India, Law, Surrogacy

India – Delhi HC seeks Centre’s response on plea challenging validity of Surrogacy law

Source The Siasat Daily

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New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Friday sought the response of the Centre on a plea challenging the constitutional validity of provisions of the Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021, and the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021.

Issuing notice in the matter, a bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Sachin Datta asked the government to file a reply within six weeks and posted the matter for further hearing on November 19.

The petition was filed by Karan Balraj Mehta, a single unmarried man and a lawyer by profession, and Dr Pankhuri Chandra, a married woman teaching Psychology in a private school.

Commercial Surrogacy, Law, Spain, Surrogacy

Spain’s High Court rejects commercial surrogacy as ‘exploitation’

Source BioEdge

Spain’s High Court has ruled that commercial surrogacy constitutes “unacceptable exploitation” of both the child and the biological mother, according to El Pais.

The case involved a Spanish woman who made a contract with a woman in the Mexican state of Tabasco in 2015 to bear a child with the help of a surrogacy agency.

The court declared that adoption was the better option for protecting “the best interests of the child”. “Both are treated as mere objects, not as persons endowed with the dignity of their condition as human beings and the fundamental rights inherent to that dignity,” the court stated.

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India, Law, Surrogacy

India’s new surrogacy laws could limit chances for some would-be parents

Source The National News

Seven months after their only daughter died during the coronavirus pandemic, Indian couple Sabu Thomas and Jean George were hoping to fill a void through surrogacy.

But their dreams of having a child have hit a dead end under India’s new surrogacy laws, aimed at regulating the country’s once booming rent-a-womb industry that earned it the sobriquet of “world’s baby factory”.

Mr Thomas, 52, and Ms George, 47, from Pathanamthitta in southern Kerala state, lost their 20-year-old daughter Nova Sabu in August to brain hemorrhage, caused by what they claim was an adverse reaction to the Covid-19 vaccine.

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Ireland, Law, Surrogacy, Ukraine, War

Irish surrogacy in Ukraine: What does the Russian invasion mean?

Source News Talk

Mary Seery-Kearney says the woman who gives birth to the child remains the child’s legal mother

Author Jack Quaan

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has not changed the legal status of surrogate children born to Irish parents.

That’s according to Fine Gael Senator Mary Seery-Kearney – who says regardless of where a child is born, the mother who gives birth to the child remains the child’s legal mother.

It comes amid concerns whether some surrogacy contracts may have been changed if surrogate mothers were to give birth outside of Ukraine.

“The agreement was based on an agreement that is recognised in Ukrainian law, and subject to Ukrainian law, and based on the baby being born in Ukraine.

“When the couple would come home to Ireland, they have to apply to the court in order to get the parental order for the father – because we don’t have surrogacy legislation in Ireland

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Fertility Fraud, Law

Praise For A Fertility Fraud Bill: Because Sperm-Switching Is Arguably Legal Right Now

Source Above The Law

ndiana State Senators Roderick Bray and Michael Delph have proposed Senate Bill 239 in order to help stop an all too familiar kind of fraud in the fertility world. The bill makes it a felony in the state for a physician to use his own sperm to inseminate a patient without her consent, or to use the reproductive material of others without the genetic provider’s consent. It’s surprising that this isn’t already the law! But to date, despite the fact that this kind of medical misconduct is unquestionably unethical, and not to mention gross, it is arguably not illegal.

The bill comes on the heels of an epidemic of discoveries — both in the U.S. and abroad — that many obstetricians and fertility doctors used their own sperm to inseminate their patients. At the time, they generally told their patients that they were using donated sperm from medical students, or other people who were unknown to the patient. Of course, prior to advances in DNA testing, these doctors where pretty confident that they could never be caught. And I have previously written on the hesitation of courts to find such doctors guilty of a crime or civilly liable.

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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.

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Australia, IVF, Law

Australia – Woman challenges laws that require estranged husband’s IVF consent

Source The Age

A woman who wants to conceive a child using donor sperm has launched a court challenge to existing laws that bar her from accessing IVF without her estranged husband’s consent.

The Victorian woman, known to the court as “LR”, says she is being discriminated against on the basis of her marital status.

The woman is still legally married, but separated and estranged from her husband, the Federal Court in Melbourne heard on Thursday.

She intends to divorce him when the 12-month waiting period is over, and wants to undergo in-vitro fertilisation to become pregnant, using her own eggs and donor sperm.

