Month: July 2018

Surrogacy, UK

UK – Surrogacy orders rise five-fold

Intended Parents

Source The Times

Surrogacy is booming, with the number of orders that transfer legal parenthood from the surrogate to intended parents up nearly five-fold in ten years, according to Ministry of Justice figures.

The figures were released yesterday as an order was laid before parliament to allow single people who use a surrogate to become legal parents via a parental order. The aim is to create equality for single parents as well as people in a relationship where their partner does not want to become a legal parent.

Read more

Israel, Surrogacy

Israel – LGBTs call nationwide strike in protest of surrogacy law excluding gays

Intended Parents

Source Times Of Israel

Israel’s LGBT community has called a nationwide strike in protest of a bill passed by the Knesset that loosened surrogacy regulations but did not include a clause enabling gay couples to use a surrogate in order to have a child.

The community’s umbrella group, The Agudah, announced the strike in a post to its Facebook page Wednesday, shortly after parliament voted on the surrogacy bill, which extends eligibility to women in a same-sex relationship, but not men. The strike was called for Sunday and the organization urged all sympathizers to join the action.

Read more

Ireland, Parental rights, Same Sex

Outdated Irish passports laws mean gay couple’s son denied

Intended Parents

Source Irish Central


An Irish-Canadian couple are outraged after being denied an Irish passport for their young son.

Jay O’Callaghan and Aaron O’Bryan told a local news channel that they will not be granted an Irish passport for their son Jake unless they identify the child’s biological father. Doing so would leave the other with no parental rights in Ireland.

The Toronto-based couple said that they both provided sperm to fertilize the donor egg that was implanted in the surrogate who gave birth to their son.

The couple chose not to find out whose genetic material was passed on to Jake.

Read more

Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother, UK

UK – Surrogate who has gifted six babies to women struggling with fertility reveals she’s planning to do it for a SEVENTH time – and she keeps in touch with ALL the families after giving birth

Intended Parents

Source Daily Mail

Amy Trelease, 42, a management analyst, from Carson City, Nevada, said she was determined to help women struggling to conceive after learning about egg donation and surrogacy in college.
She gave the gift of a newborn for the first time at the age of 26, having donated her eggs twice before in her early 20s.

After having her third child Dillon, now 13, she went on to have five more babies in seven years, gifting them to women who were dealing with infertility.

She has scheduled an IVF transfer for next month, which will be her first step to carrying a baby for someone else for the seventh time. 

Read more

Surrogacy, UK

UK – How the law is catching up with surrogacy

Intended Parents

Source The Times

Advances in medical science and shifts in attitudes to the meaning of family have led to a growth in non-traditional methods of procreation, including surrogacy.

Ministry of Justice figures show that in the ten years to 2016, the number of parental order applications — the process by which legal parenthood is transferred from a surrogate to the intended parents — rose from 55 to 316.

Read more

Ireland, Parental rights, Same Sex

Ireland – I’m Not Recognised As My Da0ughter’s Mother Due To ‘Modern’ Irish Family Law’

Intended Parents

Source Extra.ie

A family have been left devastated after discovering that a law due this autumn will not grant them equal parental rights — even though their daughter is nearly two-years-old.

Same-sex couple Bex, 48, and Steffi Payne, 28, are based in Roscommon and Steffi gave birth to daughter Ava as a result of home insemination in September 2016.

When setting out on the journey to start a family, the couple decided to go down the route of using donor sperm to help them conceive.

Read more

Surrogacy, Trafficking, Ukraine

Ukraine police expose Kyiv clinic trafficking babies. Law enforcers have established hundreds of “surrogate mothers” possibly involved in the scheme.

Intended Parents

Source Unian

A Kyiv-based clinic specializing on reproductive technologies is being suspected of illegal trafficking of newborns out of Ukraine under the guise of surrogate parenthood, according to Chief of the National Police, Serhiy Knyazev who spoke at a joint Monday briefing with Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko.

The investigation states that foreigners used fake medical papers to claim they are in fact genetic parents of newborns carried by surrogate mothers in Ukraine and effectively smuggled infants out of Ukraine.

Read more on UNIAN

Israel, Same Sex, Surrogacy

Israel – Netanyahu Voices Support for Surrogacy Births for Gay Men

Intended Parents

Source Haaretz

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that he supports surrogate births for gay men. He spoke at a meeting of Likud’s legislative caucus  that was closed to the media, addressing the issue after it was raised by party MK Amir Ohana.

