SARASOTA – “We met on a tram going to baggage claim in the Las Vegas airport…so some things in Vegas don’t stay in Vegas,” said Project Pride SRQ President, Jordan Letschert.
Project PRIDE SRQ President Jordan Letschert and his husband, Robby Price always dreamed of getting married and starting a family.
“So that was a big plus for us both, we didn’t have to convince one another of that,” said Letschert.
Jordan and Robby considered both surrogacy and adoption, not knowing of the challenges each option holds.
“We chose the surrogacy route and we hit our first roadblock in Florida, and that was because the law required you to be in Married in Florida to participate in a surrogacy,” said Letschert.
So they started the surrogacy process in California then, Florida recognized same-sex marriage in early 2015… so Jordan and Robby tied the knot here on May 22nd, 2016..that allowed them to complete the surrogacy process here in Florida, but since they had already started it somewhere else, there were a lot of moving parts.
“So we still flew out to California, we racked up around 30 thousand miles back and forth multiple times,” said Letschert.
They finally found a local surrogate and even though the couple started the journey before getting married, it took a total of 21 months. A long process with a lot of obstacles.
“Our surrogate had to go to the hospital and we both rushed to the Tampa area, and they initially would only let one of us in because they would assume that would be the mother and one of us would be the father and the other person was just extra,” said Letschert.
“I don’t think that’s a common scenario for a lot of couples to be in, and one that we had to fight with on a couple occasions with some of the charge nurses that we’re at the hospitals, it was a very difficult process,” said Robby Price.
Extra hurdles most heterosexual, or straight, couples would likely never encounter…
Tune into SNN on Tuesday, June 22nd for part 2 of Pride on the Suncoast.