India, Law, Surrogacy

India – Delhi HC seeks Centre’s response on plea challenging validity of Surrogacy law

Source The Siasat Daily

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New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Friday sought the response of the Centre on a plea challenging the constitutional validity of provisions of the Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021, and the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021.

Issuing notice in the matter, a bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Sachin Datta asked the government to file a reply within six weeks and posted the matter for further hearing on November 19.

The petition was filed by Karan Balraj Mehta, a single unmarried man and a lawyer by profession, and Dr Pankhuri Chandra, a married woman teaching Psychology in a private school.

Commercial Surrogacy, Law, Spain, Surrogacy

Spain’s High Court rejects commercial surrogacy as ‘exploitation’

Source BioEdge

Spain’s High Court has ruled that commercial surrogacy constitutes “unacceptable exploitation” of both the child and the biological mother, according to El Pais.

The case involved a Spanish woman who made a contract with a woman in the Mexican state of Tabasco in 2015 to bear a child with the help of a surrogacy agency.

The court declared that adoption was the better option for protecting “the best interests of the child”. “Both are treated as mere objects, not as persons endowed with the dignity of their condition as human beings and the fundamental rights inherent to that dignity,” the court stated.

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India, Law, Surrogacy

India’s new surrogacy laws could limit chances for some would-be parents

Source The National News

Seven months after their only daughter died during the coronavirus pandemic, Indian couple Sabu Thomas and Jean George were hoping to fill a void through surrogacy.

But their dreams of having a child have hit a dead end under India’s new surrogacy laws, aimed at regulating the country’s once booming rent-a-womb industry that earned it the sobriquet of “world’s baby factory”.

Mr Thomas, 52, and Ms George, 47, from Pathanamthitta in southern Kerala state, lost their 20-year-old daughter Nova Sabu in August to brain hemorrhage, caused by what they claim was an adverse reaction to the Covid-19 vaccine.

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Ireland, Law, Surrogacy, Ukraine, War

Irish surrogacy in Ukraine: What does the Russian invasion mean?

Source News Talk

Mary Seery-Kearney says the woman who gives birth to the child remains the child’s legal mother

Author Jack Quaan

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has not changed the legal status of surrogate children born to Irish parents.

That’s according to Fine Gael Senator Mary Seery-Kearney – who says regardless of where a child is born, the mother who gives birth to the child remains the child’s legal mother.

It comes amid concerns whether some surrogacy contracts may have been changed if surrogate mothers were to give birth outside of Ukraine.

“The agreement was based on an agreement that is recognised in Ukrainian law, and subject to Ukrainian law, and based on the baby being born in Ukraine.

“When the couple would come home to Ireland, they have to apply to the court in order to get the parental order for the father – because we don’t have surrogacy legislation in Ireland

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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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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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Australia, IVF, Law

Australia – Woman challenges laws that require estranged husband’s IVF consent

Source The Age

A woman who wants to conceive a child using donor sperm has launched a court challenge to existing laws that bar her from accessing IVF without her estranged husband’s consent.

The Victorian woman, known to the court as “LR”, says she is being discriminated against on the basis of her marital status.

The woman is still legally married, but separated and estranged from her husband, the Federal Court in Melbourne heard on Thursday.

She intends to divorce him when the 12-month waiting period is over, and wants to undergo in-vitro fertilisation to become pregnant, using her own eggs and donor sperm.

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Law

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

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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Law

Commercial Surrogacy on Path to Legalization in NJ, NY, but Some Donor-Conceived Adults Oppose the Laws

Source Christian Post

Two populous states are on the path to legalizing commercial surrogacy, a move that’s drawing intense criticism from bioethicists, egg donors, donor-conceived children and pro-life advocates.

Legislation permitting the practice is being considered in New York and New Jersey, and the New Jersey bill, known as bill S482, which recently passed through both houses of the state legislature, is sitting on the desk of Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.

New Jersey Right to Life is actively opposing the proposed legislation. If Murphy does not sign, veto or conditionally veto it by May 28, it will become law.

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Birth Certificate, Italy, Law

Children of same-sex couples officially recognized in a first for Italy

Source The Local it

Three gay couples in the northern city of Turin have been able to legally register their children to both parents, in a first for Italy.

“Today an important page of history has been written,” said the mother of one of the children, Turin councillor Chiara Foglietta.

Foglietta, who gave birth after undergoing artificial insemination in Denmark, said staff at the public records office had told her “no form exists” to recognize the child’s birth through the procedure, which is subject to strict rules in Italy.

Instead, the staff reportedly told Foglietta she should declare that she had had the baby with a man. On Monday, the councillor said she “cried with joy” after signing the documents in which both she and her partner, Micaela Ghisleni, were recognized as parents of their son.

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Italy, Law, Lesbian, Same Sex

Italian authorities REFUSE to register the baby of a lesbian couple unless the mother pretends she had sex with a man

Source Daily Mail

A lesbian couple in Italy have been refused their request to register their baby unless the child’s mother pretends she had sex with a man.

Chiara Foglietta, from Turin, gave birth to a baby boy, Niccolo Pietro, last Friday after travelling to Denmark with partner Micaela Ghisleni last year to undergo artificial insemination treatment.

To the couple’s dismay, Italian law refuses to acknowledge the treatment for lesbian couples – only recognising its effects in heterosexual couples.

Italy has continued to ban several fertility treatments which have long been the norm in many other EU member states.

Despite legalising same-sex civil unions back in 2016 – the country is lagging far behind in its adoption of Europe-wide rights for same-sex couples.

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Law, Malta

Malta – ‘I had told Muscat I am against freezing, adoption of embryos, and surrogacy’ – Deborah Schembri

Source Independent

Former Parliamentary Secretary Deborah Schembri said she has always been against embryo freezing, embryo adoption and surrogacy and “Prime Minister Joseph Muscat knew (this) from day one.”