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Kenya, Surrogacy Law

Kenya – Trying to hand over a surrogate baby to the intended parents might land the parties involved in court with charges of child trafficking.

Source National

Four years ago, Kenya first confronted the issue of surrogacy and the legal gaps that surround a science that has been around for ages. It came in the form of a landmark case that began in hospital.

After giving birth at a private hospital in Nairobi, a surrogate mother declined to put her name on the birth notification, saying that the intended parents for whom she had carried the pregnancy would sign it.

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Law

A Legislative Approach to the Concept of Parentage in the Age of Surrogacy and Artificial Reproduction

Source New York Law Journal

In March, this column addressed the “Continuing Legal Evolution of the Concepts of Parent and Child,” N.Y.L.J. (March 8, 2018) in a review of the Appellate Division, Third Department’s decision of Jan. 25, 2018 in Matter of Christopher YY v. Jessica ZZ, 2018 NY Slip Op 0049, where the sperm donor, biological father sought access to the child of a feminine same sex couple and the court employed both the presumption of legitimacy of a child born to married partners and the doctrine of equitable estoppel to enforce the donor’s promise to relinquish his rights to the child. The difficult questions resolved by that decision were soon followed by Matter of David S. v. Samantha G., N.Y.L.J. (May 3, 2018) where Family Court Judge Carol Goldstein was presented with a custody dispute surrounding a “tri-parent arrangement” involving a biological mother and the biological father joined by his husband.

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Law

Commercial Surrogacy on Path to Legalization in NJ, NY, but Some Donor-Conceived Adults Oppose the Laws

Source Christian Post

Two populous states are on the path to legalizing commercial surrogacy, a move that’s drawing intense criticism from bioethicists, egg donors, donor-conceived children and pro-life advocates.

Legislation permitting the practice is being considered in New York and New Jersey, and the New Jersey bill, known as bill S482, which recently passed through both houses of the state legislature, is sitting on the desk of Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.

New Jersey Right to Life is actively opposing the proposed legislation. If Murphy does not sign, veto or conditionally veto it by May 28, it will become law.

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Birth Certificate, Italy, Law

Children of same-sex couples officially recognized in a first for Italy

Source The Local it

Three gay couples in the northern city of Turin have been able to legally register their children to both parents, in a first for Italy.

“Today an important page of history has been written,” said the mother of one of the children, Turin councillor Chiara Foglietta.

Foglietta, who gave birth after undergoing artificial insemination in Denmark, said staff at the public records office had told her “no form exists” to recognize the child’s birth through the procedure, which is subject to strict rules in Italy.

Instead, the staff reportedly told Foglietta she should declare that she had had the baby with a man. On Monday, the councillor said she “cried with joy” after signing the documents in which both she and her partner, Micaela Ghisleni, were recognized as parents of their son.

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Law, Malta

Malta – ‘I had told Muscat I am against freezing, adoption of embryos, and surrogacy’ – Deborah Schembri

Source Independent

Former Parliamentary Secretary Deborah Schembri said she has always been against embryo freezing, embryo adoption and surrogacy and “Prime Minister Joseph Muscat knew (this) from day one.”

Last week Health Minister Chris Fearne presented in Parliament a number of amendments to the Embryo Protection Act. Schembri said that she is in favour with some of them and against in others.

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donor sperm, intended parents, Parental rights, Same Sex, Sperm Donation

The Continuing Legal Evolution of the Concepts of ‘Parent’ and ‘Child’

Source: New York Law Journal

Alton L. Abramowitz

On Jan. 25, 2018, the Appellate Division, Third Department, issued a significant decision in Matter of Christopher YY v. Jessica ZZ, 2018 NY Slip Op 00495. Underlying the court’s determination is the conundrum which it describes as follows: “Application of existing case law involving different-gender spouses, addressing whether the presumption [of legitimacy] has been rebutted, to a child born to a same-gender married couple is inherently problematic, as it is not currently scientifically possible for same-gender couples to produce a child that is biologically ‘the product of the marriage’ [citations omitted].”

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Law, Sperm Donation, Sperm Donor

Judge Dismisses Third Sperm Bank Lawsuit Over Dodgy Donor

Source: Daily Report powered By Law.com

For the third time, a federal judge in Atlanta has tossed out claims against a Georgia sperm bank involving a donor it touted as a highly educated and multitalented but who was really a convicted felon with a history of mental illness.

