Month: July 2018

Surrogacy Law, Surrogate Mother

Surrogacy laws: why a global approach is needed to stop exploitation of women

Intended Parents

Source The Conversation

Surrogacy may have become a popular way for many couples in the limelight to have children – notably Kim and Kanye, Elton John and David Furnish, as well as Sarah Jessica Parker and her husband Matthew Broderick. But it isn’t just a service for the rich and famous.

People may choose to use a surrogate for all sorts of reasons – fertility issues being the obvious one – but people with health problems or complications with previous pregnancies as well as same-sex couples or single people looking to start a family, are all also common clients.

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Fertility over 50, India, IVF

UK – ‘I had given up hope anyone would call me Mummy’: Woman, 58, gives birth to son after paying £4,500 for IVF in India because she was ‘too old for treatment in the UK’

Intended Parents

Source Daily Mail

A 58-year-old woman has given birth to a son after paying £4,500 for IVF in India because she’d been denied treatment in the UK.

Carolyne Hess forked out for the ’embryo adoption’ procedure abroad after the NHS and private clinics at home turned her down for being too old, The Mirror reports.

The single mother gave birth to her son Javed in November after three donor embryos fertilised by a sperm donor were implanted into her womb at the International Fertility Centre in New Delhi in March last year.

She said her eggs came from a 21-year-old Indian woman who liked dancing and her sperm donor was a 6ft tall white American man who worked in IT. 

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Italy, Same Sex, Surrogacy

Italian minister takes aim at same-sex couples who seek surrogacy abroad

Intended Parents

Source The Guardian

Italy’s families minister has said same-sex couples who have children via surrogacy abroad should not be recognised as legal guardians.

In a sign that he may make it increasingly difficult for gay people to become parents, Lorenzo Fontana, who is from the far-right League party, told a parliamentary hearing on Thursday: “The current family law situation cannot fail to take account of what has been happening in recent months on the issue of the recognition of parenthood, with the registration of children conceived abroad by couples of the same sex via the use of practices that are banned by our laws and should stay so.”

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Australia, Grandmother as surrogate

Australia – Grandmother will be a surrogate for her own grandchild: 49-year-old made offer after life-saving hysterectomy left her daughter, 31, unable to have children

Intended Parents

Source Daily Mail

A grandmother has offered to give birth to her own grandchild after a life-saving hysterectomy left her daughter unable to have any more children.

Sherrie Zammit, 49, from Gladesville, New South Wales, Australia, made the offer to Chloe Simmons, 31, after Ms Simmons was told she had just weeks to live unless she had her womb removed the day after being diagnosed with cancer in the area between her placenta and uterus lining.

Grandmother-of-one Ms Zammit has already undergone all of the necessary tests ahead of the surrogate pregnancy, which would involve implanting Ms Simmons’ egg and her fiancé Dimitri Pixomatis’ sperm.

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Israel

Israel to Fight Listing Both Fathers of Kids Born via Surrogacy

Intended Parents

Source Haaretz

The move, coming a few days after the Knesset voted not to include gay men in a new domestic surrogacy law, will make it harder for gay men to be recognized as the parents of children born abroad using surrogacy

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Fertility over 40, IVF

UK – The age factor: IVF still cannot turn back the biological clock – but the rate of over-40s pursuing it is soaring

Intended Parents

Source Daily Mail

At the time, the birth of Louise Brown in Oldham, Manchester, on July 25 1978 was met with predictable star-gazing and horror: could this ‘test tube’ baby be the start of a science fiction future? Is it unnatural? Unethical? One magazine called Brown’s conception via IVF ‘the biggest threat since the atom bomb’.

Four decades and eight million babies later, IVF is still eye-wateringly expensive but widely accepted, hugely successful, and generally available for anyone with the cash – whether they have fertility issues, or have delayed childbearing beyond the natural scope of fertility.

It means, in a year, any woman under 42 can have an 80 percent probability of conceiving using their own eggs, and we can even screen embryos for genetic defects before they’re implanted. And the babies are healthy – far from the unnatural aliens that critics predicted in the 70s.