Last week Health Minister Chris Fearne presented in Parliament a number of amendments to the Embryo Protection Act. Schembri said that she is in favour with some of them and against in others.

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Law, Parental rights, Surrogacy, surrogate children, Surrogate Mother

‘Platonic’ couple can be joint parents

Source: The Times

Sir James Munby, the leading judge, said that a sexual relationship was not necessary for a marriage to be valid

A married couple in a sexless marriage because one of them is gay have been given the go ahead to be joint parents to a surrogate baby.

Britain’s leading Family Court judge, Sir James Munby, said it did not matter that the marriage was “platonic” or that they had separate homes.

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Gay Parenting, intended parents, Law, Parental rights, Same Sex, Surrogacy, Surrogacy Law, Surrogate Mother

New Uniform Parentage Act Becomes Law in Washington State

Source: The Humanist

Earlier this week, Governor Jay Inslee of Washington signed into law an updated version of the state’s Uniform Parentage Act. Written to safeguard the rights of LGBTQ and non-biological parents, the new law defines a “de facto” parent as well as allows compensation beyond medical and other expenses for surrogate mothers.

According to the law’s sponsor, state Senator Jamie Pedersen, who has four children with his husband conceived through surrogacy, the bill will help parents who want to have a child through surrogacy at home in Washington State, rather than leaving the state. (Pedersen and his husband had their children in California where compensated surrogacy is already allowed.)

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Employee Benefits, India, intended parents, Law, Surrogacy, Surrogacy Law, Surrogate Mother

Tribunal grants maternity leave to govt. servant who begot children through surrogacy

Source: The Hindu

Soibam Rocky Singh

The Central Administrative Tribunal has come to the aid of a woman, working in the Ministry of Law & Justice, who was denied maternity leave as she had begotten her children through surrogacy.

The Tribunal directed the Ministry to sanction 180 days of maternity leave to the woman citing three high court’s verdicts which have held that the commissioning mother is also entitled for grant of maternity leave.

The woman is working as a Personal Assistant in the Legislative Department, Official Language Wing of Ministry of Law & Justice. As she was unable to conceive due to medical issues, she entered into Gestational Surrogacy Agreement with another woman.

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Law, Sperm Donation, Sperm Donor

Judge Dismisses Third Sperm Bank Lawsuit Over Dodgy Donor

Source: Daily Report powered By Law.com

For the third time, a federal judge in Atlanta has tossed out claims against a Georgia sperm bank involving a donor it touted as a highly educated and multitalented but who was really a convicted felon with a history of mental illness.

The order issued Thursday by Northern District Judge Thomas Thrash Jr. closely mirrors two he issued last year, finding that Xytex Cryo International clients who bore children sired by the donor have no basis under Georgia law to sue for “wrongful birth.”

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Divorce, intended parents, Law, Same Sex, Surrogacy Law

U.S. Supreme Court rejects Tucson woman’s argument in gay marriage, child custody matter

Source: Tuscan.com

The U.S. Supreme Court this morning rejected a bid by a Tucson woman arguing that gay marriages are not legally the same as others, at least when it comes to divorce.

Without comment the justices rejected a bid by Kimberly McLaughlin to deny shared custody of her biological child with Suzan McLaughlin, who she was legally married to at the time of the child’s birth.

Keith Berkshire, Kimberly McLaughlin’s attorney, acknowledged to the justices that two prior rulings had said that all marriages are entitled to the same benefits.

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Gay Parenting, Law, Same Sex

For 3rd Time, ‘Presumption of Legitimacy’ for Same-Sex Couples Recognized

Source: New York Law Journal

A state appeals court in Brooklyn on Wednesday recognized the “presumption of legitimacy”—that a child born during a marriage is presumed to be the two spouses’ child—for a same-sex married couple that had been fighting to stop a male sperm donor from asserting parental rights to their daughter.

The ruling is the third time in the last five months that a state appeals court has made clear that New York’s family law presumption of legitimacy applies to same-sex couples—just as it does to heterosexual couples.

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Adoption, Gestational carrier agreements, Gestational surrogacy, intended parents, Law, Surrogacy, Surrogacy Law, Surrogate Mother

Racism, Blackmail, And Death: Iowa Supreme Court Makes Pro-Surrogacy Ruling In Tumultuous Case

Source: Above The Law

Let’s count this as an important half-victory for securing the rights of intended parents to enter into valid surrogacy agreements.

Last week, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in favor of the intended parents in a surrogacy arrangement gone wildly wrong. The judgment finally secured the parental rights of an intended parent who was also the genetic father of the baby. The case also set a valuable precedent for enforcing surrogacy contracts in Iowa. Intended parents and gestational surrogates — as well as fertility doctors and assisted reproductive technology attorneys in the Hawkeye state — can all celebrate the new certainty and dependability of many of these arrangements. However, the decision left open the possibility that some parents may be left out in the bitter Iowa cold.

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Law, Same Sex, Sperm Donation, Sperm Donor, Surrogacy, Surrogacy Law, Surrogate Mother

‘My wife and my son are my family… but right now it’s like she doesn’t even exist’

Source: Her

Sarah and her wife, Geraldine, welcomed their gorgeous baby boy, Lochlan, in November.

Now three-and-a-half months old, their son is – of course – the apple of his parents’ eyes.l

Born at healthy 10lbs 4oz, it’s understandably been a blissful time for the Stone McDevitt family.

However, in the midst of their happiness is a pretty significant upset: despite being a married couple and co-parents, Ger’s name is notably absent from Lochlan’s birth cert.

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