Gay Parenting, New Zealand, Surrogacy

New Zealand ‘Our last chance’: Men search for surrogate to help make dad dream come true

Source Stuff.co.nz

When Barry and Quinton Keyser met over a bonfire on a full moon South African night, they had no idea that the following 15 years would be spent on a heart-wrenching quest to become parents.

The couple travelled to New Zealand from South Africa 10 years ago with two bags of clothing and $6000 in their pockets.

Barry, a nursing practitioner, and office manager Quinton gained New Zealand residency and studied towards their chosen careers, eventually buying and renovating the Manawatū home they share with their three toy poodles Jasper, Gemma and Ruby.

But there is a big piece of the family puzzle missing, and both men feel they are slowly running out of time to find a path to parenthood.

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New Zealand, Surrogacy

New Zealand – Bill seeks streamlined path through surrogacy process

Source RNZ.CO.NZ

A new bill in Parliament recognises that the path to being a parent is not always straightforward, especially if you’re becoming one via a surrogacy arrangement.

A child born in surrogacy generally happens one of two ways:

Through a traditional surrogate, where the woman carrying the baby has been artificially inseminated with the sperm of a father who is one of the intending parents, or donor sperm.

Or it happens via a gestational surrogate where IVF makes it possible to gather eggs from the mother (or an egg donor), fertilise them with sperm from the father (or a sperm donor), and place the embryo into the uterus of a woman who is the gestational surrogate.

If that sounds a bit complicated, it actually gets more complicated, and this is the reason why a Member’s Bill from Labour MP Tamati Coffey – the Improving Surrogacy Arrangements Bill – is currently before Parliament.

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New Zealand, Surrogacy

NZ – Outgoing Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft joins fight to have surrogate child’s dead mother recorded on birth certificateOutgoing Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft joins fight to have surrogate child’s dead mother recorded on birth certificate

Source Newshub

The outgoing Children’s Commissioner is joining the fight to get a surrogate child’s mother’s name recorded on her birth certificate, calling the situation “sad beyond words”.

Paige is the only child in New Zealand who has been stripped of her mother’s identity on her birth certificate. Instead of her mum’s name, it simply says “not recorded”.

Judge Andrew Becroft used his last day as Children’s Commissioner to bring attention to 18-month-old Paige’s situation – which Newshub first brought to light earlier this month. 

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New Zealand, Surrogacy

New Zealand – Why it’s time to change our archaic and unnecessary surrogacy laws 

Source The Spinoff

IMAGE: ARCHI BANAL

In Aotearoa, parents who conceive via a surrogate must formally adopt a baby who was always intended to be theirs. Now, a member’s bill looks set to change a time-consuming, expensive and exhausting process. It’s about time, writes Hannah Gibson.

At its essence, surrogacy is about people working together with others, centrally the surrogate, to fulfil their dream of having a family. For three years as a part of my anthropological research, I immersed myself in the complex world of surrogacy in Aotearoa, and found that the existing laws around adoption and surrogacy were one of the most loathed and archaic parts of the journey for new parents and surrogates alike.

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intended parents, New Zealand, Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother

New Zealand – Make sure new law doesn’t make surrogates ‘useful wombs’

Source Newsroom

The Law Commission estimates that around 50 children are born through surrogacy each year, including through international commercial surrogacies. Photo: Flickr/Sergio Santos

Anne Else looks at the Law Commission’s proposals for new surrogacy law, and the key legal issue: how the intending parents become the legal parents

Agreeing to be a birth mother in a surrogacy arrangement is a precious gift to people wanting a child. But if it’s poorly regulated, it can lead to women being seen as just useful wombs.

No one knows exactly how many surrogacy arrangements have been made or how many children have been born this way to New Zealanders since the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology (HART) Act was passed in 2004, because no comprehensive records are kept. But surrogacy makes up less than 1 percent of fertility clinic treatment cycles here. There’s no guarantee of a live birth.

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Egg Donation, New Zealand, Surrogacy

New Zealand – ACT backing Tamati Coffey’s surrogacy bill

Source 1 News

Labour MP Tamati Coffey’s surrogacy bill has today got backing from the ACT party. 

Coffey’s bill covers many areas, including identifying on the birth certificate who donated an embryo or cells, as well as the surrogate.

