Uncategorized

Five Ways to Know If You’d Make a Good Gestational Surrogate

Source Good Men Project

Being a surrogate mother has its rewards, like the incomparable ability to share the gift of parenthood with those who are unable to get pregnant. But it won’t just help others; becoming a surrogate allows you to fund your family’s dreams at the same time. Gestational surrogates are well compensated financially for helping intended parents become a family. Discover if you have what it takes to help two families achieve their dreams simultaneously.

You are physically strong and healthy

Good candidates are between the ages of 21 and 39 and have already experienced an uncomplicated pregnancy and delivery. Many women have uncomplicated pregnancies and deliveries but may underestimate the physical challenges of helping a family experience the miracle of life.
Gestational surrogates undergo rigorous testing to ensure that they have the best chances of carrying a healthy pregnancy and can withstand an IVF procedure. You must agree to maintain a clean and healthy environment for yourself and the growing baby, and endure pregnancy and birth.

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Uncategorized

IVFML Season 2, Episode 6: Deciding To Use A Surrogate Is The Easy Part

Source Huffington Post

Andrea Syrtash and her husband had done 18 fertility treatments over the course of almost a decade before they began considering gestational surrogacy.

While other women may mourn their inability to carry a pregnancy to term, Syrtash was relieved after she finally made the decision.

“I’ve been beaten down by all these years and treatments,” she said. “And there was something really nice about just giving my body a break and hopefully having another healthy body in the mix to carry a healthy embryo.”

But making the decision to use a surrogate is relatively easy compared with the expense and effort of finding a woman to carry a pregnancy for you.

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Fertility Fraud, Law

Praise For A Fertility Fraud Bill: Because Sperm-Switching Is Arguably Legal Right Now

Source Above The Law

ndiana State Senators Roderick Bray and Michael Delph have proposed Senate Bill 239 in order to help stop an all too familiar kind of fraud in the fertility world. The bill makes it a felony in the state for a physician to use his own sperm to inseminate a patient without her consent, or to use the reproductive material of others without the genetic provider’s consent. It’s surprising that this isn’t already the law! But to date, despite the fact that this kind of medical misconduct is unquestionably unethical, and not to mention gross, it is arguably not illegal.

The bill comes on the heels of an epidemic of discoveries — both in the U.S. and abroad — that many obstetricians and fertility doctors used their own sperm to inseminate their patients. At the time, they generally told their patients that they were using donated sperm from medical students, or other people who were unknown to the patient. Of course, prior to advances in DNA testing, these doctors where pretty confident that they could never be caught. And I have previously written on the hesitation of courts to find such doctors guilty of a crime or civilly liable.

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Canada, Gay Parenting, Surrogacy

Canada – Who’s the mother?’: Two new dads embrace parenthood after surrogate birth

Source CBC

“Who’s the mother?”

It surprises me how often we get asked that question — often right to our faces — as two dads with a newborn baby girl.

People — often uninformed straight people— are convinced we must have compartmentalized our marital duties into perfectly traditional gender roles. When they ask, “Who’s the mother?” they are actually asking, “Who wears the pants and who wears the skirt?”

Yes, we still get asked that question all the time. In 2018.

I usually answer with something saucy like, “Hey the 1950’s called, they want their mores back.”

When we began our surrogacy journey two years ago, we were cautioned by a psychologist that as a same sex couple we must remain very clear, precise and steadfast with our use of parental terminology. More specifically, we were told to be careful never to allow ourselves and others to misuse the term “mother.”  

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Cambodia, Surrogacy Law

Cambodia – Surrogacy law progresses

Source Khmer Times

Interior Minister Sar Kheng is monitoring the progress of a draft law aimed at addressing the problem of surrogacy in the Kingdom, which is now being debated at the inter-ministerial level.

Mr Kheng on Tuesday evening briefed Donica Pottie, Canada’s Ambassador to the Kingdom, on the draft laws progress, ministry spokesman Phat Sophanith said on Tuesday.

“Currently, Cambodia is working on the draft surrogacy law and I will look into it closely, although now the bill is yet to be adopted,” Mr Kheng said during the meeting. “We will try to solve the problem since the surrogate business is now a very complex issue with regards to human rights and other issues.”

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Parental Leave, South Africa

South Africa – Working dads now entitled to 10 days’ leave on birth of a child

Source Times Live

Employees who were not entitled to maternity leave before will now on be entitled to 10 days’ paid parental leave to be paid out of the Unemployment Insurance Fund.

This follows the signing of the Labour Laws Amendment Bill into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday.

In terms of the act an employee who is a parent not covered by maternity leave will be entitled to 10 consecutive days’ parental leave when their child is born or when an adoption order is granted.

