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: 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.
Source: Euractiv
Sophia Kuby is the director of EU advocacy at ADF International.
Surrogacy agencies, clinics, lawyers, and medical doctors cash in on the business of selling sperm and egg cells, creating embryos in vitro, implanting them into a woman’s hired womb and providing the “commissioning parents” with a baby.
The Hague Conference on Private International Law, an intergovernmental institution comprising 82 members, including all EU member states and the EU itself, has stepped into the ethical and legal quagmire created by this business.
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: The Spokesman-Review
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.”
Washington law currently allows women to act as surrogate mothers, but not to receive compensation above the cost of medical and other expenses. A proposed change to the Uniform Parentage Act, which covers a wide range of issues involving parental rights and responsibilities, would allow a surrogate to be paid more than that by the couple who have arranged for her to carry a baby for them.
Source ITV
A woman from Rotherham who has been a surrogate mother twice – is calling for urgent changes to what they believe to be outdated surrogacy law.
When Kate became pregnant she always intended to give the child to its parents, Tracy and Pete from Portsmouth.
But, under UK law she could have changed her mind at any point and kept the baby as her own, because she gave birth to the child
Source: NDTV.com
New Delhi: Central government’s women employees, whose children are born through surrogacy, will now be entitled to maternity leave, according to an official order of the personnel ministry.
The employees can avail of paid maternity leaves up to 26 weeks (about 180 days).
The ministry has written to all central government departments about a 2015 Delhi High Court order on this issue.
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.
Source: Times of India
NEW DELHI: The department of personnel and training (DoPT) has instructed all Central ministries and departments to implement a 2015 order of the Delhi High Court for granting maternity leave to female employees who chooses to have a child by commissioning a surrogacy. Such leave would include both the pre-natal and post-natal period.
Source: Hello Giggles
While still not often discussed, fertility issues affect so many women and families in our culture. And Kayla Jones, 29, knew conceiving would be impossible after receiving a partial hysterectomy as a teenager.
But while Kayla’s uterus was removed, her ovaries weren’t — meaning she could still potentially have a child that was biologically hers with the help of a gestational surrogate. And that’s where her mother-in-law, 50-year-old Patty Resecker, came in.
Source: New Jersey Law Journal
A committee of the New Jersey Legislature has recommended approval of a bill—identical to one previously vetoed—that would permit legally binding gestational carrier agreements.
Source: Glamour
On February 16, 2017, Cheryl Flynn of Fillmore, Utah, gave birth to a healthy baby boy—though the child’s parents lived across the country, in New Jersey. Flynn was their surrogate. A mother of three already, Flynn and the baby’s parents found each other through Reproductive Medicine Associates of New Jersey—which works with 80 to 100 gestational surrogates every year—and it went so well that Flynn plans to act as a surrogate for the same couple again as soon as she is able (her doctor at RMANJ, Rita Gulati, M.D., FACOG, explains that gestational surrogates have to wait a full 12 months after delivery before attempting another pregnancy). “I am wishing Cheryl and the intended parents anther smooth and successful journey,” Dr. Gulati told Glamour. “This is definitely an exciting time.” While Flynn did not discuss her fee, being a gestational surrogate can generate anywhere from $25,000 to $240,000 and up for the woman carrying the pregnancy. Here, Flynn tells us in her own words what it’s like to be a gestational surrogate.
Source: National
Thai nationals eligible to apply for board approval for assisted pregnancies in cases related to medical conditions.
To protect children born via surrogates and prevent problems similar to those that have made recent headlines, authorities have set up strict rules for couples who wished to have a child via surrogacy due to difficulty conceiving a child naturally, and those wishing to provide that service.
Source: Hürriyet Daily News
The number of Turkish women illegally seeking surrogate mothers abroad, especially in countries where the practice is common and legal, such as in Greek Cyprus, Georgia and the United States, or women offering to become surrogates for money has been on the rise, daily Habertürk reported on Feb. 5.
Source: Bismarck Tribune
Shannon Mouser and Seth Paskin, of Austin, Texas, have desperately been trying to have a child of their own.
The couple married in 2014 and immediately tried various methods to get pregnant, including vitro fertilization, which involves combining sperm and an egg outside of the body, and artificial insemination. For years, they had no luck.
Source: Daily Mail
A couple who went through seven failed rounds of IVF treatment before finally having twins through a surrogate have said they will ‘never know how to repay’ her kindness. Elouise King and her husband Paul, from Solihull in the West Midlands, thought their dream of becoming parents was over after a miscarriage in 2013 led to complications. Mrs King had undergone a surgical procedure to remove the foetus, but afterwards she was struck down with a rare condition known as Asherman syndrome which causes scarring of the cervix and uterus.
Source: Idaho Press-Tribune
“That’s my son,” Richardson remembers thinking. “I just caught my son.” Her sister, Andrea Friesen, laid her head back on the hospital bed and sobbed with relief. “Every single nurse, doctor, everybody in there had tears in their eyes,” the sisters’ father, Don Larson, said. “And it was just that final relief of, oh my goodness, it’s finally over, and it was successful.”
Source: The Guardian
I had children in my teens and became a grandmother two decades ago. I’ve always thought how lucky I was to get pregnant so easily, and how heartbreaking it is for people who can’t. I liked the idea of being a surrogate, but my husband wasn’t keen. By 2012, we had divorced, and I’d taken care of my parents and older brother, who sadly passed away. I’d turned 50 and thought, if I’m going to do this, it needs to be now.
Source: Phnom Penh Post
Just half of an estimated dozen applications by parents trying to prove their DNA link to their baby born via a Cambodian surrogate have so far been approved by the Phnom Penh Municipal court, officials said yesterday.
Following an outright ban on the fraught practice of commercial surrogacy in Cambodia, where hundreds of babies are estimated to have been born to foreign couples, the Kingdom laid out guidelines in July last year, requiring intended parents to get DNA tests, have their paternity status verified by the courts and apply for exit visas through their embassies in order to legally take their babies home.