“I support surrogacy for single fathers,” Netanyahu said. He said he favored amending the law during the current Knesset session if possible, but if not, he said it should be done later on, via reservations to an amendment bill that Ohana raised last week, to permit surrogacy procedures for same-sex couples. 

Read more

Egg Donor

UK – A Love Letter To The Family I Donated My Eggs To

Intended Parents

Source Huffington Post

A while ago I went through an IVF cycle to donate my eggs to you, a couple in your 30s I didn’t know. Why? Because, at 35, it was now or never for me. Because a generous sperm donor had given us our family, and I felt a duty to pay it forward. It was about integrity, gratitude and doing the right thing.

I felt enormous responsibility for it to work. I wasn’t going through all the injected medication, diary rescheduling, overstimulated ovaries and endless driving back and forth to the fertility clinic for you not to get pregnant. I held your dreams in my hands and I couldn’t bear to let you down. Then the fertility clinic counsellor told me that wasn’t the point. I wasn’t giving you a baby, I was giving you a chance, and that was my gift whether it worked or not. And, as I relaxed about the whole thing, I realised the gift I was making was not just of my eggs; it was a gift of hope, of humanity, of love. That may sound weird and probably pretty corny. We’ve never met. I don’t know who you are. But a gift of love doesn’t just evaporate. It lasts

Read more

Surrogacy, UK

UK – Surrogacy and me: the choosing process is over, we have a donor

Intended Parents

Source The Times

I realise some of the terms I use in this column may be a little confusing to the uninitiated, so I thought this week I would do some untangling. There are a few types of surrogacy, but the first distinction is between gestational and traditional. In gestational surrogacy, either the intended mother’s eggs (my ideal option, although sadly not possible for me because I don’t have any), or a donor’s eggs are used. In traditional surrogacy, a surrogate’s eggs are used, making her the biological mother of the child. The latter is rare because of all the next-level emotional and moral issues this understandably adds.

Read more

Egg Donor, UK

UK – Why I donated my eggs at 21

Intended Parents

Source The Times

What do you say to a child, born with your DNA, who you’ll probably never meet? This was the question I found myself trying to answer five years ago as I filled in a form after agreeing to donate my eggs to a fertility clinic. “Leave a goodwill message for children born from your donation,” read the instruction at the top of a blank sheet of paper. “Be happy” was the only thing I could bring myself to write.

Read more

Australia, Mother serves as surrogate for daughter

Australia – Grandmother agrees to be surrogate for her own grandchild

Intended Parents

Source Yahoo News

Often grandparents share the burden of child-rearing, but one family has taken that a big step further.

A very generous 49-year-old mum wants to help her 31-year-old daughter have a baby, and has agreed to be a surrogate for her grandchild-to-be.

Sherrie Zammit gave daughter Chloe the gift of life – now, history is about to repeat itself for the next generation.
“My days, I thought, were done and dusted with pregnancies, and never did I expect to be carrying my grandchild, but I’m really excited,” Sherrie said.

Read more

Egg Donor

Does exercise boost your egg production? Doctors weigh in on 5 common fertility myths

Intended Parents

Source Today

It’s hard to understand what’s fact and fiction when it comes to getting pregnant, but the experts clarify what’s true and what’s not.

Everyone loves Chrissy Teigen for her brutal honesty and hilarious insights. And her candor about her struggles with fertility and using in vitro fertilization to become pregnant has helped many people feel less alone with their infertility struggles.

“The big question was why this wasn’t working for us when I was young and he was healthy,” Teigen told SELF magazine in 2016, before her daughter Luna was born. “I thought, ‘People get pregnant by accident all the time! How does this happen?’”

Read more

Egg Donor, UK

UK – Selfless generosity or naive mistake? Kerri, 30, endures daily injections and painful operations to donate her eggs to women she doesn’t know – but doesn’t want children of her own

Intended Parents

Source Daily Mail

For someone who says she doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body, Kerri Middleton will happily admit she was thrilled when she discovered a baby was on the way.

‘I was absolutely over the moon — so much so that I had a little cry,’ she says. ‘It was exactly what I had hoped for.’

Would it look like her? Would it inherit her colouring and her single-minded personality? All were questions that flitted through her mind — but they are ones she will likely never be able to answer.