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Egg Donor Selection, Face recognition

Face recognition screens egg donors so your child will look like you

Intended Parents

Source New Scientist

An egg bank in Spain is using face recognition technology to match people with donors who look like them. The idea is that this way prospective mothers will get a child who resembles them even though they are not genetically related.

Egg donation is relatively common in Spain compared to other European nations. It has strict laws protecting the anonymity of the donor, which makes it a popular destination for women across Europe seeking eggs for IVF.

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Surrogacy

Why surrogacy has to stop

Intended Parents

Source ABC.net

In the four decades since the first baby was born using in vitro fertilisation, a debate has raged about creating new life. It’s even more challenging today, with the use of surrogacy, where a woman carries a child – sometimes her biological child but usually not – for another person or couple.

This week, the Israeli parliament passed a law allowing surrogacy for single mothers and women who can’t have children, but excluded gay couples and single men.

For the Swedish feminist and writer Kajsa Ekis Ekman, the issue is clear cut – no surrogacy for anyone for any reason. She says it’s about the rights of the child.

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IVF

Forty years of IVF, but not everyone’s celebrating

Intended Parents

Source Conservative Woman

Louise Brown, the world’s first baby born via in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), celebrates her 40th birthday today.

Four decades after her birth it is estimated that more than seven million babies have been born as a result of IVF and other assisted reproduction treatments. Around 2.4million assisted reproductive technologies (ART) cycles are estimated to take place each year world-wide, with about 500,000 babies born as a result. If rates stay at current levels, then an estimated 157million people alive at the end of the century will owe their lives to assisted reproductive technologies (1.4 per cent of the global population).

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Three Genetic Parents

3 biological parents, 1 child, and an international controversy

Intended Parents

Source Vox.com

When scientists discover a new way to prevent disease or overcome infertility, they usually get applauded. But throw genetic engineering into the mix and it gets dicey fast. Genetic engineering in reproductive medicine is particularly scary because we’re talking about changing the genes of future generations — so any new technique is sure to incite controversy, especially in the United States.

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Egg Donor

Utah Woman Donates Eggs to Best Friend So She Can Realize Her Dream of Becoming a Mom

Intended Parents

Source Inside Edition

After seven years of heartbreaking disappointment, Chelsea Judd is finally pregnant, thanks to her best friend.

The Utah woman and her husband, Steve, finally learned her eggs weren’t fertile enough after an IVF attempt failed. They were reluctant to use an anonymous donor.
And that’s when Chelsea’s friend, Tia Stokes, stepped forward to help.

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IVF, Louise Brown

First IVF baby’s 40th birthday: How a tiny girl changed science and the world

Intended Parents

Source ABC

In July 1978, “You’re the one that I want” from Grease was top of the pops in Australia, women were marching for equal rights in the US, and Louise Joy Brown was born in the United Kingdom.

Weighing in at around 2.5 kilograms, the world’s first “test tube baby” was delivered by caesarean section under torchlight — to avoid tipping off the media — in Oldham General Hospital, shortly before midnight on July 25.

The Daily Mail reportedly paid around 325,000 British pounds for her first pictures — but even before The Lovely Louise was introduced to the world, she was famous.

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Egg Donor, UK

UK – Teacher, 32, who spent four YEARS trying to conceive reveals how her ‘selfless’ best friend donated her eggs – and now she’s the proud mother of the daughter she always dreamed of  By Latoya Gayle For Mailonline

Intended Parents

Source Daily Mail

A married couple who spent seven years trying to conceive have revealed how they finally realised their dream of starting a family – after a close friend donated her eggs.

Chelsea Judd, 32, and her husband Steve, 34, from Santa Clara, Utah, began trying for a baby in 2011, but didn’t fall pregnant.

During the couple’s first IVF attempt doctors discovered Chelsea suffered from low quality eggs and urged her to seek either egg donation or adoption.

The ‘devastated’ couple began to fear they would never have the children they craved, until Chelsea’s best friend Tia Stokes, 32, offered to help.

