It has triggered a boom in risky multiple births, created a generation of children with anonymous sperm-donor parents and spawned an underground trade in semen, eggs and surrogates.

Canada’s thriving fertility industry, however, will soon be left with virtually no official oversight, after the federal government decided this week to close down the oft-criticized regulatory agency for the field.

The government indicated in Thursday’s budget there is no point keeping Assisted Human Reproduction Canada (AHRC) open after a 2010 Supreme Court of Canada decision struck down much of the law it was supposed to enforce. The agency is slated to be shuttered by next March, its remaining functions taken over by Health Canada.

And though the court said large parts of the federal legislation fell under provincial jurisdiction, the provinces have shown little inclination to step into the breach.

Meanwhile, the issues that a Royal Commission argued almost 20 years ago urgently required regulation continue to percolate: the commercial trade in sperm, eggs and surrogates; the multiple births generated by in-vitro fertilization; the effect on children of having unidentified donor parents; and the long-term health impacts of fertility treatment on women and their offspring. ...

On top of all that, the RCMP now appears interested for the first time in investigating violations of the still-active sections of the law – a criminal ban on the purchase of eggs, sperm and surrogate-mother services – despite confusion about what the sections mean.

“It’s a mess,” said Sherry Levitan, a Toronto lawyer who specializes in the area. “The industry is just tied up in knots. Everybody is worried abut the next phone call. People are very nervous because nobody knows where the line is.”

Labels: Canada, donor conception, fertility treatment, IVF, surrogate motherhood

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The biological mother of twins born in a surrogacy procedure does not have to formally adopt her babies, the Tel Aviv District Family Court decided in a precedent-setting ruling published Wednesday.

The twin babies were born last month to Jewish Israeli parents following a surrogacy procedure carried out in Tbilisi, Georgia. The case came to court after the Interior Ministry opposed the couple’s request for an injunction formally naming them as the parents.

The parents said they had decided to use the surrogacy procedure after attempts to conceive naturally failed. The twins were born following an in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure, in which an embryo was created using the father’s sperm and the mother’s eggs and successfully implanted into a surrogate mother’s uterus.

After the births, the couple requested to be listed as parents on the babies’ birth certificates, so that the children could be entered into the Population Registry and issued passports to bring them to Israel.

Labels: adoption, Georgia (country), Israel, IVF, surrogate motherhood

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It’s officially a go for NBC’s comedy project from the Glee duo of Ryan Murphy and Allison Adler. The network has given a pilot order to The New Normal, a single-camera project co-written by Glee co-creator Murphy and Adler and to be directed by Murphy, which might be the last half-hour to snag a pickup at NBC this season. The Book Of Mormon star Andrew Rannells is set for one of 3 leads in the project, a heartwarming comedy about a blended family of a gay couple and the woman who becomes a surrogate to help them start a family.

Labels: children, culture, donor conception, gay couples, gay parenting, more than two parents, motherhood, parenting, surrogate motherhood

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Do mothers matter? Having no mother was -- at least until recently -- widely agreed to be a tragedy. Psychiatric case studies, Disney movies, and well-known spirituals such as "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" have testified to the importance of mothers and the pain of mother loss. But such views have not meant that every child has lived in a society that affirms the importance of the child's bond with his or her mother. Children have been denied their mothers because of class biases (see, poor); racial and ethnic biases (Indian, Aborigine); as part of severe civil conflict (Argentina, Dirty War); amid widespread, institutionalized human rights abuses (slavery); or because their mothers were rightly or wrongly perceived to be unfit (see: history of adoption, good, bad, and ugly).

Yet even as the broad history of helping ourselves to other people's children continues to be probed and largely condemned (except in the case of adoption, where most reasonable people agree that such an institution must exist in order to find loving homes for children in need of them), a newer and notably deliberate form of mother loss has sprung up, one that receives relatively little debate and is often presented as benign or even good, without question. I am referring, of course, to the practices of surrogacy and egg donation.