The order issued Thursday by Northern District Judge Thomas Thrash Jr. closely mirrors two he issued last year, finding that Xytex Cryo International clients who bore children sired by the donor have no basis under Georgia law to sue for “wrongful birth.”

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Law, Surrogacy, Surrogacy Law, Surrogate Mother

SB126: Bill to limit surrogate births stalls in committee

Source: The Daily Universe

SALT LAKE CITY — Lawmakers appeared to be swayed by Utah families — many with babes in arms — who urged lawmakers to reject changes to Utah’s surrogate birth laws. SB126, which would repeal protections and requirements for surrogate births in Utah, was stalled in committee on Feb. 7 The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, sponsored legislation passed in 2005 making surrogate birth legal in Utah under certain conditions. Hillyard is sponsoring SB126 to repeal specifications and protections for surrogate births.

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Ireland, Law, Same Sex

Ireland – Woman speaks of frustration as wife cannot be named on son’s birth cert

Source: RTE

A woman has spoken of her frustration at not being allowed to name her wife as a co-parent on their son’s birth certificate, despite legislation being in place for two years to enable same-sex parents to be named on such documents.

Sarah Stone-McDevitt told RTÉ’s Today with Sean O’Rourke that her three month-old child Lochlann’s rights have been infringed by the fact that she could only put her name on the birth certificate and not her wife Ger’s name too.

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Infertility, Law, Same Sex, Surrogacy, Surrogacy Law, Surrogate Mother

After courts started allowing gay couples to use surrogates, a Utah senator wants to repeal the law he once championed

(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) l-r Senator Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan listens as Sarah Tuttle gives reasons not to repeal SB126 regarding surrogacy Wednesday, February 7, 2018 in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee at the Capitol. “I would’ve given anything to have been able to carry my own children,” said Tuttle who now has two daughters thanks to a surrogate, Kara Ford, who is now her best friend.

Source: The Salt Lake Tribune

Sen. Lyle Hillyard sat in his chair as Lisa Candie Barlow asked him not to repeal the law that provides her legal protections while she carries her brother’s child.

Barlow is 14 weeks pregnant with a baby that she’ll give back to her brother upon delivery.

She was one of dozens of mothers, fathers and surrogates – including Abby Cox, who is married to Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox – who pleaded with a committee on Wednesday to block Hillyard’s SB126.

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intended parents, Ireland, Law, Surrogacy Law

Hopes and dreams for the new law on assisted human reproduction in Ireland

Source: Bio News

The Minister for Health in Ireland on the 3 October 2017 disclosed a decision by Government to approve the drafting of a bill on assisted human reproduction (AHR) and associated research. Three days later a general scheme of the Assisted Human Reproduction Bill 2017 was published. This month, the bill went to Ireland’s Oireachtas health committee for scrutiny (see BioNews 934), after which it will go back to the Irish government for a final bill to be drafted. This is very exciting as it will be the first legislation in Ireland on assisted reproduction: setting up a legislative and regulatory structure under which the practice of AHR may operate.

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Law, South Africa, Surrogacy, Surrogacy Law, Surrogate Mother

South Africa – Surrogacy – too much to bear?

Source: Lexology

Surrogacy – a word recently dragged kicking and screaming into the limelight by the pop-couple Kardashian-West. What caused the outcry? Kim’s decision: the mother of two would not bear their third child herself. Worldwide the topic of surrogacy sparks debate. Leaving ethics aside for a moment, should the legal aspects of surrogacy be influenced by social, political or geographical factors?

Surrogacy is not a concept or practice foreign to South Africa. The Children’s Act of 2005 prescribes that all surrogacy arrangements are to be governed by a “surrogacy motherhood agreement” (SMA), the validity of which must be confirmed by a court. A recent decision handed down by the Johannesburg High Court highlighted a few requirements for such confirmation. The judgment arguably opens the door to social, political and or geographical discrimination.

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Gay Parenting, Law, Singapore, Surrogacy, Surrogacy Law

Singapore sticks with old-fashioned parenting model

Source: BioEdge

A gay couple has created a conundrum for the Singaporean government by attempting to adopt a child born of an American surrogate mother. The two unnamed men, both Chinese, aged 45 with high salaries, paid a California woman US$200,000 to provide an egg and to gestate a baby, who was born in 2013.

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