Month: March 2018

IVF, Surrogacy, Surrogacy Law, Surrogate Mother

Oregon is fertile ground for surrogacy

Intended Parents

Source: The Bulletin

New parents are often in awe over their first child, and that is certainly true for Andrew and Courtney Reeves.

The Bend couple marvels at how much their son, Jon, looks like his father. They are amazed at how well he behaves on trips and how he sleeps through most nights. They have already taken their 5-month-old baby on family vacations to Utah and Hawaii.
But Jon’s presence is more a miracle than his good behavior. He was born through surrogacy, an arrangement in which a woman agrees to become pregnant and gives birth to a child for a couple, who will be the child’s parents. The surrogate carries an embryo created in a laboratory using an egg and sperm from the child’s parents.

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DNA Test, Sperm Donor

Lawsuit Claims Fertility Doctor Used His Own Sperm To Impregnate Patient

Intended Parents

Source Courthouse News Service

(CN) – A DNA sample sent to Ancestry.com in 2017 led to the filing of a federal lawsuit Friday, as it was discovered that a fertility doctor allegedly used his own sperm to inseminate a patient in 1980.

The parents and the child of the artificial insemination filed the medical malpractice lawsuit in Idaho’s federal court. The complaint alleges that Dr. Gerald Mortimer told Sally Ashby and her husband Howard Fowler that Fowler had a low sperm count and offered an insemination procedure in order to fulfill the couple’s wish to have a child.

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compensation, Surrogacy Law, Surrogate Mother

Canada – Should surrogate mothers be paid for their labour?

Intended Parents

Source. cbc.ca Radio

Under Canadian law, the act of carrying a baby as a surrogate is not illegal, but payment for it is. (Shutterstock)

Is it time that we recognize labour as… labour? Or is paying women to act as surrogates a slippery slope to exploitation?

Under Canadian law, being a surrogate is not illegal, but payment for the service of surrogacy is.

Stephanie Plante, who was a surrogate for a same-sex couple in Spain, thinks women should be trusted to make decisions about their bodies, and be compensated accordingly.

“If I’m a man and I decide to go to Afghanistan and put my body in harm’s way, I’m given a book tour,” says Plante, “and I am given a speaker circuit, and I’m given a pension.”

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Commercial Surrogacy, India, Parental rights, Surrogacy Law, Surrogate Mother

India – Surrogacy Regulation is Stuck Between Market, Family and State

Intended Parents

Source The Wire

Through the years, India’s stand on surrogacy has varied from a medico-liberal to a carceral model, but the best safeguards for surrogates would be empowerment rather than relying on the market or the state for protection.

Surrogacy policy in India has varied from encouraging commercial surrogacy to allowing only altruistic surrogacy, a move that was condemned by a parliamentary standing committee Credit: Reuters

Law has long been the site of intense political, social and economic contest over women’s reproductive labour. Surrogacy is no exception. Over the past 15 years, numerous legislative drafts on surrogacy have been proposed, making India possibly the only country in the world to seriously consider all possible regulatory approaches to surrogacy ranging from a liberal, contract-based model in the late 1990s to a prohibitionist, carceral model in 2016.
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Australia, Sperm Donor

Australia – Victoria’s sperm donor laws yield some surprises, but mostly happy ones

Intended Parents

Source. The Conversion

At least half of the donors who had donated anonymously were in favour of their offspring being able to know their identity. Shutterstock

Many Victorians are now discovering for the first time that they have offspring from sperm donations made in Victorian clinics in the 1970s and 1980s.

These findings were revealed in a new report released earlier this month by the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority (VARTA), the organisation charged with overseeing applications for information from donors, donor-conceived persons, their parents and descendants.

The VARTA report revealed that sperm donor records that were held by clinics in the 1970s and 1980s have been preserved. This is good news for people who wish to find people to whom they are related via donor conception, using last year’s changes to donor conception laws in Victoria.

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Canada, Gestational carrier agreements, intended parents, re-conception parentage agreement, Surrogacy Law, Surrogate Parents

Impact of the All Families are Equal Act, 2016 for Surrogate Births

Intended Parents

Source Lexology

The recent All Families Are Equal Act, 2016 (the “Act”) amends various existing pieces of legislation in connection with the goal of establishing new rules related to parentage (see the amendments here). For a general overview of the legislative changes brought about by the Act, please see our bulletin here.

Of importance to hospitals are the amendments to sections 9 to 11 of the Children’s Law Reform Act. Section 9 introduces the concept of a “pre-conception parentage agreement,” which allows potential parents to contractually define their parentage status. Sections 10 and 11 update Ontario laws to provide for surrogacy agreements, with a standard format allowing for up to four legal parents.

