open to having a biological child at a later date.

Egg freezing should preferably be done before commencing gender-affirming hormone therapy (Testosterone or “T”). It is sometimes possible to undergo a stimulated cycle to retrieve eggs later, but this entails a suspension of gender-affirming hormone therapy for an extended period and may be a confronting and difficult process depending on your stage of transition.

If you decide to freeze your eggs, you’ll need to take a course of hormonal ovarian stimulation medication to produce ovarian follicular growth, and then undergo an egg collection procedure. The eggs are then frozen and stored for later use.