It also calls for a register listing potential surrogates and, crucially, the ability to create a legally-binding surrogacy order ahead of the child’s birth.

“So that the time that baby’s born, the intending parents become the parents. We’ve heard a few heartache stories along the way about that gap and what happens in there,” Coffey said

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New Zealand, Surrogacy

New Zealand – Surrogacy horror: Kiwi parents are having to share custody with surrogate

Source NZ Herald

Anna and Mark are living what many hopeful parents would call a nightmare.

The couple, who the Herald has agreed not to name, are stuck in a shared custody agreement with their surrogate after the woman decided she wanted to keep the child.

Shortly before the woman was due to give birth they claim she essentially cut off contact with the pair.

“There’s nothing worse than not knowing. If we’d been told from the start that she wanted to keep it, it would be easier than just not knowing, because we had no idea whether she would contact us when the baby was born, or what her plan was,” says Anna.

Their fears rang true when the baby did arrive and they weren’t told.

Read more NZ Herald

Gay Parenting, New Zealand, Surrogacy

New Zealand – Gay father fighting for fairer surrogacy laws backed by thousands as he presents petition to Parliament

Source I Stuff

A father calling for reform of the 64-year-old Adoption Act has presented his 30,000-signature petition to Parliament.

Auckland man Christian Newman handed his petition calling for a “total overhaul” of the “outdated” and “complicated” act to MPs Louisa Wall, Tamati Coffey and Paul Eagle on Tuesday afternoon. 

Newman and his husband Mark Edwards – known online as Love From Your Dads – battled for more than three years to conceive and then adopt their son, Frankie. 

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New Zealand, Surrogacy

NZ – The Gift of Life: Egg donor becomes surrogate as pay back for sperm donation

Source Stuff NZ

Natasha Dalziel has three children – three “gifts” born from sperm donation – so as she sees it, she owes three gifts in return.

The 30-year-old from Te Awamutu has donated her eggs to help a couple conceive, and is currently 16 weeks pregnant as a surrogate for a gay couple, all in the name of “paying it forward”.
Five years ago, Dalziel and her then-wife walked into a fertility clinic for the first time.

Then 25 years old, she joined a waiting list for a donor, before finding the match that gave her her son Jacob, now 4, 12 months later.

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Adoption, New Zealand, Surrogacy

New Zealand – Toni Street slams ‘outdated’ surrogacy adoption process and spurs PM to promise ‘fixing’ the law

Source TVNZ

Broadcaster Toni Street has elicited a promise from the prime minister that updating adoption laws is on the Government’s agenda after the media personality posted on social media about having difficulty adopting her biological son born via a surrogate.

Street wrote in an Instagram post that she had signed a change.org petition for the New Zealand Adoption Act to be updated.

“It is incredibly hard for loving parents to adopt in this country and our vulnerable children deserve better,” she wrote. 

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New Zealand, Surrogacy

New Zealand – Toni Street can’t believe how lucky she is to have son Lachlan

Source Stuff

Toni Street still can’t quite believe she has got the son she thought she’d never ever have.

Lachlan Stephen France entered the world on August 14 at Auckland’s North Shore Hospital having been conceived via a surrogate, the 34-year-old broadcaster’s best-friend Sophie Braggins.

“I look at Lachie and get these ‘wow’ moments over how lucky we are,” The Hits host told Woman’s Day magazine.

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New Zealand, Surrogacy

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

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.

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Egg Donor, New Zealand

New Zealand – Egg donor friends share special bond helping couples become parents

Source NZ Herald

It might be one of the most uniquely beautiful friendships in Australia.
Two women who formed a bond over their love for helping other women become mums, became best friends themselves — and have helped produce 35 babies, news.com.au reported.

If you count Melissa Holman and Sarah Connor’s own children, that number sits at 40 — and then there’s all the potential babies that could come from frozen embryos around the country one day giving parents desperate for a family a child of their own.

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New Zealand, Two mothers on birth certificate

New Zealand – First for NZ: Couple both listed as ‘mother’ on child’s birth certificate

Source News Talk ZB

Nelson-Tasman region couple Stacy and Jess conceived Evie using donor sperm and IVF. (Photo / Nelson Weekly)

For the first time in New Zealand two women can be named on a child’s birth certificate as “mother” for children conceived using assisted reproductive techniques.

Jess and Stacy complained to the Human Rights Commission, who raised it with the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA).

