Fertility Fraud

Fertility fraud: People conceived through errors, misdeeds in the industry are pressing for justice

Source Washington Post

Jacoba Ballard was conceived in a brick office building on 86th Street in Indianapolis when fertility doctor Donald Cline inseminated her mother with his own sperm instead of the donor sperm he had promised.

To Ballard, it was an offense akin to rape — one Cline is suspected of repeating with as many as 50 other women. But the law in Indiana, as in most other states, was not written to account for such a crime. So Cline was charged with obstruction of justice, and accused of false advertising and “immoral conduct” in the delivery of services. He lost his medical license, was fined $500 and received a year’s probation.

“My mother was violated. He took advantage of her in one of the most vulnerable moments of her life,” Ballard said. The sentence, she said, was “not enough to send a message.”

Read more

Surrogacy, UK

UK – Giving birth to another child could have left her in a wheelchair – so woman’s friend had her baby

Source Metro

A mum has revealed how she let another woman give birth to her second child because another pregnancy could have left her in a wheelchair.

Kelly Bullock, 33, from Warrington, Cheshire, and her husband Paul, 34, welcomed Riley to their family six months ago.

Back in 2013, Kelly gave birth to Brody, now five, but she developed a condition called Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction (SPD) during pregnancy.

Despite operations to help her walk again, doctors said that another pregnancy would cause further damage to her pelvis.

Read more

Surrogacy, Ukraine

Increasing Number of North American Couples Trying European Surrogacy Options

Source Digital Journal

Valencia, Spain – Nov 20, 2018 – With fertility rates decreasing, the price of surrogacy options in North America increasing and restrictive laws in Canada and in many US states, one Ukrainian clinic is reporting a staggering increase in applications from North American couples. 

One reason that surrogacy in Ukraine has become so popular in the past five years are the liberal laws which improve the rights of ‘intended parents’. Unofficially Europe’s ‘capital of surrogacy’, Ukraine is one of the few countries in the world which opens up its safe, regulated surrogacy programs to legally married heterosexual couples from all around the world. As a result, a number of Ukrainian surrogacy clinics have begun offering their services to international couples and, increasingly, those from the US & Canada.

Local laws ensure that intended parents appear on the birth certificate, meaning that the surrogate has no legal claim to the child. Ukrainian law also insists that at least one of the intended parents have a genetic link to the child, meaning that a sperm or egg donor can also be used in cases where one partner has struggled with fertility issues. 

Read more

Canada, Surrogacy

Canada – Proposal to pay sperm and egg donors, surrogates spawns controversy

Source CBC

Kevin Martin was conceived with the help of a sperm donor in London, Ont.

On Wednesday, the 32-year-old was driving from his home in Ohio to Toronto to voice opposition to Bill C-404. The legislation would legalize financial compensation for egg and sperm donors — and could make Canada the new nexus of a global fight over assisted reproduction.

Martin and others are set to make their arguments at a public consultation hosted by Health Canada, not on Bill C-404 itself but other potential changes to the Assisted Human Reproduction Act.

While many see sperm and egg donation as a way to make it easier for couples struggling with infertility, LGBT couples or prospective single parents to have children, the meeting does not explicitly invite donor-conceived people.

With commercial DNA tests on the rise, those donor-conceived people are finding their hidden genetic history online after decades of donor anonymity being the norm — and they’re demanding new protections in the world of assisted reproduction.

Read more

Australia, Surrogacy

Australia – After a decade, WA’s surrogacy laws are still sparking controversy

Source Brisbane Times

For some WA women, surrogacy is a last chance for having a family and even though the practice has been legal in WA for almost a decade, it remains controversial.

An Australian surrogacy organisation has drawn fire from Christian groups for bringing international speakers associated with commercial surrogacy to Perth; a practice illegal in WA.

The state’s surrogacy laws, which have been in place for a few weeks short of a decade, restrict surrogacy to altruistic agreements aimed at helping women who cannot conceive or carry a child for medical reasons.

Read more

Surrogacy

Monica and Lou Canellis share their surrogacy story

Source Fox

CHICAGO (FOX 32 News) – What was once a rare occurrence is now becoming more common in the United States.

The practice of using a surrogate to have a baby may be something people don’t always want to speak about openly, but we at FOX 32 are close with a couple who does. 

Their goal is to help other childless couples who can’t have a baby.

We bring you the story of our own Lou Canellis and his wife Monica and baby Gia, the child they didn’t think would be possible.

“She acts like her, she looks like me, that’s why she’s so cute,” Lou said.

She is the baby Monica and Lou thought they could only dream about. When they married 13 years ago, Monica knew she would never be able to bear her own biological child. Being a childless couple was something they accepted as their fate.

