Source Sunday Express
COUPLES desperate to have a baby are resorting to unregulated commercial surrogacy abroad, which can lead to legal battles and losing the child, experts warn. New figures show the practice is rising but due to a chronic shortage of British surrogates, many people are going to countries where commercial arrangements are legal.
Source 9 News
Male same-sex couples and single men will be able have children through a surrogate under proposed amendments to West Australian laws.
The bill will be introduced in state parliament on Thursday and will bring WA into line with most Australian jurisdictions.
If the legislation passes, men in WA will have the same access to altruistic surrogacy that women and heterosexual couples have had since 2009.
Source Crime Online
A surrogate mother in California who became pregnant with twins and learned that one of the babies was her biological son is suing, alleging that the surrogacy agency wanted her to pay them to get her son back.
According to the Daily Mail, Omega Family Global matched Jessica Allen, 31, with a childless Chinese couple (called the Lius in the article) and Allen underwent in vitro fertilization in April 2016. A frozen embryo from the couple was implanted into Allen, who successfully became pregnant.
It wasn’t until a month after giving birth in December 2016 that she found out that one of the twin boys belonged to her and her husband. The Mail reported that Allen was unaware she suffered from superfetation.
Source Deccan Chronicle
Hyderabad: Compensatory surrogacy, and not altruistic surrogacy, was recommended by the Telangana infertility specialists in their discussion and debate at the conference of Indian Fertility Society’s Telangana Chapter on Sunday.
The central government, in its amendment of Surrogacy Regulation Bill 2016, has stated that commercial surrogacy is prohibited and there must be a 16-month insurance coverage provided by the commissioning parents to the surrogate to deal with medical complications. The Founder of IFS, Dr Kuldeep Jain, explained, “Altruistic surrogacy is not possible as, with nuclear families and with near and dear ones not being in the same city, it is not found to be possible. There is only 1 per cent chance for this type of surrogacy as only someone who is really very concerned, free and can do it selflessly for the couple will come forward.”
Source Israel National News
The demand to expand surrogacy for male couples has been described by some in recent weeks to be a humanitarian cause, but the issue is a lot more complex underneath the surface.
A study conducted by Dr. Etty Samma revealed certain aspects on the phenomenon of surrogacy that are generally ignored by the Israeli media.
“With some of the women who agreed to this, and with the approval of the Ethics Committee, I conducted in-depth interviews and talked about the process they underwent,” explained Dr. Samma.
“The interviews dealt with more than 100 surrogacy procedures, both parents and surrogates.”
Dr. Samma discovered that in fact a good number perhaps most don’t finish the surrogacy until birth.
Source National Magazine
Though surrogacy is legal in Canada, surrogacy contracts are mostly deemed unenforceable throughout the country. In Quebec, they are qualified as “absolutely null” under the Civil Code’s article 541. That means that in Quebec a woman who agrees to carry a child for another individual or intended parents is deemed a threat to public order. So the contract, whether verbal or in written form, may not be enforced. But in an article recently published in the Canadian Bar Review, McGill University’s Stefanie Carsley notes that lawmakers have largely failed at dissuading people from taking the risk of entering surrogacy arrangements. Intended parents in the province have sought ways around the unenforceability issue by applying to the courts for legal status through adoption – more specifically through special adoption. This allows one birth parent to maintain their bond of filiation while their spouse adopts the child. Carsley reviews recent Quebec case law addressing article 541 and concludes that the province’s legal framework is failing all parties.
Source benzinga
Becoming a surrogate can be one of the most rewarding decisions a person can make. After all, a surrogate helps a couple or individual create the family for which they have longed.
“However, many women who want to become a surrogate and couples and individuals wanting to create a new life are scared off due to myths about surrogacy,” said Dr. Kyle Kramer, co-founder of Omega Family Global, which exists to make new family creation straightforward and as easy as possible, while being legally protected.
To educate women contemplating becoming a surrogate and couples and individuals that want to start a family, Dr. Kramer dispels the following three surrogacy misconceptions:
Source Cochrane Eagle
One Tuesday afternoon last fall, Heidi Rousseau was attending a Bible gathering for moms. It was there that the course of her life in the months and the year ahead would completely alter.
Rousseau, a mother of four, was approached by a recent acquaintance, Chantelle Toews, who shared a troubling predicament faced by her family – Toews could not bear any more children due to a complication in the delivery of her first child.
