Ireland, Same Sex

Irish same-sex couple ‘so relieved’ after both being legally recognised as parents of their children

Source News Talk

An Irish woman says she and her wife are “so relieved” after becoming one of the first same-sex couples in Ireland to both be legally recognised as parents of their children.

However, she says they can’t celebrate fully until other LGBT+ parents and their children receive the same legal protections they have.

Activist and CEO of Equality for Children Ranae Von Meding appeared on Wednesday in a Dublin court for the final step in a five-year fight

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Israel, Same Sex, Surrogacy

Israel will allow same sex couples to access surrogacy

Source BioNews

Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex couples and single men will be able to become parents through surrogacy.

The court had previously ruled that the law allowing only heterosexual couples and single women to access surrogacy was discriminatory (see BioNews 1037) and gave the government a year to revise the legislation. This deadline passed in March this year without changes being made. 

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Africa, Same Sex, Surrogacy

Namibian Gay Couple Fight Government’s Refusal to Recognize Their Daughters, Born through Surrogacy

Source Edge Media Network

The Namibian government refuses to recognize the daughters of a same-sex couple, effectively stranding one of the fathers in South Africa with the twin infants while the other father fights his own battle to remain in the country, Mamba Online reports.

The girls were born last month in South Africa to a surrogate mother. One of the two men listed as the parents on their infants’ birth certificate, Phillip Lühl, a Namibian citizen, “planned to take them home,” Mamba Online recounts, “to meet their other father, his Mexican-born husband Guillermo Delgado,” as well as the men’s “two-year-old son, Yona.”

“Namibia’s Ministry of Home Affairs, Immigration, Safety and Security,” the article adds, “is refusing to issue travel documents for the twins to allow them into the country.” The ministry has said it wants “genetic proof” of Lühl’s paternal relationship to the girls.

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Ireland, Same Sex

Ireland – ‘I’m a non-entity on my child’s birth cert’ – Same sex couples still facing legal limbo

Source News Talk

Same-sex couples are still facing legal hurdles to be named as parents to their children, despite changes that have come into force.

Couples who conceive through IVF or surrogacy can find themselves in legal limbo with no parental rights, despite new laws that came into effect last year.

Ranae Von Meding and her wife Audrey have two daughters – Ava and Arya – who were conceived through reciprocal IVF.

This means the couple used Audrey’s eggs and donor sperm while Ranae carried the pregnancies.

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Same Sex, Surrogacy

Gay Singaporean man wins landmark appeal to adopt surrogate child

Source BBC

A gay Singaporean man has won a landmark court case which will allow him to adopt a child he fathered through a surrogate.

The man, 46, and his long-term partner carried out the process in the US at a cost of $200,000 (£159,000), as surrogacy is illegal in Singapore.

He tried to legally adopt the child but the bid was rejected last year, leaving him with no legal parental rights.

Same-sex marriages are not recognised in Singapore and gay sex is illegal.

The four-year-old child is considered illegitimate in the eyes of the law as the surrogate mother and biological father are not married.

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Gay Parenting, Same Sex, UK

TOM DALEY ON BECOMING A DAD, PREJUDICE AND WHY UK SURROGACY LAWS NEED TO CHANGE

Source Independent

Tom Daley is sitting on a sofa in a central London hotel suite with his husband, Dustin Lance Black, while their seven-week-old baby, Robbie Ray, snoozes peacefully beside them – and it’s clear the new fathers (both dressed in baby blue) are entirely besotted with their son.

“We don’t ever turn on a TV anymore, we just stare at the little one,” Daley, 24, tells The Independent. “It’s been so crazy. It feels kind of surreal still, the fact that we have a…”
He stops mid-sentence to coo at baby Robbie, which I soon realise is to become a regular occurrence during our interview.

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Germany, Same Sex

Same-sex German couples forced abroad for fertility treatments

Source Handelsblatt Global

German cultures of conception and birth are undergoing a quiet evolution. In the last 15 years, the number of children conceived by artificial insemination and other forms of assisted reproduction has almost doubled, with 21,000 children born in 2015.

But growing demand for assisted reproduction is bumping up against Germany’s laws on conception, which are much stricter than many of its European neighbors. Only couples may use donated sperm to conceive, and they can only do so if someone is prepared to accept paternity of the child. And donating sperm anonymously is illegal.

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Italy, Same Sex, Surrogacy

Italian minister takes aim at same-sex couples who seek surrogacy abroad

Source The Guardian

Italy’s families minister has said same-sex couples who have children via surrogacy abroad should not be recognised as legal guardians.

In a sign that he may make it increasingly difficult for gay people to become parents, Lorenzo Fontana, who is from the far-right League party, told a parliamentary hearing on Thursday: “The current family law situation cannot fail to take account of what has been happening in recent months on the issue of the recognition of parenthood, with the registration of children conceived abroad by couples of the same sex via the use of practices that are banned by our laws and should stay so.”