Read more

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.

Read more

Surrogacy

‘Wisconsin is kind of old school:’ Some say ‘the law has not kept up with the science’ of surrogacy

Source Fox 6 Now

MILWAUKEE — Wisconsin is fertile ground for a growing industry — surrogacy — but a lack of laws could be putting those involved in vulnerable situations.

At noon on a Tuesday, Lauren Rigby and the rest of SSM Health St. Mary’s – Madison labor and delivery squad had already delivered six babies in six hours. Rigby is a mother of two, but she’s been pregnant more times than that. This is not a story, however, about the loss of life. Instead, it is about creating life for those who cannot create it themselves.

“We both wanted kids. We’d always wanted children. We just knew,” explained Brent Love and his husband Charlie.

Read more

Embryo adoption

Overseas Embryo Adoption Saves Chelmsford Couple Thousands Of Dollars

Source CBS Boston

CHELMSFORD (CBS) – Infertility can be a painful experience for couples trying to start a family. It’s a roller coaster ride of emotion that Shawn and Shannon McNamee know well.

For more than a year, Shannon injected herself hundreds of times. They tried several rounds of in vitro fertilization (IVF). Nothing worked.

“You would get really hopeful and optimistic, then it would crash. The results came back negative every time,” Shawn told WBZ-TV.

The McNamees decided to adopt and now their living room is filled with toys and their hearts with love. Their son Logan is happy and curious and in no way intimidated by their 150-pound mountain dog.

“He’s just everything that I could have imagined as a baby and a son,” Shannon said.

Read more

IVF, UK

UK – When you’re desperate to conceive, you’ll pay anything, and IVF clinics are cashing in

Source The Times

Nearly 2½ years after my husband and I began trying for a baby, our luck came in. The faintest of blue lines appeared on those deeply unscientific-looking pee-test sticks at 5.30am one summer’s morn last year. We had finally managed to get pregnant. I write “finally” with the bleak awareness that this moment takes a great deal longer for some people and never happens at all for others. But for us it had felt like an eternity.

At first I refused to believe it — not because we had been trying for years but because I never thought IVF would work. And definitely not the first time. But it did.

Read more

Canada, Surrogacy

Canadians paying bills for birth tourism

Source Toronto Sun

Call it birth tourism of another kind.

We’ve all heard stories about mothers arriving in Canadian cities just in time to give birth so their child can get Canadian citizenship.

But what about foreign parents having a kid in Canada via surrogacy?

It is happening and it is growing.

In 2016 and 2017 there were 102 babies born to surrogate mothers in British Columbia. A shocking 45 of those babies were born to parents from outside of the country.

Here is the crazy part, you are paying for it and the baby that is quickly whisked off to a foreign land is granted automatic Canadian citizenship.

Read more

Insurance, IVF

Insurance companies should be required to cover in vitro fertilization

Source Washington Post

Michelle Obama’s revelation in her new memoir that she and Barack Obama conceived their daughters through in vitro fertilization has placed the increasingly common medical procedure into the national spotlight. Malia and Sasha, it turns out, are among the more than 1 million babies born in the United States through IVF. Yet a full 40 yearsafter the first IVF baby was born, even as the procedure has become safe and remarkably effective, it remains financially out of reach for many U.S. couples struggling to become parents.

Health insurance regulation is largely up to the states, and policies vary widely. Some have expanded IVF access by mandating that most health-care plans cover the procedure — includingConnecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and the Obamas’ home state of Illinois (which enacted its mandate seven years before Malia’s birth).

Read more

Surrogate Mother, UK

UK – Surrogate mothers could be allowed to charge cash

Source The Times

Legal reformers are looking at whether to change the law so that surrogates can profit from having babies for others.

The Law Commission is consulting on the subject and is to publish proposals in the new year. Sir Nicholas Green, chairman of the independent body, said that the existing laws, which were drawn up more than 30 years ago, were not fit for purpose.

Surrogacy, he said, had increased ten fold in ten years. The main problem was that the law was “quite cumbersome” and often required people to go abroad.

Read more

Surrogacy

Inside Surrogacy And The Path To Achieving Motherhood

Source Michronicle Online

What was previously a very private, and in some cases unspoken, way to conceive has become one of the most talked about ways to become a mother. Surrogacy has been life-changing for many women whose path to become a mother was not as simple as getting pregnant on their own. This includes several high-profile celebrities like Kim Kardashian West and Gabrielle Union, who have been open and honest about their journey to motherhood through the surrogacy process, however many still don’t seem to know exactly what having a surrogate actually means.