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intended parents, Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother
Intended Parents

Source. PopSugar


Once I was married, it took me a while to be sold on having kids — all I wanted to do for many years was to travel, so that’s what my husband and I did. We visited as many states and countries as we possibly could each year, and I was glad to watch my bucket list dwindle as the years wore on. It was only after one particularly adventurous and eye-opening trip to Amsterdam, Cologne, and Brussels that I decided we should start trying for a baby.

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Commercial Surrogacy, compensation, Surrogacy, Surrogacy Law, UK

UK – Government Advises Openness, Confidence, And Transparency (In Surrogacy)

Intended Parents

Source Above The Law

The UK — not the US, sorry — has a very thoughtful and vocal stance on surrogacy.

Last month, the government issued thoughtful guidance on best practices for citizens considering entering into a surrogacy arrangement. Our government? No, no, sorry for any confusion. I am talking about the United Kingdom. The United States continues to maintain a patchwork of (mostly positive) surrogacy laws, or in many cases, no law at all. But the UK’s government, and more specifically, the Department of Health and Social Care, recently issued official guidance for intended parents and surrogates entering into surrogacy arrangements in England and Wales.

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cryogenic cold storage, Egg Freezing, Embryo Freezing, Sperm Freezing

Fertility clinic failure worse than thought

Intended Parents

Source Francais Express

Wendy and Rick Penniman and their children Beau and Mary KateWendy and Rick Penniman and their children Beau and Mary Kate. Wendy had three embryos frozen after IVF that were stored at the University Hospitals fertility center.

Nearly 1,000 patients of the University Hospitals Fertility Center are being sent letters apologizing once more and acknowledging some of the reasons a storage tank failed. The hospital is now blaming human error for the loss of those frozen eggs and embryos, some of which had been stored for decades.

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Australia, Sperm Donor Children, VARTA

Australia – Living on a knife’s edge’: Families dealing with sudden notification of sperm donor children

Intended Parents

Source 3AW693 NEWS TALK

Neil Mitchell has spoken with three people affected by the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority’s release of a report, revealing previously unknown details about sperm donors to both donor children and biological fathers.

One is angry, one is hopeful and one is terrified.

The VARTA report to be released earlier this week revealed some donors who believed they were contributing to research actually have a number of biological children.

John told Neil Mitchell he and his wife have 35-year-old and 45-year-old children and subsequent grandchildren, who don’t know John isn’t biologically related to them.

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Canada, Commercial Surrogacy, Gestational carrier agreements, intended parents, Surrogacy, Surrogacy Law, Surrogate Mother

Paying a surrogate in Canada is illegal but one Liberal MP wants to change that

Intended Parents

Source Global News

Paying a surrogate mother for her services is illegal in Canada but one Liberal MP wants to change that.

When most Canadians picture criminals, a couple trying to have a baby probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind.

But under Canadian law, that’s exactly what couples who pay a surrogate to carry their child to term are deemed to be, and one Liberal MP wants to change that.

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Gay Parenting, Gestational carrier agreements, Same Sex, Surrogacy, Surrogacy Law, surrogate children, Surrogate Mother, UK

UK government launches surrogacy guidance for gay parents after Tom Daley baby news

Intended Parents

Source PinkNews

Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black

The UK government has said it “supports surrogacy” for “LGBT+ parents wanting to create a family”, issuing guidance on the issue for the first time after British Olympic diver Tom Daley announced he is expecting a child via surrogate.

Daley and husband Dustin Lance Black announced earlier this month that they are expecting their first child together. Though they have not spoken about their route to parenthood, it is believed the pair are using a surrogate, whose identity has not been made public.

Following the news, this week the UK government for the first time published guidance on surrogacy for prospective parents.

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Gestational carrier agreements, intended parents, Psychological Evaluation, Surrogacy, Surrogacy Law

Gestational carrier laws, hepatitis C testing and more in health care legislation Monday

Intended Parents

Source The Press Of Atlantic City

Legislators Monday will have a busy day both in the Senate and Assembly as they vote on a number of bills, some health-related.

Laws on gestational carrier agreements, hepatitis C testing, dementia, the reopening of a psychiatric hospital, earned sick leave and opioid prescription warning stickers are at the top of the list on the health care front.

The Senate will vote on a bill that would allow gestational carrier agreements — where a woman agrees to carry and give birth to a child that is not genetically related to her — for an individual or couples seeking to expand their families.