It also enables the adoptive parents of a child of under two years old to take adoption leave of two months and two weeks consecutively.

If there are two adoptive parents‚ one of them is entitled to adoption leave and the other employee is entitled to parental leave of 10 days.
The same provision is made for commissioning parents in a surrogate motherhood agreement.

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Surrogacy, UK

UK – Surrogacy and me: Hey doctor, please don’t frighten our ‘angel’

Source The Times

An email! From the fertility doctor!
Subject: “Potential Surrogate.”

Potential? Still? There are several P words that I would like in this scenario; “progress”, “positive”. “proceed”, “pregnant”. Potential is not one of them.
Message: “Pelvic sonogram showed left ovarian cyst. In 4-5 weeks she should repeat another sonogram and the cyst needs to be gone or significantly decreased before we can give her clearance to proceed as a surrogate. Thank you.”

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Infertility

UK – Stigma and shame: Struggling with fertility as a black woman

Source Metro

Fertility problems are hard to talk about. There is still an enormous amount of societal stigma and taboo when it comes to struggling to conceive.

This is even more true in certain black communities, particularly some Christian and traditional African families.

It just isn’t spoken about. And if it is, there is often the assumption that the problem is the fault of the woman.

Outdated and accusatory comments can lead to serious feelings of shame. Entreprenuer and infertility blogger Vanessa Haye, felt this keenly when she struggled to conceive. The lack of support and understanding was a struggle – and now she wants to normalise conversations around fertility and reproductive health in her own communities.

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Fertility Fraud

Fertility fraud: People conceived through errors, misdeeds in the industry are pressing for justice

Source Washington Post

Jacoba Ballard was conceived in a brick office building on 86th Street in Indianapolis when fertility doctor Donald Cline inseminated her mother with his own sperm instead of the donor sperm he had promised.

To Ballard, it was an offense akin to rape — one Cline is suspected of repeating with as many as 50 other women. But the law in Indiana, as in most other states, was not written to account for such a crime. So Cline was charged with obstruction of justice, and accused of false advertising and “immoral conduct” in the delivery of services. He lost his medical license, was fined $500 and received a year’s probation.

“My mother was violated. He took advantage of her in one of the most vulnerable moments of her life,” Ballard said. The sentence, she said, was “not enough to send a message.”

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Surrogacy, UK

UK – Giving birth to another child could have left her in a wheelchair – so woman’s friend had her baby

Source Metro

A mum has revealed how she let another woman give birth to her second child because another pregnancy could have left her in a wheelchair.

Kelly Bullock, 33, from Warrington, Cheshire, and her husband Paul, 34, welcomed Riley to their family six months ago.

Back in 2013, Kelly gave birth to Brody, now five, but she developed a condition called Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction (SPD) during pregnancy.

Despite operations to help her walk again, doctors said that another pregnancy would cause further damage to her pelvis.

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Surrogacy, Ukraine

Increasing Number of North American Couples Trying European Surrogacy Options

Source Digital Journal

Valencia, Spain – Nov 20, 2018 – With fertility rates decreasing, the price of surrogacy options in North America increasing and restrictive laws in Canada and in many US states, one Ukrainian clinic is reporting a staggering increase in applications from North American couples. 

One reason that surrogacy in Ukraine has become so popular in the past five years are the liberal laws which improve the rights of ‘intended parents’. Unofficially Europe’s ‘capital of surrogacy’, Ukraine is one of the few countries in the world which opens up its safe, regulated surrogacy programs to legally married heterosexual couples from all around the world. As a result, a number of Ukrainian surrogacy clinics have begun offering their services to international couples and, increasingly, those from the US & Canada.

Local laws ensure that intended parents appear on the birth certificate, meaning that the surrogate has no legal claim to the child. Ukrainian law also insists that at least one of the intended parents have a genetic link to the child, meaning that a sperm or egg donor can also be used in cases where one partner has struggled with fertility issues. 

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Canada, Surrogacy

Canada – Proposal to pay sperm and egg donors, surrogates spawns controversy

Source CBC

Kevin Martin was conceived with the help of a sperm donor in London, Ont.

On Wednesday, the 32-year-old was driving from his home in Ohio to Toronto to voice opposition to Bill C-404. The legislation would legalize financial compensation for egg and sperm donors — and could make Canada the new nexus of a global fight over assisted reproduction.

Martin and others are set to make their arguments at a public consultation hosted by Health Canada, not on Bill C-404 itself but other potential changes to the Assisted Human Reproduction Act.

While many see sperm and egg donation as a way to make it easier for couples struggling with infertility, LGBT couples or prospective single parents to have children, the meeting does not explicitly invite donor-conceived people.

With commercial DNA tests on the rise, those donor-conceived people are finding their hidden genetic history online after decades of donor anonymity being the norm — and they’re demanding new protections in the world of assisted reproduction.