If you look at the comments underneath photos of celebrities who have used a surrogate to expand their families, you’ll see a host of trolls commenters who ask very insensitive, rude and downright ignorant questions about how a child can belong to a mother who did not actually carry her. Although a quick Google search could easily give you all the answers you need on the subject, but, the Internet. In an effort to educate, we’ve compiled everything you need to know about the process that has helped many women around the world fulfill their dream of becoming a mother.

Read More

Brexit, UK, Sperm Donor

UK – A Shortage of Sperm Donors: The Brexit Dilemma We Didn’t See Coming

Source Huffington Post UK

Every year, around 2,500 men and women in the UK have a baby with the help of a sperm donor. For many, using donated sperm is their one chance to fulfil the dream of having a family. But while the number of women using donated sperm is rising every year, the number of willing British donors remains low. 

This is why the UK relies heavily on foreign sperm – recent figures show 3,000 sperm samples from Denmark alone were imported to the UK in 2017. But like all imports, these could be affected by Brexit next March if these thousands of samples are held at the border, unaccounted for by trade agreements. 

Is this the hard Brexit dilemma we didn’t see coming? And if British men don’t step up and donate, will we see a drop in the number of babies born in the UK by sperm donor? 

Read more

IVF, UK

UK – Couple who spent £20,000 on IVF treatment before shelling out another £7,000 on ‘add-ons to boost their chances of a baby’ become first in the UK to sue over the ‘worthless and unproven’ extras

Source Daily Mail

Legal secretary Tracy Wint underwent two years of unsuccessful IVF treatment, spending more than £20,000 in her desperation to have a second child with her husband Mark.

During that time she claims Oxford Fertility convinced her and her husband to fork out an extra £7,000 for add-ons doctors said would boost their chances of having a baby. However, the pair now believe they were ‘worthless’.

Couples are often persuaded by private doctors to buy expensive top-up procedures such as ‘glue’ to stick embryos to the womb, or genetic tests to screen for abnormalities.

But a report last year by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) said many such treatments have no scientific basis, are dangerous, and could even harm a woman’s chances of becoming pregnant.

Mrs Wint, 41, said: ‘We feel like we’ve paid out thousands for add-ons that are not proven to work and carry health risks. We were desperate. If they had said they could sprinkle fairy dust and it will make you pregnant we would have bought it.’

Read more

IVF, Michelle Obama

IVF is so hard to talk about. Thank you, Michelle Obama, for speaking out

Source The Guardian

After her years of living in the fishbowl of the White House, Michelle Obamadoesn’t owe us anything. But for millions of people, her new disclosure that she and Barack Obama used IVF treatment to conceive their two daughters is a remarkable act of generosity. Because for all that IVF treatment is increasingly common, it remains an often stigmatized thing to talk about. And for those of us who go through it, knowing that public figures aren’t ashamed to be among us can make a huge difference in terms of feeling able to get the support and space we need to persevere.

IVF has been around for 40 years, now (thank you, Lesley Brown) but till remains something that people find difficult to discuss. The reasons are complex. If you conceive children without medical assistance, it’s understandably quite rude to volunteer the details of your techniques. While you can describe IVF with a degree of sterile remove that may be absent from that night on your honeymoon when you overdid the pina coladas, it still makes people uncomfortable – something that I learned last year when my husband and I started treatment.

Read more

Surrogacy

Gabrielle Union baby: What does ‘via surrogate mother’ mean?

Source Monsters and Critics

Gabrielle Union announced yesterday that she and Dwyane Wade had become parents to a little baby girl.

Fans were excited for the couple, who had kept the pregnancy private. In an emotional message to fans, she revealed their newborn arrived via surrogate — but what does that mean?

Traditional and Gestational surrogates

There are two kinds of surrogates: traditional surrogate and a gestational surrogate. Both are used when a hopeful mom-to-be has trouble getting pregnant.

A traditional surrogate sees a second woman — the “surrogate” — become naturally or artificially inseminated with the father’s sperm or sperm from a donor while she’s ovulating.

She then carries the baby to term, and it is the surrogate’s egg that is used.

Read more

Turkey

Turkey – New legislation expands ban on sperm and egg donations in Turkey

Source Hurriyet Daily News

A controversial legislation that was passed by a parliamentary committee on Nov. 7 includes a provision that expands a ban on sperm and eggdonations.

According to the respective regulation in legislation, a doctor who refers people to donation centers to seek fertility treatment in foreign countries may risk facing up to five years in jail.

Doctors who encourage people to visit such centers abroad will face criminal charges.

This rule will also apply to those who donate, preserve, ship and trade sperms and eggs and those that trade sperms and eggs and encourage such activities.

Some medical specialist lawmakers from the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and İYİ (Good) Party criticized the proposed regulation, calling for the withdrawal of the related article.

Read more