When surrogacy and egg donation first gained national attention in the 1980s the children in question usually had a social mother, a woman, herself infertile, married to a man and seeking to achieve pregnancy with the use of another woman's body. Today we are witnessing an equal opportunity run on deliberately conceiving motherless children. Men, alone or in pairs, can buy eggs and rent wombs, too. A child can be denied knowledge of and a relationship with his or her generally fit mother simply because other adults -- the child's prospective legal parents -- wish it to be so, and are willing to pay to make it so. These transactions occur with the aid of doctors, lawyers, and clinics licensed by the state, and thus with tacit approval from the state.

I wrote about some of these new single fathers by choice in my recent report, "One Parent or Five: A Global Look at Today's New Intentional Families." There is Ian Mucklejohn, father of three. In 2001, at the age of 54, the British citizen became the father of triplets conceived with an egg donor and a gestational surrogate mother, both living in the U.S. Mucklejohn soon became a hero for other single fathers-to-be when he won British citizenship and birth certificates with a blank in the space for "mother" for all three children.

Labels: children, culture, donor conception, Elizabeth Marquardt, Fathers, gay parenting, motherhood, My Daddy's Name Is Donor, parenting, single parenting, surrogate motherhood

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Surrogate mothers and egg and sperm donors should be provided with "reasonable" financial reimbursements, says Monash IVF clinical research director, Associate Professor Luk Rombauts.

International ethics expert Prof Guido Pennings told the World Congress on Human Reproduction in Melbourne that surrogates could be paid for their services in the same way participants in clinical trials were reimbursed. ...

Victorians were commonly travelling to South Africa, Thailand and India to find egg donors, surrogate mothers or select the gender of their baby.

Overseas clinics may have lower standards with women risking sperm, eggs or embryos being swapped, infection and complications due to a lack of follow-up care.

"The risks of reproductive tourism are real, and by having restrictive policy on reimbursement we are ignoring this risk," he said.

Labels: Australia, donor conception, economics, surrogate motherhood

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Poway based attorney Theresa Erickson, a nationally recognized surrogacy attorney (in part from her east coast based public relations firm), was just snared in a black market baby selling practice. Babies born overseas fetched up to $100,000.00 per child.

Parents had no idea the infants were purchased. ...

Erickson admitted to falsifying court documents in which San Diego Court judges were told the unborn children were the products of legitimate surrogacy arrangements. After the documents were court-approved, Erickson simply added the names of the parents who had been duped into a purchase.

Authorities also said Erickson submitted claims to the State of California's Access for Infants and Mothers program to pay for the children's delivery.

Erickson admitted guilt and was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Her sentencing date is October 28,2011, where she faces a maximum fine of $250,000 and up to five years in prison.

Labels: children, surrogate motherhood

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...It is vital to cover the surrogate with both health and life insurance. Life insurance is important because having a child is still dangerous and, if something should happen, the surrogate’s family will need to be compensated. It is rare that a surrogate dies but it is very important to plan for the worst.

When it comes to health insurance, I strongly recommend Lloyds of London since it is the only insurance program that has been developed specifically to cover surrogacy. It is always a gamble to hope that the surrogate’s health insurance will cover pregnancy via surrogacy. More and more insurance companies are changing their policies to exclude surrogacy. Therefore, it better to pay a bit more for health insurance to avoid even the slightest chance of insurance fraud.

Labels: donor conception, pregnancy, surrogate motherhood, women

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Does India need a new independence struggle?

The fight this time would not be against British colonialism, but rather against the United Kingdom's approach to regulating reproductive medicine. At a time when India is considering a sort of match-making service for Western couples seeking to hire Indian surrogate mothers, the UK government has announced the abolition of two leading medical regulatory agencies.

Meanwhile, as these countries move farther down the road to free markets in reproductive medicine, France is debating all of its bioethics laws - and continuing to stand up for a different model - focused on social justice and protection of vulnerable women. There is an alternative simply to letting the market decide, the French Assembly insists. ...

Proponents of the Assisted Reproductive Technologies Regulation Bill 2010, now before the Indian Parliament, employ a similar rhetorical twist. They say that the bill actually protects surrogate mothers - for example, by limiting the number of pregnancies they can undergo. But the law would make surrogacy contracts legally binding, requiring the mother to give up the baby even if she changes her mind.