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Australia, Surrogacy

Australia – After a decade, WA’s surrogacy laws are still sparking controversy

Source Brisbane Times

For some WA women, surrogacy is a last chance for having a family and even though the practice has been legal in WA for almost a decade, it remains controversial.

An Australian surrogacy organisation has drawn fire from Christian groups for bringing international speakers associated with commercial surrogacy to Perth; a practice illegal in WA.

The state’s surrogacy laws, which have been in place for a few weeks short of a decade, restrict surrogacy to altruistic agreements aimed at helping women who cannot conceive or carry a child for medical reasons.

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Surrogacy

Monica and Lou Canellis share their surrogacy story

Source Fox

CHICAGO (FOX 32 News) – What was once a rare occurrence is now becoming more common in the United States.

The practice of using a surrogate to have a baby may be something people don’t always want to speak about openly, but we at FOX 32 are close with a couple who does. 

Their goal is to help other childless couples who can’t have a baby.

We bring you the story of our own Lou Canellis and his wife Monica and baby Gia, the child they didn’t think would be possible.

“She acts like her, she looks like me, that’s why she’s so cute,” Lou said.

She is the baby Monica and Lou thought they could only dream about. When they married 13 years ago, Monica knew she would never be able to bear her own biological child. Being a childless couple was something they accepted as their fate.

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Employee Benefits, Law, UK

UK – What it is like coping with IVF at work – and how employment law is failing women trying to conceive

Source Metro

It’s a Wednesday afternoon and I’m sitting in a meeting with a colleague.

He’s telling me about the complex technology used by one of our new clients. Something about data stacks.

I’m nodding along but there are tears running down my cheeks, dropping silently on to my notebook.

‘I’m fine honestly,’ I say when he looks at me startled, thinking he has bored me to tears. ‘Please keep going.’

I’d got my period that morning. And that time, I’d fallen hook, line, and sinker for the dream. At a week late, I had thought I was finally pregnant. I’d even noticed some of the early symptoms everyone talks about.

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Surrogacy

‘Wisconsin is kind of old school:’ Some say ‘the law has not kept up with the science’ of surrogacy

Source Fox 6 Now

MILWAUKEE — Wisconsin is fertile ground for a growing industry — surrogacy — but a lack of laws could be putting those involved in vulnerable situations.

At noon on a Tuesday, Lauren Rigby and the rest of SSM Health St. Mary’s – Madison labor and delivery squad had already delivered six babies in six hours. Rigby is a mother of two, but she’s been pregnant more times than that. This is not a story, however, about the loss of life. Instead, it is about creating life for those who cannot create it themselves.

“We both wanted kids. We’d always wanted children. We just knew,” explained Brent Love and his husband Charlie.

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Embryo adoption

Overseas Embryo Adoption Saves Chelmsford Couple Thousands Of Dollars

Source CBS Boston

CHELMSFORD (CBS) – Infertility can be a painful experience for couples trying to start a family. It’s a roller coaster ride of emotion that Shawn and Shannon McNamee know well.

For more than a year, Shannon injected herself hundreds of times. They tried several rounds of in vitro fertilization (IVF). Nothing worked.

“You would get really hopeful and optimistic, then it would crash. The results came back negative every time,” Shawn told WBZ-TV.

The McNamees decided to adopt and now their living room is filled with toys and their hearts with love. Their son Logan is happy and curious and in no way intimidated by their 150-pound mountain dog.

“He’s just everything that I could have imagined as a baby and a son,” Shannon said.

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IVF, UK

UK – When you’re desperate to conceive, you’ll pay anything, and IVF clinics are cashing in

Source The Times

Nearly 2½ years after my husband and I began trying for a baby, our luck came in. The faintest of blue lines appeared on those deeply unscientific-looking pee-test sticks at 5.30am one summer’s morn last year. We had finally managed to get pregnant. I write “finally” with the bleak awareness that this moment takes a great deal longer for some people and never happens at all for others. But for us it had felt like an eternity.

At first I refused to believe it — not because we had been trying for years but because I never thought IVF would work. And definitely not the first time. But it did.

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Canada, Surrogacy

Canadians paying bills for birth tourism

Source Toronto Sun

Call it birth tourism of another kind.

We’ve all heard stories about mothers arriving in Canadian cities just in time to give birth so their child can get Canadian citizenship.

But what about foreign parents having a kid in Canada via surrogacy?

It is happening and it is growing.

In 2016 and 2017 there were 102 babies born to surrogate mothers in British Columbia. A shocking 45 of those babies were born to parents from outside of the country.

Here is the crazy part, you are paying for it and the baby that is quickly whisked off to a foreign land is granted automatic Canadian citizenship.

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