Ronald the cavoodle has two doting dads, but if all goes to plan for Alex and Tom, the day will come when he'll need to share the love with their child.
The Brisbane couple have created embryos and are looking for a surrogate to give birth on their behalf.
"Family is really important to Tom and I," Alex said.
"Children just sort of bring joy and happiness to any sort of household."
In-vitro fertilisation (IVF) is typically the last resort for those who want to start a family. For Alex and Tom, it was the first step of their journey.
"Everyone should be able to access it equally, regardless of what couple type you're in," Tom said.
But access is not equal. People aiming to have a baby via surrogacy are excluded from receiving the Medicare rebate for IVF procedures.
"The egg retrieval is roughly a $12,000 to $16,000 process," Alex said.
"Medicare would pay about $5,000 to $6,000 so it's a good chunk of that, nearly 50 per cent of that, is reimbursed," he said.
'We've spent so much money'
Medicare also denied the rebate to Sarah Stevenson, who is medically infertile.
After 16 failed IVF cycles, the Sydney woman has turned to surrogacy.
"I just find it difficult to understand why people like me, we don't get any help," Ms Stevenson said.
"We've spent so much money, multiple IVF cycles, multiple embryo transfers, so I find it pretty difficult that we then have to have the added expense of doing the surrogacy without Medicare," she said.
Ms Stevenson has found a surrogate and plans to implant her first embryo at the end of the month.
"It should be sort of a level playing field for everyone. Regardless of if you're gay, if you're straight [or] if you're single. I feel like everybody should have the same access to IVF," Ms Stevenson said.
"People, I think, don't realise what it feels like when all you want is your baby and you medically can't do that," she said.
"Everybody should have the chance to get some help to be able to create their family."
Surrogacy lawyer Stephen Page labelled the Medicare exclusion a "discriminatory anomaly" from when surrogacy was illegal.
"For the last 10 years or so, we've had all the states say okay to altruistic surrogacy here, but we've had the Commonwealth as the laggard not prepared to pay for it through Medicare," Mr Page said.
Mr Page, who is a director of the Fertility Society of Australia and New Zealand, argues that removing the distinction will actually cost taxpayers very little.
"We're talking about drop-in-the-ocean stuff — $900,000 a year," he said.
"It's just an absolute scandal that, depending on something unfortunate about your biology, you weren't born with a uterus or because of your sexuality, for example, you're a gay couple, that you … can't get the subsidy."
A senate committee is inquiring into universal access to reproductive healthcare.
Alex, Tom and Mr Page have made submissions arguing that the surrogacy exclusion should be abolished.
Brisbane MP Stephen Bates has also called on the government to scrap the restrictions.
"If we can afford to spend $368 billion on submarines, we can afford $900,000 to make reproductive healthcare universal and accessible," Mr Bates said.
"We shouldn't be punishing people for wanting to have a family."
The previous federal government received advice to scrap the surrogacy exclusion, with the Medicare Benefits Review Taskforce endorsing a recommendation in 2020 to remove the restrictions.
The Albanese government said it would consider lifting the exclusion "as part of broader deliberations on supporting access to reproductive health services", but is yet to make a commitment.
Assistant Health Minister Ged Kearney said the government would consider the recommendations and findings from the senate inquiry, due to be delivered by May 11.
Mr Page said the exemption would be easy to remove.
"It's a regulation, so it doesn't have to go through the senate," Mr Page said.
"This is a budgetary decision. If they've got the political gumption to do this and the political will to do it. It'll just go straight through," he said.
"I think it is quite an easy fix to create equality," Alex said.
A 'particular woman'
Another barrier facing people planning to have a child is the wording of laws banning human cloning.
"The Commonwealth act, for example, says that if you create an embryo, and if you don't do it for the purpose of implanting into a 'particular woman', then you commit an offence punishable by up to 15 years imprisonment," Mr Page said.
Clinics have varying interpretations of the phrase "particular woman".
"One of the clinics has been told, I've been told, by the offices of the federal health department, that if you can't identify the particular woman at the time of creation of the embryo, you commit the offence," Mr Page said.
"They won't treat because they're worried that they're going to lose their licence, as well as committing a serious criminal offence," he said.
Alex said one fertility doctor warned that he and Tom could go to prison if they created an embryo without having a surrogate lined up first.
"I thought then and there that our family creation journey had hit a brick wall," Alex said.
"The purpose of the legislation, this particular section, is to stop embryo farming. Obviously, that's not what Tom and I are trying to do."