Opponents say that the agencies making the arrangements will be the biggest winners - that the huge profits they reap will dwarf the fees paid by foreign couples to the women bearing their children. As NB Sarojini and Aastha Sharma wrote in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, "The Bill actively promotes medical tourism in India for reproductive purposes."

Labels: donor conception, economics, Europe, France, India, poverty, surrogate motherhood, United Kingdom

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...I’m a big fan of the NYT weddings/celebrations section which appears every Sunday in the Style section. This past week there was this entry. Steven Fuchs and Brian Lancaster were to be married this past Sunday afternoon. (I hope it all went off without a hitch.) They’ve been together 26 years. Here’s the detail that caught my eye:

And now Mr. Lancaster and Mr. Fuchs have two children of their own, 6-year-old Anna and 4-year-old William, who are to attend the wedding along with their surrogate mothers.

Obviously the surrogate mothers play significant social roles in the life of this family. (The wedding is in the family’s home, so it’s probably not enormous.) Equally obviously, there are no secrets here.

There’s much that interests me about this. I think the most common vision of surrogacy is one where the surrogate performs her function and then moves on. She doesn’t play a role in the family’s life once the child is born. Indeed, I’ve read that her presence can create friction with an intended parent mother who might feel more threatened by the surrogate. (I’m not saying this is the most common experience, only that it is the prevalent image.) Certainly in globalized surrogacy, where there never is much of a relationship between surrogate and intended parent, there is no vision of an ongoing family life that include all parties.

The erasure of the surrogate is something that bothers me, although I don’t think I’ve focused on it much recently.

Labels: children, culture, donor conception, more than two parents, pregnancy, surrogate motherhood

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AS Queensland's first child born under the state's altruistic surrogacy laws, Connor Harris's arrival was a moment of unbridled happiness for his parents.

For his biological mother "Rosie" (not her real name), there has been nothing but heartache and regret since that historic day last May 11.

"As soon as the baby was born it all changed," the married friend of the couple said.

"I was crying in hospital when he was having his first bath, I couldn't watch, I thought what the hell have I done?

"I never thought having a child and giving him away would make me feel like this.

"I regret everything, I don't regret Connor, I regret the decision very much, I just wish I'd never done it."

Matt said things changed after Connor was born, with Rosie wanting to be called b-ma (biological mother) instead of auntie Rosie as agreed before the birth.

"We went into this just wanting to be parents and not having a third parent," he said.

When Rosie and the Harrises agreed to go through with surrogacy, the laws had not been enforced and what they were doing was illegal.

"It was a risky thing to do," Rosie said.

"We couldn't get psychological counselling prior to the pregnancy because we were running the risk I could have gone to jail." ...

The gay couple are both listed as Connor's parents on his birth certificate after Rosie agreed to legally transfer parentage in court.

Labels: Australia, donor conception, motherhood, surrogate motherhood

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Nontraditional families got the microscope Tuesday in front of the Washington Senate's Government Operations Committee.

The big debate was over surrogate parents — whether Washington should allow them to be paid and under what conditions payment should be allowed.

That debate followed quick and mild testimony over whether Washington should recognize gay marriages from other states.

The House recently passed both bills. Recognizing other states' gay marriages passed by a 57-41 vote and expanding surrogacy rights passed 58-39. Both bills are now working their ways through the Senate.

The surrogacy bill allows straight or gay couples to enter a contract — including compensation — with a surrogate mother. It outlines the requirements and obligations for all of the parties involved.

"The bill is about bringing into our laws into a better alignment with what exists today in Washington state," said Rep. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle.

Right now, Washington does not allow surrogate parents to be paid. Nearby states do.

Labels: surrogate motherhood, Washington (state)

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The photos of triplets born into a billionaire family that were splashed across the front pages of local papers in October made for a great story.

Their proud grandfather, Lee Shau-kee, the 82-year-old chairman of property developer Henderson Land Development Ltd. and one of the richest men in Asia, held up the three baby boys swathed in blue. Next to him stood the father, Peter Lee, the bachelor vice chairman and heir apparent to the Henderson empire.

