At the World Fertility Awards in New York City, transgender fertility work was named, recognized, and placed on a global stage alongside major advances in assisted reproductive technology, access, and patient advocacy. The World Fertility Awards exist to recognize people and projects expanding access, awareness, innovation, and equity in family building around the world. This year’s honorees included clinicians, researchers, advocates, and leaders working across continents to address infertility, access gaps, and outdated narratives about who gets to build a family.

Baby Making for Everybody demystifies the dizzying process of pursuing parenthood as queer and solo people, offering detailed, gender-affirming, body-positive advice on topics including fertility tracking, choosing a donor or surrogate, legal considerations, navigating pregnancy and gender identity, fertility procedures, foster parenting and adoption, and miscarriage and infertility.

A study released earlier this year documented nine transgender women in the Netherlands and Australia as they paused hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in order to create mature sperm. By 17 weeks, or nearly four months, all individuals were able to produce spermatozoa (mature sperm cells). And three of the four trans women who stopped HRT to conceive at home with a partner were able to do so.

More trans people are publicly out and having families of their own, inspiring others to do the same. This increased visibility is likely to prompt fertility care providers to realize that this kind of care needs to become standard. The difficult part will be figuring out how to make that care accessible to everyone.