Source Above The Law
Last week, I wrote about the 60,000 Israelis who gathered in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, among other places in Israel, to protest the lack of LGBTQ access to surrogacy for Israeli families. For those who read my column, you are likely familiar with the wide range of treatment of surrogacy around the world. So while the Israeli public is clearly mobilized on this issue to fight discrimination, in other parts of the world, countries are doing much more to stifle surrogacy options. Some countries go so far as to criminalize the practice.
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.”
Source ABC.net
In the four decades since the first baby was born using in vitro fertilisation, a debate has raged about creating new life. It’s even more challenging today, with the use of surrogacy, where a woman carries a child – sometimes her biological child but usually not – for another person or couple.
This week, the Israeli parliament passed a law allowing surrogacy for single mothers and women who can’t have children, but excluded gay couples and single men.
For the Swedish feminist and writer Kajsa Ekis Ekman, the issue is clear cut – no surrogacy for anyone for any reason. She says it’s about the rights of the child.
Source The Asean Post
First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage. But for those for whom this traditional family-building strategy doesn’t quite resolve itself, advances in the artificial reproductive field have made it possible to have genetically-linked children through surrogacy.
Surrogacy refers to the arrangement in which women become pregnant and carry a baby to term for contracted parties who will then assume the role of parents. Surrogacy could be traditional, in which the ovum of the surrogate mother is used, or gestational, in which the sperm and/or ovum used come from one or both of the intended parents or donors. It could be a commercial transaction, in which money changes hands for the service of a womb or a baby delivered, or an altruistic arrangement, in which the service of carrying the baby is done wholly to enable infertile persons to become parents.
Source Alport Syndrome News
An anonymous donor’s $10,000 gift to Path2Parenthood will help a woman with Alport syndrome as she and her husband expand their family through surrogacy.
The donation from person described “celebrity” who wanted someone in need of surrogacy, was given through Melissa B. Brisman, an attorney specializes the field reproductive law longtime supporter family-building nonprofit organization. Path2Parenthood, collaboration Connecticut-based Nest Egg Foundation, provided the surrogacy grant to the grateful recipient.
Source Al Monitor
On July 18, the Knesset approved a new law offering heterosexual couples and single women state-supported surrogacy. The new law excludes single men and gay couples. Previously, state support was offered only to married heterosexual couples. The final version did not include a proposed amendment that would have allowed single men to have a child in Israel through surrogacy.
There is no reason to be surprised that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suddenly withdrew his support for the amendment. Supporting it would have meant angering the ultra-Orthodox Knesset factions and a potential coalition crisis just moments before the Knesset begins its summer recess on July 22.
Source The Times
Surrogacy is booming, with the number of orders that transfer legal parenthood from the surrogate to intended parents up nearly five-fold in ten years, according to Ministry of Justice figures.
The figures were released yesterday as an order was laid before parliament to allow single people who use a surrogate to become legal parents via a parental order. The aim is to create equality for single parents as well as people in a relationship where their partner does not want to become a legal parent.
Source Times Of Israel
Israel’s LGBT community has called a nationwide strike in protest of a bill passed by the Knesset that loosened surrogacy regulations but did not include a clause enabling gay couples to use a surrogate in order to have a child.
The community’s umbrella group, The Agudah, announced the strike in a post to its Facebook page Wednesday, shortly after parliament voted on the surrogacy bill, which extends eligibility to women in a same-sex relationship, but not men. The strike was called for Sunday and the organization urged all sympathizers to join the action.
Source Daily Mail
Amy Trelease, 42, a management analyst, from Carson City, Nevada, said she was determined to help women struggling to conceive after learning about egg donation and surrogacy in college.
She gave the gift of a newborn for the first time at the age of 26, having donated her eggs twice before in her early 20s.
After having her third child Dillon, now 13, she went on to have five more babies in seven years, gifting them to women who were dealing with infertility.
She has scheduled an IVF transfer for next month, which will be her first step to carrying a baby for someone else for the seventh time.
Source The Times
Advances in medical science and shifts in attitudes to the meaning of family have led to a growth in non-traditional methods of procreation, including surrogacy.
Ministry of Justice figures show that in the ten years to 2016, the number of parental order applications — the process by which legal parenthood is transferred from a surrogate to the intended parents — rose from 55 to 316.
Source Unian
A Kyiv-based clinic specializing on reproductive technologies is being suspected of illegal trafficking of newborns out of Ukraine under the guise of surrogate parenthood, according to Chief of the National Police, Serhiy Knyazev who spoke at a joint Monday briefing with Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko.
The investigation states that foreigners used fake medical papers to claim they are in fact genetic parents of newborns carried by surrogate mothers in Ukraine and effectively smuggled infants out of Ukraine.
