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About
In 2019, Fertility and Sterility published a paper that opened what its authors called “a new frontier in reproductive medicine”: a comparison of assisted reproductive technology outcomes in female-to-male transgender patients against cisgender patients. Its author team included Dr. Kim Thornton. Few fertility specialists can point to the study that defined a field before they joined its governing board — Thornton did both, entering the ASRM Board of Directors in 2022.
Her day job is equally senior. She is the Division Director of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School, in addition to practicing clinical medicine at Boston IVF. On ASRM’s Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Task Force she helps draft actionable recommendations aimed at the barriers that keep women of color from accessing reproductive care — the equity thread that also runs through her transgender fertility work.
She trained at Case Western Reserve (MD), Wayne State University (OB/GYN residency) and Yale School of Medicine (REI fellowship), and is a Fellow of ACOG. Outside the clinic she sits on the board of the Robert F. Kennedy Children’s Action Corps. Patients see her at Boston IVF’s Waltham and Worcester centers, with telehealth across Massachusetts.
Clinical Expertise
- Transgender Fertility Preservation and Family Building: The outcomes data in this area is partly hers; counseling on sperm banking, oocyte cryopreservation and gestational paths for trans patients
- LGBTQ+ Family Building: Reciprocal IVF, donor sperm programs and lesbian conception, including published best-practice commentary on lesbian ART pathways
- IVF and ICSI: Standard and complex cycle management at both Waltham and Worcester
- PGT-A: She co-authored the widely cited 2019 Human Reproduction framework for counseling patients on whether to test embryos for aneuploidy
- Program Leadership: As BIDMC division director, oversight of REI clinical training and quality
Why Choose Dr. Thornton
Board-level influence on the field she practices on. An ASRM director helps set policy for American reproductive medicine; she brings that vantage to individual cases.
The definitive transgender fertility paper. For trans and nonbinary patients, evidence of comparable ART outcomes came substantially from her group’s research, which she co-authored.
Academic hierarchy, private-practice access. A division director at BIDMC who still carries patients at Boston IVF — an unusual combination in a fertility clinic.
Equity as stated practice. Her DEI task force role is about removing access barriers, and her care philosophy starts with listening to each patient’s story before customizing treatment.
Professional Affiliations
ASRM Board of Directors (elected 2022); ASRM Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Task Force; Fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists; Division Director of REI at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; board member, Robert F. Kennedy Children’s Action Corps. Twenty research publications, spanning transgender ART outcomes, PGT-A counseling frameworks and one-stimulation (“one-and-done”) family-building strategies.
Suitable For
- Transgender patients planning preservation or pregnancy who want a physician who literally wrote the outcomes data
- Lesbian and LGBTQ+ couples navigating donor and reciprocal-IVF decisions
- Patients asking “should we test embryos?”: her PGT-A counseling framework addresses exactly that
- Worcester and metro-west patients needing division-director-level care without traveling to Boston