Source: NBCNews
There are more options than ever for same-sex couples looking to expand their families, but it’s not a simple — or affordable — endeavor for many.
Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and his husband, British Olympic diver Tom Daley, announced on Valentine’s Day that they’re expecting their first child. But while there are more options than ever for same-sex couples looking to expand their families, it’s not a simple — or affordable — endeavor for many.
Source: NZ Herald
Telling your kids that they’re about to get a younger sibling can be tricky at the best of times.
But having to explain that their baby brother will be born via surrogate has made for an added twist for The Hits host Toni Street to navigate.
Street – who announced she will have her third child with the help of her best friend Sophie Braggins – says she decided to “keep it really simple” when breaking the news to her daughters, Juliette, 5, and Mackenzie, 2.
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: PinkNews
(Photo by Charlie Crowhurst/Getty Images)
Current AffairsCatholic group attacks Tom Daley for ‘depriving’ baby of mother
A Catholic group has lashed out at gay Olympic hero Tom Daley – for having a baby.
Daley, 23, revealed this week that his expecting a baby with his Oscar-winning husband Dustin Lance Black, 43.
It is believed that the pair are having the child via surrogate, posting a selfie with an ultrasound scan.
The high-profile gay couple’s decision to start a family has led to a tidal wave of homophobic comments.
Kim and Kanye are the latest celebrity couple to have a baby using a surrogate. They join the likes of Nicole Kidman, Tyra Banks, and Elton John and his partner David Furnish, who have all turned to surrogacy to have children.
It’s not just high-profile couples who are using a surrogate to help them start or add to their families. According to Surrogacy UK on average 10 children are born through surrogacy each week.
Source: The Center for Bioethics and Culture
23 NGOs (including The Center for Bioethics and Culture) from eight countries and two international networks (including the #StopSurrogacyNow Coalition) have issued a renewed call to the members of the Experts’ Group of the Hague International Conference.
Specifically, we are asking them to:
1. Renounce working on any instrument which would tend to organize surrogate motherhood internationally or would favor mutual recognition in this domain;
2. Recognize the necessity of a Convention on the Abolition of Surrogacy, similar to what was done against slavery and practices analogous to slavery with the Conventions of 1926 and 1956, and to recommend that the Member States of the Conference engage in this direction within the United Nations, which is the relevant organisation in this respect.
Source SC News
Following the Feb. 6 legislative cutoff deadline for committee action on bills in their originating house, both chambers took up debate and voted on dozens of bills in floor sessions that lasted well into the night.
Lawmakers have until Wednesday, Feb. 14, to pass bills and move them to the opposite house for further consideration. Measures that don’t make it past this deadline, except budget-related bills, will likely be dead for this session.
Source: Nyooz
Pune: The parents of a 27-year-old man, who died of brain tumour two years ago, used their unmarried son’s cryopreserved semen extracted long before his death to have grandchildren. Fusing the semen with eggs of a matching donor, doctors created embryos and transferred them into a surrogate mother’s womb.
The woman, who incidentally is the man’s aunt, delivered healthy twin baby boys two days ago. Experts, however, have raised questions about the ethics behind the procedure. The man was diagnosed with brain tumour in 2013 while pursuing higher education in Germany.
Source: NewsByte
Ukraine is in news again but for reasons apolitical. The European nation has become the go-to place for people wanting to have children via surrogacy.
Despite regional, cultural and bureaucratic barriers, what unites prospective parents and surrogate mothers is desperate need. One party needs a child, the other, money.
Here, we look at how surrogacy is making a few dreams come true in Ukraine.
Source: The Witachee Times
SPOKANE —Surrogate mothers could be paid for carrying a child for another couple under a bill that passed the Senate despite criticism that it could turn babies into “commodities like a bushel of wheat or widgets.”
Source: Atlanta Magazine
When customers of Xytex uncovered the truth about one of its sperm donors, the disclosure set off more than a dozen lawsuits—exposing an industry that can shatter lives while helping to create them
In first grade, when John drew a picture of his family, there was no dad because he knew his biological father was a sperm donor. His two mothers had always been open about that. In the drawing, his birth mother, Wendy Norman, bounces on a trampoline. Janet Norman, his other mom, grades papers inside. His older brother, Kevin, plays video games. John stands alone at the top of the stairs. About a year later, he would threaten to throw himself down them.
Source: Grazia
© Shutterstock
Finding a surrogate in the UK can be a difficult pursuit, with laws around surrogacy giving the majority of rights to the surrogate. Legal contracts cannot be enforced, and surrogates cannot be paid except for reasonable expenses, which means that upon having the baby the surrogate has full maternal rights to the child even if she has no biological connection to it. With surrogacy legislation so complicated in the UK, many couples choose to go abroad to look for a surrogate.
While surrogacy tourism has been banned in India, Nepal and Thailand – former hotspots for the industry – amidst exploitation claims, other countries have slowly popped up to take their place. One surprising example is Ukraine, where a series of liberal laws has unintentionally created a thriving surrogacy industry.
Source: Times of India
Every couple hopes to hear their child giggling in the house, but sometimes their dream seems to slowly fade to a point that it starts to feel far-fetched. Science is offering many Assisted Reproductive Techniques but seldom medical issues with the couple obstruct the way, even after options like IVF, IUI, and ICSI etc. When these techniques fail, a couple has two final options left: Adoption and Surrogacy.
Source: Buffalow Business First
The Ethics of a Surrogate Mother: What is Surrogacy’s Social Responsibility? Gestational Surrogates earn more than most new teachers in the US — so why call them victims? William Houghton, director of Sensible Surrogacy, presents the pro-surrogacy perspective in a new interview.
Source: Daily Record
She will never know her dad but little Haileigh Fleming has brought incredible joy to her mum. The four-month-old is Kellie-Ann’s miracle, conceived through IVF with sperm from a dead donor. The teacher, who took out a bank loan to pay for the treatment, has no regrets after failing to find a partner. She said: “Haileigh has got a huge personality and it is as if she already knows just how special she is. “I turned 40 just before I had her so Haileigh is the best present I could have wished for. She is my wee star, my tiny miracle and my greatest achievement.
Source: Greenwich Time
GREENWICH — When Wear Culvahouse, a Greenwich obstetrician-gynecologist, delivered a baby for the first male same-sex parents at Greenwich Hospital in 2004, he saw doors opening for himself as well.
The team assembled to to help the male couple included personnel from labor and delivery, the nursery and administration. They set up two rooms at Greenwich Hospital: One for the new fathers to learn how to bathe, feed and change their baby, and one for their surrogate to recover.
Source: St George News
With the issue now before the Utah Supreme Court of whether or not gay men should have the right to the same legal protections in surrogate birth arrangements as others have under Utah law, one senator wants to end those protections, at least for now, for all couples in order to keep a promise he made 13 years ago.
Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, is seeking to pass a bill that would end legal protections for surrogate births | Profile photo via senate.utah.gov, St. George News Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, is sponsoring a bill, designated SB 126, that would repeal Utah law on gestational agreements, law that came from a bill he sponsored in 2005.
Source: The Globe and Mail
A year ago, after their surrogate’s labour through the night, Globe business reporter Tim Kiladze, left, and his husband, Matt, finally got to meet their daughter Eva. Tim took 10 months of parental leave to care for the baby .
I tried my very best to be calm, convincing myself that everything before this, all the agony and the ecstasy in my life, had been preparation for this moment.
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.
Source: Deccan Chronicle
New Delhi: Many cancer treatments affect the ability to become pregnant, temporarily or permanently.
Fertility preservation (FP) is an effort to retain the fertility of cancer patients, thereby improving their quality of life.
