Source ABC
Gazing at her pregnant belly, feeling the kicks of the baby that wasn’t hers, Zara Stratton felt an overwhelming sense of isolation.
For nine months she’d been carrying a child for another couple, her childhood friend and her husband.
It was always supposed to be a shared experience.
The intended parents would be there for every scan, to share the joy of each milestone and support her all the way up to the day of birth.
Source Brisbane Times
The federal government is granting travel exemptions for Australian women to travel overseas for IVF treatment or surrogacy arrangements not available under Australian law.
Growing Families, a charity that provides education and support on surrogacy and egg and sperm donation, claims to have helped dozens of women organise travel exemptions based on compassionate grounds.
Global director Sam Everingham said the charity had helped 100 women get travel exemptions to complete surrogacy arrangements and a further 23 for IVF treatment with donor eggs in Greece, Cyprus, the United States, South Africa and Russia.
Source BioNews
It is reported that surrogacy agencies in the USA have been so overwhelmed by requests for unvaccinated surrogates that it has now become a new matching criterion that the agencies use when placing surrogates to work with intended parents.
The anxiety around the potential harm the vaccine can do to a baby in the womb has led to surrogacy contracts being amended to ensure that intended parents can make medical decisions for the surrogate, and in some cases has led to the breakdown of surrogacy teams who cannot agree on whether to vaccinate or not.
Read moreis reported that surrogacy agencies in the USA have been so overwhelmed by requests for unvaccinated surrogates that it has now become a new matching criterion that the agencies use when placing surrogates to work with intended parents.
The anxiety around the potential harm the vaccine can do to a baby in the womb has led to surrogacy contracts being amended to ensure that intended parents can make medical decisions for the surrogate, and in some cases has led to the breakdown of surrogacy teams who cannot agree on whether to vaccinate or not.
Source The Citizen
Emily Chrislip, a 25-year old US citizen is still taking care of a baby she carried for a couple in China as a surrogate mother a year ago.
Two months before Chrislip gave birth to the child, the World Health Organisation declared Covid-19 a global pandemic. Travel restrictions made it impossible for the Chinese couple to travel to the US for birth or for Chrislip to hand over the child.
In September 2020, Chrislip was interviewed People magazine about her decision to be a surrogate and her experience thus far.
Source Sunday World
They have expressed their shock and upset after finding out that the country has been added to the mandatory hotel quarantine list by the Department of Health.
An Irish couple who are trying to get home after pursuing surrogacy abroad are facing mandatory hotel quarantine with their new born baby when they arrive at Dublin Airport on Saturday.
Sinead Gallagher-Hedderman and her husband Mark are currently in the Ukraine following the birth of their baby boy Theo to a surrogate eight days ago.
They have expressed their shock and upset after finding out that the country has been added to the mandatory hotel quarantine list by the Department of Health.
Source GMA
Emily Chrislip, a 25-year-old mom from Idaho, thought her experience as a surrogate for a family in China would end after she gave birth.
Instead, Chrislip and her husband, Brandon, remain the temporary caregivers for the baby Chrislip gave birth to last May.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the baby, whose name and face the family are not revealing publicly due to privacy concerns, has remained with the Chrislips in Idaho for nearly one year instead of returning to her biological parents in China.
Source BioEdge
The intersection of the Covid-19 pandemic and surrogacy has not been a happy one. After international border lockdowns, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of couples found that they were separated from babies gestating in women in countries like Ukraine.
The rollout of vaccines is proving to be another stumbling block. A fascinating feature in Vice says that many commissioning parents do not want their surrogate to be vaccinated before or during the pregnancy. “Surrogacy agencies have been fielding so many requests for unvaccinated women that several have started specifically matching vaccine-averse prospective parents with surrogates who are willing to stay unvaccinated,” Vice says.
Source New York Post
These parents don’t want their baby vaccinated — so they’re asking their surrogate not to get the coronavirus vaccine.
As the COVID-19 vaccine becomes more widely available in the US, surrogacy agencies have been inundated with parents specifically requesting unvaccinated women to carry their babies, Vice reported.
In one extreme case, according to the report, a woman even asked if it was within her rights to have her surrogate abort the baby should the surrogate choose to get vaccinated against the woman’s will.
Source Bangkok Post
The Covid-19 outbreak has left many newborn babies of illegal surrogate mothers stranded in Thailand because of international travel bans.
“Many babies from commercial surrogate mothers could not be given to the clients due to the Covid-19 travel ban in many countries,” Dr Akom Praditsuwan, the Department of Health Service Support (HSSD), said yesterday.
Source TMZ
Restrictions on fertility procedures, coupled with a freeze on foreign travel due to the coronavirus, are drying up a bankable swath of the baby-making business … TMZ has learned.
Right now, fresh or frozen embryo transfers, in vitro fertilization and pretty much all elective surgeries are being scrapped as U.S. fertility clinics follow guidelines released by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
A rep there tells us, the financial pain is being felt industrywide … but even more so with clinics relying heavily on international clientele.
Source New York Times
The pandemic is not just impacting parents and pregnant people — all prospective parents are facing new challenges.
Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has upended life for those who are or hope to become pregnant in the United States. Fertility doctors have indefinitely postponed all advanced fertility treatments, and some major hospitals in hard-hit areas are trying to ban partners and doulas from delivery rooms.
But the pandemic is affecting expectant parents forming families through surrogacy, foster care and adoption as well.
Source Mathrubhumi
Varappuzha: A mother’s long wait carrying the dreams of two strangers in her womb has come to an end finally. But the little baby girl is still waiting for her parents having no clue when they will be able to come back. Unfortunately, the restrictions made as part of the coronavirus prevention came in the way of a family’s dream.
