Source: Yahoo Finance
According to the Ministry of Health (MOH), surrogacy refers to the arrangement where “a woman is artificially impregnated, whether for monetary compensation or not, with the intention that the child is to be the social child of some other person or couple”.
Commercial surrogacy often involves a fee paid to the surrogate mother. By hiring a surrogate mother, you are essentially hiring a woman to carry and deliver a child for you.
Source: Lexology
With more people facing fertility issues and couples increasingly seeking alternative routes to have children, there is a growing number of UK families created through surrogacy.
In the last three years, the number of children being born through surrogacy has almost tripled according to figures from the Ministry of Justice Family Court.
Surrogacy is no longer a taboo – along with adoption it has become an accepted alternative to traditional child birth. It has even recently featured in the Archers on Radio 4 and has been put into the headlines by Kim Kardashian and Kanye West who have recently used a surrogate to have their baby, Chicago.
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.)
Source: 9 News
It’s the ultimate gift – bringing a baby into the world through surrogacy.
However, in Western Australia, only 10 babies have been born through a surrogate in the last decade because the state’s laws are so tough.
The process often takes up to a year and costs roughly $80,000.
That makes Robina and her husband Ryan’s one year old son, Raphael, a rare baby.
Source: Out In Jersey
LGBT people have gradually stepped out from shadows over the last 50 years, not only transforming our own lives, but those of our families and communities. A generation or two ago, the children we raised were born of previous heterosexual relationships. This began to change in the 1970s and ‘80s, aided by helpful court rulings that reflected cultural sea change in attitudes toward gay people in general. In 1997, New Jersey became the first state to allow same-sex couples to adopt jointly.
Adoption, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization and surrogacy are now viable avenues available for LGBT individuals and couples. Ultimately, the choice of how to build your family (adoption vs. fertility treatment) is a personal decision based on many factors. Those who seek help from assisted reproductive technologies want to have children with whom they share a genetic connection. What is this path like?
Source BioNews
Appeared in BioNews 940
Government guidance has been issued for couples considering surrogacy in England and Wales, for the first time.
Two sets of guidelines have been released, one for surrogates and intended parents, and the other for healthcare professionals working with them.
Couples planning to enter into an agreement with a surrogate are recommended to use written agreements covering conception, expenses and any planned relationship between the surrogate and the child. They are also encouraged to use established surrogacy organisations in the UK to find a surrogate, rather than travelling abroad to clinics or using informal arrangements.
Source: The Sunday Times
Surrogacy support groups and family lawyers have criticised the government’s planned new laws on surrogacy, which they say will force 80 couples a year to go abroad to have children.
The government’s deadline for submissions on the planned Assisted Human Reproduction Bill, which will set up a new regulatory regime for surrogacy and other forms of assisted reproduction, closed last week.
Source: Christian Headlines
Washington state could legalize commercial surrogacy, where the surrogate mother is compensated beyond medical expenses.
According to The Christian Post, children’s rights advocates say the proposal is “selling” babies.
Wednesday morning, the Washington state House of Representative passed the “Uniform Parentage Act.” House Democrats voted in favor of the act. Every Republican member opposed the bill.
“For House Republicans, this bill was a matter of conscience,” said house member Liz Pike, according to Clark County Today.
Source: The Hindu
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.
Source: Clark County Today
Senate Bill 6037 allows for paid surrogacy in the state of Washington
Sometimes I have the pleasure of telling you a story and sometimes the story just tells itself.
It’s safe to say a number of area lawmakers have had some tough days during the current legislative session in Olympia but the past 24 hours just might have been the toughest for Reps. Liz Pike (R — 18th District) and Vicki Kraft (R — 17th District) and others.
Pike, Kraft and their fellow lawmakers were on the floor of the house until after midnight in the a.m. hours of Wednesday. I spoke with Kraft by telephone this morning and I believe she told me that she was still testifying on the floor of the House of Representatives after midnight.
Source: Irish Examiner
A fertility expert has warned that plans to permit surrogacy in Ireland are too restrictive and that people would continue to seek surrogacy abroad even though it remains a grey area.
Consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Mary Wingfield said the legal situation of those who employed surrogate mothers abroad should have been addressed in the Assisted Human Reproduction Bill.
Prof Wingfield was one of three fertility experts to discuss the proposed legislation at a meeting of the joint committee on health yesterday.
Source: The Telegraph
Children created through surrogacy should be told how they were born, the Government has said for the first time.
The first-ever official guidance for surrogacy arrangements says that “openness, confidence and transparency about a child’s origins from an early age (pre-school) is the best way to talk to children about their identity and origins”.
Parents are also warned not to enter into informal surrogacy arrangements but to use a surrogacy organisation to arrange the process, and advised not to go abroad but to use licensed clinics in the UK.
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.
Source: Connacht Tribune
A Galway City councillor has called on the Health Minister to consider introducing legislation giving surrogate mothers maternity leave so they are not treated any differently from natural or adoptive parents.
Fine Gael Cllr Padraig Conneely said he is aware of several couples in Galway who have become parents through a surrogacy arrangement abroad.
Surrogacy is a way for a childless couple or individual to have a child, with a surrogate mother carrying the child. The surrogate mother agrees to be artificially inseminated or to have an embryo transferred to her womb in order to become pregnant. She then carries the child to term with the intention of giving custody of the child to the “commissioning” person or couple.
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.
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.
Source: New Zealand Herald
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.
Source: RadioIowa
The Iowa Supreme Court rules that contracts made with surrogate mothers are legal in the state.
The case involves a couple from Cedar Rapids who were nearing 50 years old when they married in 2013 and decided they wanted to have a child. They placed an online ad in 2015 and signed an agreement to have the Muscatine woman serve as the surrogate mother. Both embryos implanted in the surrogate mother took hold — but the twins were born prematurely and one died.
The surrogate mother then refused to give up the surviving baby, saying the surrogate contract was not legal in Iowa. The district court, after genetic testing, ruled the contract is enforceable, terminated the parental rights of the surrogate mother and her husband, and awarded the Cedar Rapids man permanent legal and physical custody.
Source: WHOTV
DES MOINES, IOWA — Surrogate rights in Iowa have fallen under the microscope.
“Genetically, it is not her child, it is a child with genes of other people she agreed to carry,” said Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Waterman.
In January of 2016, Paul and Chantele Montover entered an agreement in Linn County for a surrogate to carry their child but surrender custody immediately upon birth.
“We decided to not use an agency, but our clinic gave us several websites of people advertising to be surrogates,” said Chantele.
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.
