Source NEW YORK POST
Her surrogate got pregnant — and so did she.
When Lara Beth Levy took a pregnancy test in July, she was bowled over by the results. “I’ve taken quite a few and none showed positive so quickly,” said the 34-year-old, who had suffered miscarriages and dealt with fertility issues for years.
But the craziest part wasn’t just that she was pregnant: It was that she was already expecting a biological daughter in mere months, via surrogate.
Source Above The Law
You may have heard of the new New York Child Parent Security Act (CPSA). No? Well let me tell you about it. It passed last session, as part of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s budget, and officially became effective as of yesterday, February 15, 2021. Happy Presidents’ Day, everyone!
Although Cuomo certainly has become known for other, less successful, moments in the past 12 months, the CPSA, by contrast, is a major success. Aside from Gloria Steinem’s strange arguments that the CPSA is a mistake, and that the government *should* control women’s choices over their bodies and pregnancy, what do New York attorneys need to know about the new law?
Source Gay City News
Nearly one year after New York State legalized paid gestational surrogacy, which is when a surrogate carries a baby who shares no biological relation, the law finally went into effect February 15.
The gestational surrogacy bill, labeled the “Child-Parent Security Act,” passed in the budget in April of last year following a prolonged fight over the rights of surrogates and egg donors, as well as additional concerns that having a baby through gestational surrogacy would primarily only be feasible for wealthier folks.
Source The Irish Examiner
Couples in Ireland who conceived through IVF and surrogacy fear that they may never be legally recognised as their children’s parents, due to a gap in legislation.
New laws on the issue were passed in 2020, however, the new law does not encompass all couples, according to campaigners.
Source CGTN
Recent high-profile cases have stirred up heated debate about surrogacy in China, with experts calling for a legislation on the controversial practice.
In a recent case, a Chinese pop star and her partner were found to have had two babies through surrogacy in the U.S., shocking the general public in China, who were further irritated after disclosed undercover recording showed that the woman intended not to shoulder parental responsibility.
Source Tyla
A law graduate has managed to purchase her dream home in just one year after she decided to donate her eggs to strangers.
Laywer Rachel, from Nebraska, has made £40k [$52K] in compensation from the surgeries, having successfully donated twice – having given a total of 36 eggs away.
She is now looking to complete her third donation later in the year – and has since used her savings to get her foot on the property ladder.
Source The German Eye
It is a very intimate problem that thousands in Germany suffer from: Men and women who want nothing more than to have a child of their own – but cannot fulfill their heart’s desire. There are 15,000 women in Germany alone who cannot become pregnant because they are infertile. Many men are also unable to conceive. According to the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, around a quarter of women and men between the ages of 20 and 50 have no offspring.
FDP member of parliament Katrin Helling-Plahr wants to help these people and “make surrogacy out of charity possible in Germany as well,” according to a paper published by the FDP parliamentary group. “If those affected cannot have a child in any other way, if they can be helped by surrogacy and the surrogate mother wants to help in a self-determined way purely out of charity, the state has no right to prevent this happiness.”
Source Fox 17 West Michigan
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich — In January, FOX 17 told you about a couple in Grand Rapids, still working to gain legal rights to their twins born via gestational carrier. That process often means they will have to adopt their own biological children.
Their story is one that many families are familiar with, including the Welz’s in Grand Rapids, who went through an agency to help them adopt their twins.
Source Newsday
Women in New York can be compensated for carrying babies that are not biologically their own under a law that goes into effect Feb. 15. Previously, intended parents had to go to other states to seek such help to grow their families.
“Now, you can recruit a gestational surrogate in New York State and have her be compensated for her time, risk and effort in carrying the pregnancy,” said Dr. James Stelling, a fertility specialist and co-founder of Stony Brook Community Medical-Island Fertility, referring to the Child Parent Security Act.
Source Eckville Echo
A Sylvan Lake woman is lending her voice to dispel the stigma and negative images around surrogacy.
Cindy Pelletier has been a surrogate twice, and is preparing to do so again.
She says becoming a surrogate for another person felt like a calling.
After giving birth to her third child, Pelletier felt her family was complete, but not her time with pregnancy.
“I was able to help others complete their family, I was healthy and able, so I felt like it was something I was supposed to do,” Pelletier said.
Deciding to become a surrogate came with a number of tough conversations, a number of questions, push-back and a lot of stigma.
Source The Jerusalem Post
Couples who are having their babies through surrogates are the new exception to the airport and flights closure brought on by the caution against the recent coronavirus variants. They will be permitted to leave the country specifically for the birth of the child.
Source Above The Law
The ways in which surrogacy can go sideways keep surprising us.
By ELLEN TRACHMAN
I swear most surrogacy journeys don’t end in disaster. Or a complicated legal dispute. Most matches actually end with two very happy sides — the intended parents, who grow their families with a new addition; and the gestational surrogate, who is justly compensated and who is content knowing that she forever changed the lives of a family.
