Month: May 2018

Egg Donor

UK – Why I already tell my one-year-old that she was so wanted that a donor helped to make her

Intended Parents

Source iNews

My one-year-old daughter Astrid has spent the past week practising the sound ‘mamama’. I’d love to say this is an acknowledgment of all the hard work I’ve put in during the year, but I know it’s no more aimed at me than when she says ‘dadada’, despite no dad figure in her world.

Many babies make the sound ‘dada’ first. I’m not sure whether in centuries gone by a father heard his baby’s first word and said ‘yes, that is me’, or whether a mother heard the noise and cannily offered encouragement, saying: ‘This is our child’s name for you. Now, please change this loincloth-nappy’.

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IVF Alternatives

What happens when IVF doesn’t work

Intended Parents

Source Honey Nine

The success stories of IVF are marvellous and heart-warming, but spare a thought for the women who still can’t conceive through this method.

Like many young girls, Jenny Lloyd always dreamed of having a family – never thinking she was on a strict timeline.

“No one ever said to me – you’ll run out of eggs, which is basically what happened. No one tells you that,” she tells 9Honey.

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Mother in law as surrogate mother, UK

UK – My mother-in-law gave birth to my son as I had no womb or cervix after tumour hell

Intended Parents

Source The Sun

Patty and I had always got on well but when she offered to be our surrogate, I was overwhelmed.

By carrying our precious baby Kross, she’s made all my dreams come true.
My problems started when I was just 17 after I had problems with irregular and painful periods.

Doctors examined me and found a large benign tumour growing inside my womb.
Within just a few weeks, I had an operation to remove my womb and my cervix.

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Surrogacy Costs, Ukraine

Ukraine – Costs and Legal Aspects of Surrogacy in the Ukraine

Intended Parents

Source TGDaily

Searching for surrogacy within the US can be an exhaustive and expensive process. Many US couples have opted to look outside of our fine nations borders for better options concerning the surrogacy process. The Ukraine has recently become one of the choice places to look at for surrogate motherhood. Because of the explicit laws, excellent healthcare, ease of travel, and low associated expense, more and more couples that are having difficulty conceiving a family have been looking to and for surrogacy programs in the Ukraine.

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Egg Donation, Sperm Donation

Sperm, egg donation facing decreased anonymity due to DNA testing, social media

Intended Parents

Source ABC 11

When the Donor Sibling Registry (DSR) was founded in 2000, Wendy Kramer and her son Ryan were simply hoping to make Ryan available to connect with his biological dad who donated the sperm used to conceive him. Fast forward to 2018, Ryan did connect with his biological father as well as 10 biological siblings (and counting) and the DSR has done the same for 15,557 others.

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Canada, surrogacy compensation

Canada – Bill to decriminalize payments for surrogacy, egg and sperm donors to be tabled next week

Intended Parents

Source Global News

Details on how a Liberal MP wants the government to decriminalize payments for surrogacy and human reproductive material are set to be unveiled next week.

According to a listing posted on the House of Commons notice paper, Montreal MP Anthony Housefather will table An Act to amend the Assisted Human Reproduction Act on May 29 to try to decriminalize both the paying of surrogates in Canada as well as the ban on paying for sperm and egg donations.

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Egg Freezing

Australia – Most women who freeze eggs for IVF leave them on ice

Intended Parents

Source The Courier Mail

MOST women who have frozen their eggs leave them on ice, untouched.

IVF experts at Queensland Fertility Group have been snap freezing eggs for the purpose of deferring childbirth for 10 years and just over one third of women have thawed their eggs within that time and only six per cent have used them to try and conceive within four years.

“Egg freezing is family insurance and peace of mind but things change, that’s just life,” QFG’s Dr David Molloy told The Courier-Mail.

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Children from sperm donor

UK – ‘On Father’s Day it’s really hard’: Children of sperm donors talk about what it’s like to grow up without knowing their biological dad

Intended Parents

Source Daily Mail

The children of sperm donors have spoken about what it’s like to grow up without knowing their biological father.

Caitlin, 10, was conceived with donor egg and sperm after her single mother Kathryn, at 45, was unable for have a child through IVF after six years of trying.