There was only one thing missing: their mother.

The question of her identity has since sparked debate and confusion over surrogacy's legality in Hong Kong. Many Hong Kong couples are going to the U.S. to find and pay a woman to bear their children. But a decade-old Hong Kong law deems commercial surrogacy—in which the surrogate mother is paid—a crime, regardless of where it takes place. ...

As it turns out, a government body called the Council of Human Reproductive Technology has reported to police a suspected violation of the surrogacy law, police confirm. It is the first case in the law's 10 years of existence, the Council said. The Council wouldn't say whom the case involved.

The case is pending police investigation, said a government official, who noted that the law would apply to cases even in which payment is made outside of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong isn't alone in banning commercial surrogacy. Australia, the Netherlands and France also forbid the practice. Surrogacy laws in the U.S. are determined by states. In New York, for instance, it is illegal.

Despite the law, Hong Kong's interest in surrogate motherhood is providing clients for a number of agencies in the U.S. California, where a 1993 California Supreme Court decision upheld the legality of a commercial surrogate arrangement, is a popular destination.

The Surrogacy Center Hong Kong, based in Laguna Niguel, Calif., caters to Hong Kong parents looking for surrogate mothers in the U.S.

"Knock on wood, we haven't had any legal issues yet," says Hilary Neiman, an attorney for the center, founded six years ago.

She says about 40% of clients are single men who pay anywhere from $20,000 to $35,000 for a surrogate mother, "depending on her experience."

Labels: Asia, California, economics, Hong Kong, men, motherhood, single parenting, surrogate motherhood

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Canada's fertility laws are driving infertile couples who are desperate for babies into the black market or abroad and need to be reformed, critics say.

The 6-year-old law prohibiting payment for sperm, eggs or surrogacy services has Canadians seeking paid surrogates in India. They're travelling to the United States, Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Romania and the Czech Republic for in vitro fertilization using donor eggs. Some are buying fresh sperm over the Internet.

Only days ago, Health Canada issued an advisory warning about the dangers to mothers and their future children of using fresh donor semen for assisted conception. Message boards, Facebook groups, ads and websites are offering free sperm for willing recipients.

Labels: Canada, donor conception, economics, surrogate motherhood, women

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A couple of years ago (hard to believe I’ve been doing this that long) I wrote about disturbing allegations of children being stolen from their families in Guatemala and then placed for adoption (as though they were orphans) with families in the United States. This post from RH Reality Check continues the story. While it suggests that progress has been made in controlling the profit-driven adoption market, it also notes the emergence of paid surrogacy as a substitute for intercountry adoption. It certainly gives one pause.

One one level, it’s obvious that surrogacy can be a substitute for adoption. If you want a child, those are two different ways you might obtain one. While there are substantial differences (for instance, in surrogacy the child is created for you while in adoption the child already exists), I would expect that many couples and individuals seeking children have considered both and then, for one reason or another, made their choice.

But this story suggests a different sort of substitution and thereby casts things in a different light. To begin with, it seems fairly clear that there is a demand for children within affluent sectors of the US (and for all I know other countries, too). One way to meet this demand is via international adoption.

I’m not by any means opposed to international adoptions in general, but it is clear that there is a potential for exploitation in practice. That’s part of the rational for the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. It’s possible that unwitting US parents may well have adopted children who had been taken from (or purchased from) their Guatemalan parents.

I’m glad to hear that this problem may have been addressed. But that doesn’t make the demand for children go away. And as I said above, surrogacy might be seen as a substitute for adoption.

But surrogacy can be quite expensive, particularly in the US. We’ve all seen the stories about globalized surrogacy and reproductive tourism. There are cheaper places to go than California, India being the one that has gotten quite a bit of publicity. This leads me to have serious concerns about a race-to-the-bottom: What country will provide the most poorly compensated, least protected surrogates?