But as readers of this column know, the ways in which surrogacy can go sideways keep surprising us. I don’t know what Sarah Koenig, famed journalist and podcast host of Serial, is up to these days, but she should really check out this situation and let us know if Robert Park and the rest of the Omega crew are guilty — in this case of heinously defrauding families at their most vulnerable — or are, as they claim, mere victims themselves.
Source Inform NY
NEW YORK (WWTI) – New insurance protections and rights for surrogates and parents will take effect in New York on February 15.
Governor Cuomo’s FY 2021 Enacted Budget legalized gestational surrogacy in New York.
“When we passed legislation lifting the antiquated ban on gestational surrogacy we included the nation’s strongest protections for both surrogate mothers and parents alike,” Governor Cuomo said. “I remind and encourage all New Yorkers to review these new insurance protections and rights as they go through this process.”
Source WGRZ
According to NYS, these new insurance protections and rights were part of the governor’s FY 2021 Enacted Budget, which legalized gestational surrogacy in the state.
ALBANY, N.Y. — Starting February 15, new insurance protections and rights for surrogates and parents will take effect in New York State.
According to the office of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, these new insurance protections and rights were part of the governor’s FY 2021 Enacted Budget, which legalized gestational surrogacy in the state.
Source The Citizen
According to Stephanie Jones, finding another woman in Michigan who had a baby via surrogacy is like finding a unicorn. “People hear surrogacy, they think Kardashians, they think celebrities, they think California,” said Jones, a Goodrich High School graduate. “It’s not abnormal, and in some states, it’s common.”
Surrogacy is the term for when another woman, a surrogate, carries a baby for another person. In most cases, the baby has no genetic connection to the surrogate.
The reason Jones has a hard time finding other people like her who had a baby via surrogacy is because Michigan is the only state that that has a ban on surrogacy contracts.
In 1988, there was a court case in New York, nicknamed the ‘Baby M’ case. The couple who wanted to have a baby via surrogacy, which in the 80s meant that the surrogate was also an egg donor, had a contract with a surrogate. After the birth of the baby, the surrogate decided to keep the baby and a court case ensued for parental rights for the baby. The state of Michigan did not want a similar situation, and passed legislation to not recognize surrogacy contracts.
Source Bangkok Post
Cybercrime police have cracked down on an illegal transnational surrogacy ring disguised as a cleaning company.
The officers acted after discovering that surrogate mothers were unable to deliver surrogate children to their parents overseas due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The authorities raided 10 locations involved in the illegal transnational surrogacy network in and around Bangkok, arresting three surrogate agents and four Thai surrogate mothers.
Source Daily Mail
A woman who was forced to have a hysterectomy after being diagnosed with cervical cancer has praised her ‘selfless’ best friend who stepped in to be her surrogate.
Jessica Thomas, from Atlanta, had her eggs frozen following the cancer treatment but failed to find a suitable surrogate until, in May 2019, her friend of 15 years Liz Gensheimer stepped in.
Jessica, now 33, and her husband Michael, 43, who are both band directors, welcomed son Ollie into the world on November 10, weighing 9lbs.
Source Shine
A long-term mechanism should be created to crack down on the underground surrogacy industry, with regional legislation and grid-style social management based in communities, according to local political advisers in their proposal to the Two Sessions.
Last week in a post on Weibo, Zheng Shuang, a popular Chinese actress, was accused by her former partner, producer Zhang Heng, of abandoning their two babies born to American surrogate mothers.
Zheng allegedly refused to sign documents required for Zhang to take the babies back to China. As a result, Zhang and the babies remain in the United States.
In a recording Zhang provided, Zheng allegedly expressed frustration that the surrogates, who were seven months pregnant at the time, couldn’t have abortions.
Source Baby Gaga
Even though they’re the biological parents of their twins, Tammy and Jordan Myers are being forced to adopt their babies because they were born to a surrogate. The New York Times explains that Michigan law currently does not recognize the biological parents as the legal parents of children born to surrogates. Rather, the surrogate is automatically deemed the legal parent, whether they used their eggs to conceive the child or not. For Tammy and Jordan Myers’ twins, a daughter named Ellison and a son named Eames, the surrogate, Lauren Vermilye, and her husband were listed as the legal parents at birth.
The Myers, who are also parents to 8-year-old daughter Corryn, have tried twice to adopt their biological twins but have been denied both times. This decision comes even after both a fertility doctor as well as the surrogate and her husband declared in separate affidavits that the twins are the biological children of the Myers and support their bid to adopt the babies. The Myers originally connected with their gestational surrogate after an emotional plea on Facebook. They paid for IVF in order to transfer Tammy’s egg and Jordan’s sperm to the surrogate’s uterus. The surrogate, who has two children of her own, grew close to the Myers and has been supportive of them raising their twins since the beginning.
Source SILIVE.COM
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — For LGBTQ+ and heterosexual New Yorkers struggling with fertility issues, both emotional and practical doors will open on Monday, Feb. 15, when paid gestational surrogacy once again becomes legal in the state.
The law will allow adults to use the commonplace reproductive technology — long legal in all but three states — to start a family close to home, form a partnership with the surrogate mother and have an active role in the pregnancy, advocates say.