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Parental rights, single parents, Surrogacy, Surrogacy Law

UK – Surrogacy Laws Must Recognise Single Parents Says Joint Committee

Intended Parents

Source Each Other

Surrogacy laws in the UK prevent single parents from obtaining a parental order, which means that they are not recognised in law as the parent of their biological child.

The government is correcting this injustice, but the Joint Committee on Human Rights says that the proposed changes still don’t comply with human rights law.

Publishing the report earlier this month, the committee looked at the Government’s proposed changes to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (2008). The key issues centred around the compatibility of the proposals with the right to private and family life provided for by the Human Rights Convention.

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Parental rights, Surrogacy, Surrogacy Law, Surrogate Parents

Court upholds surrogacy contracts as enforceable in Iowa

Intended Parents

Source National Post

DES MOINES, Iowa — The birth mother of an 18-month-old girl, paid as a surrogate to have the baby, is not legally the child’s parent, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday in an emotional case that concluded surrogacy contracts can be enforced in Iowa.

The ruling means the girl remains with the Cedar Rapids couple, the only parents she has known since leaving the hospital after birth.

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Hong Kong, intended parents, Surrogacy Law, Surrogate Mother, Surrogate Parents

Surrogacy in Hong Kong: all you need to know about the risks and legal ramifications involved

Intended Parents

Source South China Morning Post

Hongkongers face strict rules surrounding surrogacy, which is only an option for married couples, and remains rare in the city because it falls into a legal grey area. We help you get to grips with the facts.

The controversial topic of surrogacy hit the headlines again recently with the story of a Japanese millionaire who has fathered 13 children through Thai surrogate mothers.

The 28-year-old businessman was granted sole parental rights to the children by the Juvenile Court in Bangkok, because the mothers had signed away all rights to them and DNA tests proved that he was the biological father of all the childre

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Gay Parenting, Gestational surrogacy, Same Sex, Surrogacy, Surrogate Parents

These two gay papas are showing why gay surrogacy is beautiful

Intended Parents

Source GAY STAR NEWS

Meet Papas Manuel from Spain and Bud from New Jersey. Together they run the Two Gay Papas Instagram posting the most adorable family pictures with four-year-old Álvaro and two-year-old Carmen

With over 50K followers, we are not the only the only ones loving the adorable pictures they post.

Living in Spain where same-sex marriage has been legal since 2005, and the two dads have the kids through surrogacy.

The Two Gay Papas story starts as a blog in 2012 to chronicle their surrogacy journey. Now they use Instagram create positive stories about LGBT families with their day to day life.

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Commercial Surrogacy, compensation, Surrogacy Law, Surrogate Mother

Turning Women And Babies Into Merchandise

Intended Parents

Source Sky Watch TV –

On March 12, the governor of Washington signed into law a bill amending the state’s Uniform Parentage Act. This act officially permits women to be paid for carrying someone else’s child—in other words, “surrogate motherhood.” Previously, the law only permitted women to be reimbursed for medical and other expenses associated with surrogacy. The amendment, in effect, legalizes commercial surrogacy. So women can now rent out their wombs in Washington State. Sponsors of the bill insisted that the goal of the legislation is to reduce the suffering of infertile couples. But its real-world result will be to further commodify human life and exploit desperate women.

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No uterus, Surrogacy, UK

Irish woman born with no vagina, cervix or uterus has two rounds of reconstructive surgery and says it won’t stop her being a mum

Intended Parents

Source The Sun

AN Irish woman has told of her heartbreak at discovering she had been born without a vagina, cervix or uterus when she was just 18.

While she was growing up, Rebekah Knight, now 25, from Ballymoney in Antrim, thought she would start her period in her early teens like the rest of her friends.

Rebekah has now written a book to try and help others

But, when she turned 17 and was still waiting, she began to worry that something wasn’t right.

After a string of tests, doctors told her she had a rare condition called Mayer Rokitansky Kuster Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, meaning she was born without a vagina, cervix and uterus.

Rebekah, who works as an events steward, said: “As you can imagine, I was very heartbroken and shocked. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me.

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Australia, Sperm Donor

Australia – WA woman wins right to bring dead partner’s sperm to ACT

Intended Parents

Source The Sydney Morning Herald –

A West Australian woman has won the right to bring her deceased partner’s sperm to the ACT in an attempt to have a baby, with the territory’s broad legislation allowing the procedure where other states don’t.

The West Australian Supreme Court decided this week that the 42-year-old woman, identified as GLS in court documents, would be allowed to undergo in vitro fertilisation (IVF) procedures in the ACT after her application to move the sperm had previously been rejected.

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