Labels: adoption, Central America, economics, Guatemala, Julie Shapiro, poverty, surrogate motherhood

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When a B.C. couple discovered that the fetus their surrogate mother was carrying was likely to be born with Down syndrome, they wanted an abortion. The surrogate, however, was determined to take the pregnancy to term, sparking a disagreement that has raised thorny questions about the increasingly common arrangements.

Under the agreement the trio signed, the surrogate’s choice would mean absolving the couple of any responsibility for raising the child, the treating doctor told a recent fertility-medicine conference. ...

“Should the rules of commerce apply to the creation of children? No, because children get hurt,” said Juliet Guichon of the University of Calgary. “It’s kind of like stopping the production line: ‘Oh, oh, there’s a flaw.’ It makes sense in a production scenario, but in reproduction it’s a lot more problematic.”

Prof. Guichon speculated that courts likely would not honour a surrogacy contract, drawing instead on family law that would require the biological parents to support the child.

It appears no surrogacy contract has actually been contested in a Canadian court, however, leaving the transactions in some legal limbo.

Dr. Seethram’s presentation to the Canadian Society of Fertility and Andrology conference suggested the accord signed by the three in B.C. may have undermined the surrogate’s right to make decisions in a “non-coercive” environment.

The surrogate, a mother of two children of her own, eventually chose to have the abortion, partly because of her own family obligations.

A former surrogate who helps parents and mothers make such arrangements said the parties should agree on what they would do if defects are discovered during pregnancy, ensuring they have the same views on abortion. If a dispute still arises, however, parents ought to be protected, said Sally Rhoads of SurrogacyInCanada.ca.

“The baby that’s being carried is their baby. It’s usually their genetic offspring,” she said. “Why should the intended parents be forced to raise a child they didn’t want? It’s not fair.”

In some U.S. jurisdictions, in fact, parents can even sue a surrogate to recoup their payments if the woman insists on going ahead with a pregnancy against their wishes, Ms. Rhoads said.

Disputes are rare here, but she said it is usually surrogates who end up feeling most aggrieved. She recalled one case where the mother conceived twins, the parents asked for a procedure to reduce the number of fetuses to one, and the whole pregnancy was inadvertently lost.

In three other Canadian cases, surrogates are now raising the babies after the commissioning couples got divorced and backed out, Ms. Rhoads said.

Labels: abortion, Canada, surrogate motherhood

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Also on July 16, the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a ruling rejecting a health insurance company's appeal of the State Insurance Commissioner's decision that the health insurer could not specially exclude coverage for maternity expenses that the insured incurred as a gestational surrogate. Mercycare Insurance Co. v. Wisconsin Commissioner of Insurance, 2010 WL 2791999. ...

The majority, however, was not willing to go down the road of letting insurers discriminate in their coverage depending upon how the woman became pregnant and for what purpose. (These cases both involved in vitro fertilization and implantation in the gestational surrogate of a fertilized ovum; the surrogate was providing her womb for the pregnancy, but not the egg to be fertilized, so the resulting child would not be genetically related to her.) "We conclude," wrote the court, "that the statute permits an insurer to exclude or limit certain services and procedures, as long as the exclusion or limitation applies to all policies. However, an insurer may not make routine maternity services that are generally covered under the policy unavailable to a specific subgroup of insureds, surrogate mothers, based solely on the insured's reasons for becoming pregnant or the method used to achieve pregnancy." The court seems to have been convinced of this view by various hypotheticals under which insurers might figure out ways to avoid covering various kinds of claims for some people while covering them for other people, coming to the conclusion that it could result in insurers figuring out how to extract premiums without providing coverage for anything. (Many insurance companies are undoubtedly doing what they can to come close to that money-making ideal - an approach one hopes will be short-circuited by the recently enacted federal health insurance reform legislation.)

