What is the Fertility Society of Australia & New Zealand

In this video, Accredited Family Law Specialist and Page Provan Director Stephen Page introduces the Fertility Society of Australia & New Zealand and this organization’s critical role in the IVF industry.

Transcript

Good day, everyone. [I’m] Stephen Page from Page Provan Family and Fertility Lawyers. Recently I was deeply honoured and humbled to become a Director of the Fertility Society of Australia and New Zealand. This organisation, the Fertility Society, evidently operates in Australia and New Zealand. It used to be called the Fertility Society of Australia, but apparently, New Zealand wanted a change of name and you can’t blame them. It didn’t seem very friendly if you call it the Fertility Society of Australia and you’re operating a clinic in New Zealand. But self-evidently, it is the peak body of IVF clinics in Australia and New Zealand.

It is trusted by the government to play a critical role not only as the industry body but as the industry regulator. In Australia, the Fertility Society is trusted to regulate each and every IVF clinic, no matter where you go, whether you’re in Hobart or in Darwin or in Perth or in Cans, for example, or Sydney or Melbourne, you will go to an IVF clinic trusting that that clinic is regulated by the Fertility Society.

Every year the Fertility Society runs scientific conferences. I have been honoured in the past to present at them about legal issues to do with assisted reproductive treatment, for example, ethical issues to do with surrogacy. And hopefully, I am again. How I got appointed to the Fertility Society Board was very simple, as you’ll have seen in another video. I’ve recently been appointed as the director of Access Australia’s Infertility Network, which is a charity which helps people undergo the process of fertility treatment of assisted reproductive treatment. And I turned up to my first board meeting to discover that my number was already marked and it was suggested in quite pointed terms that I should be the new representative by Access Australia’s Infertility Network on the Fertility Society Board.

And that is, as a consumer. And I’m not only a lawyer who practises in this area and a lecturer at the University of New South Wales and Ethics and Law and Reproductive Medicine. But I am and have always been keenly interested in this area and the effect it has on people who like you, who need fertility treatment. 

I’ve been there, done that. You’ll see, there’s a separate video where I talk at length about my own fertility journey, but in essence, I’ve had the pain of infertility. Not good,  eats at your soul. And I’ve been lucky enough to have three children and the last of whom was through surrogacy, which necessarily involved egg donation, a surrogate and IVF. So as much as one person can do all these things in one lifetime, that’s my lived experience. So I bring all of that, plus my expertise as a lawyer who has been in this space since 1988 and handled over 1700 surrogacy journeys and many, many egg donation, sperm donation, embryo donation journeys, as well as having to give advice about assisted reproductive treatment laws in this country to the board of the Fertility Society. Go and have a look at the website.

You’ll see what I mean about what the Fertility Society does.

Thank you.