Read more

New Zealand, Surrogacy

New Zealand – Mother to be surrogate for daughter – to carry and give birth to her own grandchild 

Intended Parents

Source New Zealand Times

A 49-year-old Australia mother is set to give birth to her own grandchild after generously offering to help her own daughter have a baby.

Sherrie Zammit is set to give her 31-year-old daughter Chloe Simmonds the gift of a new life after agreeing to be a surrogate for her grandchild-to-be.

A decade ago Chloe underwent a hysterectomy after she was diagnosed with cancer following the birth of her son.

Read more

Ireland, Parental rights, Same Sex

Ireland – Same sex couples to be allowed to register names on child’s passport and birth cert

Intended Parents

Source Irish Times

Bill to fix drafting errors in 2015 Act will also ban anonymous sperm, egg donations

Same sex parents will finally be able to register both their names on their child’s birth certificate after the introduction of a Bill to amend drafting errors in previous legislation.

The Children and Family Relationships (Amendment) Bill will also ban anonymous sperm and egg donation in fertility treatment and will allow children born through donor assisted human reproduction access to their genetic heritage once they turn 18.

Provisions for the ban and a register to allow children access to their personal family information were contained in the Children and Family Relationships Act passed in 2015

Read more

New Jersey, NJ, Surrogacy Law

New Law Offers Hope For New Jersey Families Having Trouble Conceiving

Intended Parents

Source CBS New York

TRENTON, N.J. (CBSNewYork) — There’s a big change in New Jersey State law that’s making it easier to start a family for couples who are having trouble conceiving.

It involves a gestational carrier, which is a woman who’s carrying a baby that isn’t genetically related to her. That’s very different that a surrogate mother, who is related to the child.

The developing fetus in the gestational carrier’s womb came from someone else’s egg and sperm. It had been all-but-impossible in New Jersey until now.

By all appearances the Goldstein family is a normal, happy family. What makes them unique is that 9-year-old Russell and 6-year-old Jonah were both born from gestational carriers. After a number of miscarriages, the Goldsteins thought their chances for a family had hit a dead end.

Read more

Donor Siblings

A Facebook Group Connects Three Portland Families Whose Kids Are Donor Siblings

Intended Parents

Source Willamette Week

Soon after Abby Dotson and her wife, Jen Gordon, had their first child, they found out a friend was pregnant. They were thrilled at the chance to give someone their baby’s outgrown clothes.

But Dotson says she and her friend Lizzie Keith quickly discovered their kids would share much more than old T-shirts. Without knowing it, the couples had picked the same sperm donor—meaning their kids would be genetically related “diblings,” or donor siblings.

Read more

Egg Donor, Surrogacy

Australia – ‘We can never thank her enough for helping us to achieve our dream’

Intended Parents

Source Kidspot
After a hysterectomy to treat her severe endometriosis, Jennifer relied on the kindness of strangers to help her become a mum.

I was barely in my 20s when my fertility struggles began.

When I was 16, I was diagnosed with severe stage five endometriosis, a painful chronic condition that affected every aspect of my life.

I underwent a dozen laparoscopies to try and improve the condition, but when I was 21 it was decided that the only way to move forward in my treatment was to remove my ovary (I was only born with one).

Time was running out

I was single at the time but went through two egg retrievals before the procedure so that one day having a baby wasn’t entirely an impossible dream. I ended up with five eggs and after I had the surgery to remove my ovary I went into surgical menopause.

A year later I reconnected with an old friend Steve, I’d known him since childhood, he is the brother of one of my best friends. Steve and I quickly fell in love, and while we both wanted to start a family, my endo was just getting worse and the threat of me needing a hysterectomy was very real.

With that possibility looming, Steve and I decided to try IVF, knowing that time was running out.

Read more

Egg Freezing

UK – Women freeze eggs waiting for partners, not for careers

Intended Parents

Source BioNews

Women are more likely to freeze their eggs due to a lack of a stable partner, rather than for career planning, according to a new study.

The study, led by Professor Marcia Inhorn, an anthropologist at Yale University in Newhaven, Connecticut, is the largest qualitative study into the reasonings behind elective or ‘social’ egg freezing to date. Some 150 patients undergoing egg freezing without medical reason were interviewed from four fertility clinics in the USA and three clinics in Israel.

‘The medical literature and media coverage of oocyte cryopreservation usually suggest that elective egg freezing is being used to defer or delay childbearing among women pursuing education and careers,’ explained Professor Inhorn. ‘Our study, however, suggests that the lack of a stable partner is the primary motivation.’

Read more