Labels: surrogate motherhood

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Critics of contract pregnancy contend that the relationship between a mother and a fetus is not simply a biochemical relationship or a matter of contingent physical connection. They also point out that the relationship between a mother and a fetus is different from that between a worker and her material product. The long months of pregnancy and the experience of childbirth are part of forming a relationship with the child-to-be. Elizabeth Anderson makes an argument along these lines. She suggests that the commodification of reproductive labor makes pregnancy an alienated form of labor for the women who perform it; selling her reproductive labor alienates a woman from her “normal” and justified emotions. Rather than viewing pregnancy as an evolving relationship with a child-to-be, contract pregnancy reinforces a vision of the pregnant woman as a mere “home” or an “environment.” The sale of reproductive labor thus distorts the nature of the bond between mother and the developing fetus by misrepresenting the nature of a woman’s reproductive labor as a commodity. What should we make of this argument? ...

Indeed there is a dilemma for those who wish to use the mother-fetus bond to condemn pregnancy contracts while endorsing a woman’s right to choose an abortion. They must hold it acceptable to abort a fetus but not to sell it. Although the Warnock Report takes no stand on the issue of abortion, it uses present abortion law as a term of reference in considering contract pregnancy. Because abortion is currently legal in England, the Report’s position has this paradoxical consequence: one can kill a fetus, but one cannot contract to sell it. One possible response to this objection would be to claim that women do not bond with their fetuses in the first trimester. But the fact remains that some women never bond with their fetuses; some women even fail to bond with their babies after they deliver them.

Are we really sure that we know which emotions pregnancy “normally” involves? Whereas married women are portrayed as nurturing and altruistic, society has historically stigmatized the unwed mother as selfish, neurotic, and unconcerned with the welfare of her child. Until quite recently social pressure was directed at unwed mothers to surrender their children after birth. Thus married women who gave up their children were seen as “abnormal” and unfeeling, and unwed mothers who failed to surrender their children were seen as selfish. Assumptions of “normal” maternal bonding may reinforce traditional views of the family and a women’s proper role within it.

Labels: abortion, feminism, motherhood, pregnancy, surrogate motherhood, women

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A study involving 40 gay men who became parents via surrogacy found a few differences between their habits and those of straight fathers. ...

The findings, published in the latest issue of the Journal of GLBT Family Studies, showed that gay fathers were more likely to scale back their careers in order to care for their children. Another difference was that gay fathers also saw their self-esteem and relationships with their extended families greatly improve when they had children. ...

The average age of the gay men in the study was 41, and most couples were affluent, with the average annual household income listed as $270,000.

Labels: culture, Fathers, gay parenting, gay/straight differences, men, surrogate motherhood

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Having emerged as the hottest destination for surrogacy, it is but natural for India to take the lead in evolving a law that safeguards the interests of all the parties concerned, including the child born through assisted reproductive technology (ART).

There is no precedent to the proposal under consideration that foreigners or NRIs seeking to rent a womb in India be made to give evidence that their country of residence recognized surrogacy and would give citizenship to a child born through agreement.

Both conditions are reasonable as they are designed to deal with the legal uncertainties thrown up by a couple of surrogacy cases that did not pan out in the agreed manner. In the Manji Yamada case, the baby was embroiled in litigation as the commissioning Japanese parents had divorced by the time it was born in India.

Labels: donor conception, India, surrogate motherhood

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A petition by a male, homosexual married couple to engage a surrogate mother in Israel raises profound social, philosophical and ethical issues and should therefore be decided by the Knesset and not the court, the state told the High Court of Justice late last week.

Because the state recognizes that there have been sweeping changes in the concept of what constitutes a “natural family” and because of the many technological innovations that have been made, it has decided to establish a public, professional committee to study the entire issue of fertility and birth and will include the issue of surrogate mothers in its investigation, the state added.

The response came in the wake of a petition filed on February 10 by Itai Pinkas and Yoav Arad, who married in Canada and for the past five years have been trying other ways to produce a baby they could raise. The two are represented by attorney Dori Spivak, deputy head of the Human Rights Program at Tel Aviv University.

The Surrogacy Law makes it clear that only a couple composed of a man and a woman are allowed to make use of a surrogate mother. But Spivak argued that the law should either be interpreted to include a homosexual pair in the definition of “a couple,” or that, because the current law violates the constitutional right to equality, the right of homosexual couples to engage surrogate mothers should be read into it.

Labels: discrimination law, donor conception, family structure, gay parenting, Israel, surrogate motherhood

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