Source ABC
Gazing at her pregnant belly, feeling the kicks of the baby that wasn’t hers, Zara Stratton felt an overwhelming sense of isolation.
For nine months she’d been carrying a child for another couple, her childhood friend and her husband.
It was always supposed to be a shared experience.
The intended parents would be there for every scan, to share the joy of each milestone and support her all the way up to the day of birth.
Source Babygaga
Kristen Welker feared not having maternal instincts before her baby was born via a surrogate. But with a bit of encouragement from her OB-GYN on a way in which to feel connected from the moment the baby girl was born, those fears washed away and the NBC news correspondent felt nothing but a bond with her new baby.
On Monday, Welker shared her birth story with Hoda Kotb on SiriusXM’s The Hoda Show, according to Today. And like many mothers who use a surrogate or adopt, the doubt was there that she would not have the maternal instinct and feel that connection with her baby girl.
Source The Jerusalem Post
Jerusalem Post Israel News
Merav Michaeli has baby through surrogate in US
By GIL HOFFMAN
AUGUST 22, 2021 16:39
Labor Party leader Merav Michaeli.
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Transportation Minister Merav Michaeli announced that she and her partner are the new parents of a son delivered by a surrogate.
Transportation Minister Merav Michaeli and her partner, comedian Lior Schleien, announced on Saturday night that they are the new parents of a son delivered by a surrogate mother in the United States.
“We are so happy to have him and to be his parents,” Michaeli wrote on Facebook. “This is a love story. Now it is a love story of three.”
Source Star News
It’s a decision no mother-to-be should have to make.
Jorjia Nicholas, 25, was forced to have an abortion as pregnancy put her and her unborn child’s lives at risk following years of heart problems and damage done during surgery.
The Nelson woman and fiance Chris Allen, 28, are now on the difficult hunt for a stranger to have their baby.
Nicholas’ heart issues started in 2016. She was living in Christchurch and working in a hotel when, during a shift, she became dizzy, had double vision and her ears started ringing.
Source Newsroom
Anne Else looks at the Law Commission’s proposals for new surrogacy law, and the key legal issue: how the intending parents become the legal parents
Agreeing to be a birth mother in a surrogacy arrangement is a precious gift to people wanting a child. But if it’s poorly regulated, it can lead to women being seen as just useful wombs.
No one knows exactly how many surrogacy arrangements have been made or how many children have been born this way to New Zealanders since the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology (HART) Act was passed in 2004, because no comprehensive records are kept. But surrogacy makes up less than 1 percent of fertility clinic treatment cycles here. There’s no guarantee of a live birth.
Source Legal Futures
This week is an important time for surrogacy as it marks ‘National Surrogacy Week’ and Anne-Marie Hamer at Spencer West LLP; Member of IDR focuses on how the area of Surrogacy law is there to shape the future, and what ‘the future holds for surrogacy around the world’.
The future of family law will most certainly see changes in the coming years, to bring it in line with the various changes in society and around the world, but to also ensure that it recognises the needs of people in the 21st century. Within the ambit of family law is the area of Surrogacy and Fertility Law, and this is a specialist area which is recognised around the world, to assist families/couples and intended single parents fulfil their dream of having a family.
Source 1 News
Labour MP Tamati Coffey’s surrogacy bill has today got backing from the ACT party.
Coffey’s bill covers many areas, including identifying on the birth certificate who donated an embryo or cells, as well as the surrogate.
It also calls for a register listing potential surrogates and, crucially, the ability to create a legally-binding surrogacy order ahead of the child’s birth.
“So that the time that baby’s born, the intending parents become the parents. We’ve heard a few heartache stories along the way about that gap and what happens in there,” Coffey said
Source 23 ABC News
The sound of their baby crying is something John and Kristen Krafthefer will never take for granted.
“I’m just thankful. I didn’t know I’d meet [him],” said Kristen.
“He was always that light at the end of the tunnel,” said John.
In July 2018, Kristen was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her cancer was estrogen receptor positive. That meant Kristen couldn’t do what she desperately wanted to do – have a baby.
Source Lawyers.com
For many years, New York was behind the times when it came to recognizing the nontraditional ways in which people have children. The practice of paid surrogacy was banned. But on February 15, 2021, landmark legislation went into effect that allows couples and individuals to have a child by a surrogate they legally hire for pay.
The Child Parent Security Act (CPSA) includes specific requirements for how compensated surrogacy arrangements can be made. Important provisions of the law concern:
Source BioNews
Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex couples and single men will be able to become parents through surrogacy.
The court had previously ruled that the law allowing only heterosexual couples and single women to access surrogacy was discriminatory (see BioNews 1037) and gave the government a year to revise the legislation. This deadline passed in March this year without changes being made.