While the Australian girl was happy to live in a home free of squabbling parents, she admitted she struggled growing up without knowing her biological father.

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Sperm Donation

How does sperm donation in the UK work, do you get paid and how to find your nearest sperm bank?

Intended Parents

Source The Sun

Sperm donation is essential for fertility treatment such as intrauterine insemination or IVF.

It can help couples struggling to have kids of their own or single women who want to start a family.

If you donate your sperm through a fertility clinic or a sperm bank, you won’t have any responsibilities or rights towards a child conceived using your semen.

However, as of April 2005, children conceived through sperm donation do have the right to ask for certain information about their donor once they reach the age of 16.

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Egg Freezing

Here’s What It’s Really Like to Freeze Your Eggs

Intended Parents

Source Pop Sugar

I’m 31 years old, recently married, and on the fence about ever having children. I’ve never been completely against it, but I’ve also never felt as though I’m “running out of time” or that my life is or would somehow be unfulfilled if I ended up never having kids. For some reason, a woman saying that out loud seems to offend more than when someone straight-up asks her, “When are you going to have kids already?” But I digress.

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Ireland, Surrogacy Abroad

Ireland – Surrogacy: ‘Infertile couples will still have to go abroad to make their dream a reality’

Intended Parents

Source The Ireland Journal

THE MINISTER FOR Health, Simon Harris, is forcefully encouraging the electorate to vote to repeal the 8th Amendment via his Twitter page. Consequently, the Minister is demonstrating that he empathises with women who need to be able to exercise the right to choose to terminate their pregnancy in Ireland.

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Altruistic, Surrogacy

Malta – Only Health Minister will be able to decide how altruistic surrogacy will be applied – David Agius

Intended Parents

Source The Malta Independent

If the IVF bill is made law, the Health Minister will have exclusive rights to make the rules and regulations for altruistic surrogacy, says Nationalist Party Deputy Leader for Parliamentary Affairs David Agius in reference to Article 4 of the Embryo Protection Bill.

Agius quotes the Bill as saying: “The Minister shall by regulations prescribe the manner in which altruistic surrogacy shall be effected and for any matter incidental and ancillary thereto.”

This comes about in the light of Wednesday’s vote for approval of the second reading of the draft Bill. Agius comments that whereas before there was no right to surrogacy, now – if the law is passed – it will be introduced without knowing how it will be managed or the conditions that will apply.

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Egg Donor

At 28, I Know I Never Want To Be A Mom, So I Donated My Eggs Instead

Intended Parents

Source Essence

For years, Lyne Mugema knew that motherhood was not on the menu for her. Though, this didn’t mean she drew a line in the sand: Mugema still wanted to support other women who wanted to conceive.

So, in 2016 Mugema leaned into that aspiration and donated her eggs for the first time. The 28-year-old self-described free spirit did her due diligence–she researched everything she needed to know about becoming an egg donor and discussed the experience with a coworker who’d already gone through the process.

This journey helped her produce two pregnancies and enough wisdom about herself to last a lifetime.

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Surrogacy

CZECH COURT RECOGNISES GAY PARENTS FOR THE FIRST TIME

Intended Parents

Source Radio Praha

The Czech supreme court has ruled for the first time that two gay partners should be legally recognised as the fathers of a surrogate child, the daily Mladá Fronta reported on Saturday.

The child was born a few months ago to a surrogate mother in California through artificial insemination. In its ruling, issued at the beginning of May, the Czech supreme court sustained a decision issued by a court in California, which recognised the two men as the baby girl’s parents.

Since 2006, gays and lesbians in the Czech Republic can live in an officially registered partnership. However, they are still prevented from adopting children as a couple, which means that the non-biological partner does not have the same legal rights to the child.

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Law

A Legislative Approach to the Concept of Parentage in the Age of Surrogacy and Artificial Reproduction

Intended Parents

Source New York Law Journal

In March, this column addressed the “Continuing Legal Evolution of the Concepts of Parent and Child,” N.Y.L.J. (March 8, 2018) in a review of the Appellate Division, Third Department’s decision of Jan. 25, 2018 in Matter of Christopher YY v. Jessica ZZ, 2018 NY Slip Op 0049, where the sperm donor, biological father sought access to the child of a feminine same sex couple and the court employed both the presumption of legitimacy of a child born to married partners and the doctrine of equitable estoppel to enforce the donor’s promise to relinquish his rights to the child. The difficult questions resolved by that decision were soon followed by Matter of David S. v. Samantha G., N.Y.L.J. (May 3, 2018) where Family Court Judge Carol Goldstein was presented with a custody dispute surrounding a “tri-parent arrangement” involving a biological mother and the biological father joined by his husband.