The women both wanted to named as mother on their daughter Evie’s birth certificate.

The lawyer who advocated for the “massive” change said it could affect more than 1000 children.

Solicitor and barrister Stewart Dalley, at Ryken and Associates, took on the case on a pro bono basis, after reading of their plight in the Herald last year.

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breastfeeding, Gestational surrogacy, intended parents, New Zealand, Surrogacy

Pioneering London initiative teaches surrogate mothers to breastfeed

Source: Evening Standard

Justine White received an award from the British Journal of Midwifery for her work with mothers

Women who become mothers via a surrogate are being taught how to breastfeed their baby in a pioneering London initiative.

Justine White, a breastfeeding adviser, has helped three women to feed — even though they had not given birth.

She was inspired by tribesmen in the Congo who allow babies to suck on their nipples to comfort them while the mothers hunt.

Enabling women who have not given birth to breastfeed is practised in North America but is not widely known about in this country.

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New Zealand, Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother

New Zealand – Toni Street: How I explained surrogacy to my girls 

Source: NZ Herald

Telling your kids that they’re about to get a younger sibling can be tricky at the best of times.

But having to explain that their baby brother will be born via surrogate has made for an added twist for The Hits host Toni Street to navigate.

Street – who announced she will have her third child with the help of her best friend Sophie Braggins – says she decided to “keep it really simple” when breaking the news to her daughters, Juliette, 5, and Mackenzie, 2.

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compensation, New Zealand, Surrogacy, Surrogacy Law, Surrogate Mother

New Zealand – Calls for surrogates to be compensated – as Toni Street announces baby news

Source:  NZ Herald

A leading surrogacy lawyer and doctor have called for a law change to allow compensation to be paid to women who bear a baby for someone else.

Broadcaster Toni Street last night went public on how she and her husband Matt France’s third child is being carried by a surrogate – Street’s best friend Sophie Braggins.

The couple turned to a surrogate after Street was diagnosed with a rare and incurable auto-immune condition shortly after she gave birth to Mackenzie in mid-2015.

Zandra Wackenier, who has represented surrogate mothers and “intending parents” in dozens of applications to authorities, says she supports a continuation of commercial surrogacy in New Zealand, but she also believes surrogates should be compensated for their out-of-pocket expenses.

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Infertility, intended parents, New Zealand, Surrogacy, Surrogacy Law, Surrogate Mother

New Zealand – Baby joy for Toni Street – via surrogacy

Source:  New Zealand Herald

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Toni Street and her best mate Sophie Braggins. Braggins is acting as Street’s surrogate and carrying her third child, due in August.

Broadcaster Toni Street and her husband are expecting their third child – this time via a surrogate mother.

Street has opened up on the happy family news for her and husband Matt France and also spoken of the serious health battle that has required them to use a surrogate – Street’s best friend Sophie Braggins – to add to their current family of two young daughters.

Street – a co-host of the The Hits’ popular morning radio show – and France will welcome a baby boy into their family in August.

They have gone public as a rising number of Kiwi families face a range of fertility issues, with some looking at the option of investigating surrogacy.

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Donor Eggs, Donor Embryos, Egg Donation, Egg Donor, Gay Parenting, New Zealand, Same Sex, Surrogacy

New Zealand – Gay couple find Māori egg donor through newspaper ad – now they need a surrogate

Source: Stuff NZ

Nelson and Baden Marino-Hall have been together more than five years and run a successful home renovation company in Queensland called The Reno Lads.

A married same-sex couple who advertised in The Dominion Post for a Māori egg donor have found one – and are now searching for a surrogate.

About 60 Māori women offered to help after Baden and Nelson Marino-Hall, who live in Toowoomba, Queensland, sought a donor in July last year.

They settled on one, who lives in Australia, and now have six donated embryos on ice.

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New Zealand, Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother

New Zealand – Woman dies before meeting baby, carried by best friend

Source: Newshub

A mother died before she was able to meet her surrogate baby, who will now be raised by a solo father.

Bec Arena passed away in September and earlier this month, son Rixon was born – carried by her best friend Jessica Brockie.

Ms Brockie was a surrogate for Ms Arena, who suffered from cystic fibrosis, and husband Gareth.

A GoFundMe page has been started in Ms Arena’s honour, to help Mr Arena raise the child and pay for the surrogacy process.

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