Source Time com
It’s nearly noon when Pinky Macwan wakes up and rubs her eyes, shifting uncomfortably. She’s in her second trimester of pregnancy with twins and finds herself constantly sluggish. Still in her floral nightgown, she walks down the fluorescent-lit hallway and splashes cold water on her face in the bathroom she shares with 46 other women, all surrogates at various stages of pregnancy. It’s late February, and Macwan has spent the past four months living in the basement of the Akanksha Hospital in bustling Anand, a town in the western Indian state of Gujarat. Home to the headquarters of the major dairy cooperative Amul, Anand has long been known as the milk capital of India. But booming business at Akanksha has also garnered the town another label: India’s baby factory.
Source Above The Law
This case was shocking when it hit the news earlier this year. A Chinese megacelebrity actress, Shuang Zheng, was called out on social media by her ex, Heng Zhang (whom I’ll call, as the court did, “Father”) that she had abandoned their two surrogacy-born children in the United States. In China, the scandal was not that Zheng had abandoned her babies, but that she had used a surrogate to have a child — or, in this case, two surrogates to have two children. After the news broke, Zheng’s career plummeted, she lost roles and lucrative sponsorships, including one with Prada.
Source RepublicWorld.com
American actress Amber Heard is on cloud nine at the moment after she shared the news of her newborn through surrogacy. The actress took to Instagram and shared a picture while cradling the little one in her arms and penned a heartfelt note along to express her happiness. In the post, she revealed that she has named the daughter Oonagh Paige Heard and they welcomed her on April 8.
Source Inter fax
MOSCOW. June 11 (Interfax) – A group of United Russia party deputies and a senator have submitted a bill to the State Duma proposing banning foreign citizens from using surrogacy services in Russia.
The document, which was published on the State Duma’s database on Friday, introduces a number of amendments to the Family Code, laws on health protection, and acts on civil status and on Russian citizenship related to surrogate motherhood and the citizenship of children born through surrogacy.
The bill requires that at least one of the future parents or a single person applying for surrogacy services in Russia should have Russian citizenship. However, in accordance with the initiative, any child born through surrogacy will acquire Russian citizenship by place of birth.
Source Daily Mail
She recently underwent surgery to have her ovaries removed as she continues to battle breast cancer.
And a month later, Camilla Franks, who is a mother to three-year-old daughter Luna, has revealed she’s given up on conceiving a baby naturally and is hoping to have another baby via surrogacy.
Eventually I had to come to accept that wasn’t going to be in my future,’ she told The Daily Telegraph on Saturday about conceiving naturally.
Source Tass.com
The bill sets out that only married Russian citizens or a single Russian woman who cannot carry or bear children herself can use surrogacy
MOSCOW, June 11. /TASS/. Children who are born by surrogate mothers for foreigners or stateless persons in Russia will be granted Russian citizenship by birth, reads the draft bill banning surrogacy for foreigners in Russia, which was submitted to the lower house of parliament by a group of lawmakers headed by Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy on Friday.
“A child both in Russia by a surrogate mother <…> receives Russian citizenship by birth if both potential parents or a single woman are not Russian citizens,” the bill notes.
Source Los Angeles Times
The two envelopes, one for each twin brother, arrived in the mailbox on the same day in March of last year.
The larger parcel, for Aiden Dvash-Banks, contained a new U.S. passport and a letter congratulating the boy on his American citizenship. A smaller, flimsier envelope came for Ethan Dvash-Banks. Inside, a letter stated that his citizenship application had been denied.
The boys were carried in the same womb, born 16 months ago in Canada, minutes apart. But now, only one of them is in the U.S. legally.
Source Daily Mail
Twenty-nine weeks pregnant, surrogate mum Leanne Davis, 37, can’t wait to meet the IVF baby girl she’s expecting.
Nor can her excited younger sister Rachael, 34, whose fertilised embryo Leanne is carrying.
Delivering this newborn will be very special. A labour of love. ‘We’re so looking forward to saying hello and giving her a little cuddle,’ says Leanne, 37, a single mum to three sons aged 17, 14 and nine. ‘We’re already joking about whose nose she will have.’
Rachael, who — as Leanne’s birthing partner — will hold her sibling’s hand and give words of encouragement, agrees: ‘It couldn’t be more emotional.’
Source NBC26
APPLETON (NBC26) — Lacey Popke likes to say she has two moms: the one who gave her life and the one who raised her.
“I was told that I was a surrogate baby because my mom couldn’t have her own kids,” she said. “It turns out that her eggs were even rotten.“
Almost 28 years ago, her mother Annette’s cousin, Rachel Tolmacs, offered to carry a child for her.
“The one thing my mom always wanted was a little girl,” said Popke. “And she hoped and hoped and hoped. When I finally came out as a girl, she was so excited.“
Source Babygaga
NBC News’ Kristen Welker is sharing the sweet letter she wrote her unborn daughter about her journey with infertility and surrogacy. It is easy to assume that a public figure has everything in life “handed to them.” Some believe they simply don’t face the same struggles that we all do. However, as more and more celebrities open up about their real-life struggles, the world is seeing that they are really just like us. It can also help normalize the struggles of women who suffer from infertility when they use their platforms to share their stories.