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Surrogate Mother

Metro mom of four set to give birth to fifth baby — for another couple

Intended Parents

Source Fox4kc

Meg Daughtery

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The joy of parenting is one many people want to experience.

For some moms and dads, once or twice is enough. Other families who struggle with infertility would give anything for the opportunity to bring their baby home.

And one local mom is choosing to give birth for the fifth time — but she and her husband aren’t the baby’s parents.
Every afternoon around 3 p.m., Meg Daughtery welcomes home her tribe. She and her husband Peter always knew they wanted four children. The faces of their four kids fill the walls of their home, and their laughter and personalities fill the space.

It’s a life Meg wouldn’t trade and an opportunity she wants everyone to have.

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Three Parent Embryo

FDA Tells Scientist to Stop Making Three-Parent Unborn Babies

Intended Parents

Source LifeNews.com

A Manhattan fertility doctor has stopped creating three-parent embryos for now after receiving a warning letter from the federal government last year.

The Daily Mail reports Dr. John Zhang, who runs the New Hope Fertility Clinic and biotech company Darwin Life in New York City, gained international attention in 2009 when he created and implanted a human embryo with genetic material from three parents into a woman’s womb.
His manipulation of human genes has caused massive controversy. In August, the FDA sent Zhang and warning letter telling him to stop genetically altering human embryos, which is illegal, according to the report.

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Spain, Surrogate Mother

Spain – Single mom from B.C. gives the gift of family to man from Spain

Intended Parents

Source Surrey Now-Leader

Kara Erickson gave the gift of family by being a surrogate mother for Josep Cañadas, who’s from Spain. (Submitted by New Bloom Photography)

On May 1, Kara Erickson gave birth to a healthy baby girl and then handed her over to Josep Antonio Castelló Cañadas, a man she’d met only once before in Las Vegas.

In the fall of 2016, while at an industry trade show, Erickson, who co-owns Chilliwack’s Yellow Bird Birth, had a chance encounter with Nathan Chan, the managing director of Proud Fertility in Calgary. The two—who connected over their shared stillbirth and loss doula training—began talking about egg donation and surrogacy, which Chan’s firm specializes in, and Erickson said she felt like she could be of help.

“I’d always wanted to be a surrogate,” said 28-year-old Erickson in April, while rubbing her very pregnant belly. “But I never pursued it—it was more like if somebody I knew needed somebody to carry for them I could do it.”

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surrogate mother exploitation

Surrogate mothers ask Supreme Court to stop ‘exploitation’ of women and babies

Intended Parents

Source The Washington Post

Melissa Cook’s story became headline news in 2015 when she was carrying triplets as a surrogate. The intended dad asked her to abort at least one of them, she says, because he couldn’t afford to raise them all. She refused and has been fighting for custody of the children in court ever since.

Cook and two other surrogate mothers — Gail Robinson and Toni Bare — are in Washington this week to call on the Supreme Court to provide more clarity on the rights of women and children in the controversial industry. The women, who have separately filed lawsuits in different states, say surrogacy contracts are exploitative to the birth mothers, create a class of women as breeders and commodify children.

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Embryo adoption

Malta – Most couples won’t give up spare embryos for adoption

Intended Parents

Source Times of Malta

80 per cent of couples refuse to give up spare embryos for adoption

More than 80 per cent of couples refuse to give up spare embryos for adoption after in vitro fertilisation, says an international study.

The studies were mentioned in a paper by the Malta College of Pathologists, which warned that the IVF Bill warranted further discussion by stakeholders.

The proposed law has raised eyebrows, as it would allow couples interested in IVF to give their consent to embryo adoption. Same-sex couples would rather opt for a genetically related embryo than accept adopting frozen embryos, the college said.

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