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IVF

UK – The six ages of IVF: As the medical revolution that’s transformed so many lives turns 40 tomorrow, we chart the fertility milestones since 1978

Intended Parents

Source Daily Mail

1978 THE YEAR IT ALL BEGAN

THE BREAKTHROUGH
As lab technician Jean Purdy watched the single-cell embryo in the petri dish in front of her divide into eight cells, she could, presumably, never have imagined exactly what that moment would herald.

For not only would it lead to the birth of Louise Brown nine months later — the world’s first ‘test tube baby’ — after that particular developing embryo was successfully implanted into Louise’s mother, but ultimately it would mean the birth of more than six million people, who might not have existed otherwise.

Purdy is now considered to be the world’s first embryologist — and one of a team of three British scientists, along with scientist Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe, a gynaecologist at Oldham General Hospital, whose dogged determination ushered in the age of IVF.

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Surrogacy

The risky business of commercial baby-making

Intended Parents

Source The Asean Post

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage. But for those for whom this traditional family-building strategy doesn’t quite resolve itself, advances in the artificial reproductive field have made it possible to have genetically-linked children through surrogacy.

Surrogacy refers to the arrangement in which women become pregnant and carry a baby to term for contracted parties who will then assume the role of parents. Surrogacy could be traditional, in which the ovum of the surrogate mother is used, or gestational, in which the sperm and/or ovum used come from one or both of the intended parents or donors. It could be a commercial transaction, in which money changes hands for the service of a womb or a baby delivered, or an altruistic arrangement, in which the service of carrying the baby is done wholly to enable infertile persons to become parents.

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Surrogacy

Anonymous $10K Grant Will Provide Surrogacy for Alport Syndrome Patient

Intended Parents

Source Alport Syndrome News

An anonymous donor’s $10,000 gift to Path2Parenthood will help a woman with Alport syndrome as she and her husband expand their family through surrogacy.

The donation from person described “celebrity” who wanted someone in need of surrogacy, was given through Melissa B. Brisman, an attorney specializes the field reproductive law longtime supporter family-building nonprofit organization. Path2Parenthood, collaboration Connecticut-based Nest Egg Foundation, provided the surrogacy grant to the grateful recipient.

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Born without uterus

Mother who was born without a uterus welcomes a miracle baby boy years after she was told she would never be able to give birth due to a rare defect

Intended Parents

Source Daily Mail

Kristy Darken was only 13 years old when doctors gave her life-changing news.

She was one of only 5000 Australian women born with a rare condition which meant she was born without a uterus.

Unable to carry her own child, Kristy, from Newcastle, had accepted the fact she may never have children, something she told her now-husband Craig when they first started dating.

Years later, the couple have now welcomed baby Henry into the world, with some help from their immediate family.

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Israel, Surrogacy

Israel – Netanyahu flip-flops on surrogacy rights for gay men

Intended Parents

Source Al Monitor

On July 18, the Knesset approved a new law offering heterosexual couples and single women state-supported surrogacy. The new law excludes single men and gay couples. Previously, state support was offered only to married heterosexual couples. The final version did not include a proposed amendment that would have allowed single men to have a child in Israel through surrogacy.

There is no reason to be surprised that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suddenly withdrew his support for the amendment. Supporting it would have meant angering the ultra-Orthodox Knesset factions and a potential coalition crisis just moments before the Knesset begins its summer recess on July 22.

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Egg Donation

The World Egg Bank expands to London, England and The United Kindom

Intended Parents

Source Digital Journal

“The World Egg Bank Announces expansion into the United Kindom”

The World Egg Bank began shipping cryopreserved donor eggs from U.S. donors to the United Kingdom. Women and couples trying to conceive a child with donor eggs can now stay in London, England with their known physicians, without having to travel to other countries to circumvent UK regulations.

The World Egg Bank began shipping cryopreserved donor eggs from U.S. donors to the United Kingdom. Women and couples trying to conceive a child with donor eggs can now stay in London, England with their known physicians, without having to travel to other countries to circumvent UK regulations. The World Egg Bank meets UK requirements and has a plethora of eligible donors and thousands of banked eggs immediately available. The World Egg Bank has over 23 years of expertise in working with egg donors and clinics worldwide.

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