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Ireland, Parental rights, Same Sex

Outdated Irish passports laws mean gay couple’s son denied

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.

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Ireland, Parental rights, Same Sex

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

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.

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Israel, Same Sex, Surrogacy

Israel – Netanyahu Voices Support for Surrogacy Births for Gay Men

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. 

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Ireland, Parental rights, Same Sex

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

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

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Same Sex, Single women, Surrogacy

Israel – Netanyahu Rejected Request to Consider Allowing Surrogates for Single Men, Same-sex Couples

Source Haaretz

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman refused a request from Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit to consider including single men and same-sex couples in proposed legislation allowing single women to use surrogacy services.
Litzman told the attorney general he believed the version of the government-sponsored bill that was approved by a Knesset committee this week, clearing the way for its approval by the legislature, should stand.

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Cryogenic storage failure, Egg Donor, Same Sex, Surrogate Mother

Two dads, an egg donor and a surrogate: How a freezer failure changed everything

Source CNN

San Francisco, California (CNN) — Their first date was over lunch during a Proposition 8 protest, where they joined hundreds of others railing against the passage of California’s same-sex marriage ban. The two men took a break from demonstrating, threw their hearts on the table and talked about their desire to have kids.

So it was somehow appropriate that in June 2013, nearly five years later, Bill Taroli and Yang Li stood in a delivery room and welcomed their son, Henry, one day before the US Supreme Court overturned Prop 8. A couple weeks later, with their newborn in their arms, they exchanged vows and were legally married.

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Gay Parenting, LGBTQ Parental Rights, Same Sex

A Historic Day for Surrogacy in the District of Columbia

Source Digital Journal

On June 15, 2018, Creative Family Connections LLC obtained the first ever Order of Parentage in a surrogacy case under the District of Columbia’s new Collaborative Reproduction statute, D.C. Code § 16-401 (2017), et. seq.

The Honorable Carol Dalton of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia granted two parentage orders for prospective parents who are expecting twins. She, therefore, granted one order pertaining to Baby Girl and one order pertaining to Baby Boy. The Intended Parents and the Gestational Carrier filed the petitions together as Joint Petitioners.

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Same Sex, Surrogacy

Unsung Heroes: Surrogate Mothers to Same-Sex Couples

Source Advocate

Let’s give a nod to the women who simultaneously help queer people start families and move the needle on tolerance.

I loved my small-town upbringing, but even in that somewhat sheltered environment I always had a curiosity about other places, other people, and other experiences. Now as a gay fertility doctor often working with LGBT people to build their families, it’s rewarding to see the effect this LGBT family-building is having on changing the perspective about our community in small towns across the country.

Much of that change comes from an unlikely place.

What I have learned in my work is that everyone involved in gay family-building becomes an ambassador for change. The gay parents, their family, and their child all open hearts and minds simply by living their lives.

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Same Sex, Surrogacy

The BBC is the cheerleader for same-sex surrogacy

Source Conservative Woman

Olympic diver Tom Daley and his ‘husband’ were adorned with sashes bearing the slogan ‘Daddy to be’ as they ‘celebrated the imminent arrival of their son with a baby shower’. Later Daley told the Andrew Marr Show: ‘The laws in the UK are different to the US. If a surrogate carries a baby, UK law recognises the surrogate and her partner as the parents.’ At present, the ‘commissioning couple’ has to apply for a parental order, but Daley was not asked how he would change the law. BBC Radio 5 Live also devoted a full hour to surrogacy without addressing the fact that these children are deprived of their biological mothers or fathers.

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Celebrity, Egg Donor, Same Sex, Surrogacy, UK

UK – ‘We fertilised half the eggs each’: Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black don’t know who the biological father of their unborn baby is

Source The Standard

Daddys-to-be: Tom Daley and husband Dustin Lance Black don’t know which of them is their baby’s biological father

Olympic swimmer Tom Daley has confirmed that neither himself nor his husband Dustin Lance Black know which of them is the biological father of their unborn child.

The couple were able to conceive the baby boy, who Daley revealed is due in June, through “an egg donor” and surrogate mother.

“We found an egg donor and we are the sperm donors, we have fertilised half the eggs each,” Daley said in an interview with The Times. “We put in a boy embryo and a girl embryo and we don’t know whose is whose.”

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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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Parental rights, Same Sex, Surrogacy

Gay people using a surrogate have to put time and effort into planning parenthood

Source DevonLive

I wish people who disapprove of the decision by Plymouth diver Tom Daley and his partner Dustin Lance Black to have a baby by surrogacy, would just shut up.

The most common criticism, apart from plain old prejudice, is that the baby will suffer from not having a mother.

Unlike some heterosexual couples who accidentally have babies, or decide on a whim, same-sex couples are almost certainly going to discuss and plan their children at length

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