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Couple wishing on a surrogate

Alicia and David Petrucci only have their cat, Reynolds, to call their own.

The 34-year-old Deerfield Township residents have had “more than their fair share” of bad news over the past few years, Elizabeth Walker said.

The two began trying to conceive in 2011. With no success, the Petruccis underwent testing, which revealed David Petrucci had nonobstructive azoospermia, a lack of any sperm count, and Alicia Petrucci was found to have diminished ovarian reserve. It meant she was undergoing early menopause, having far fewer eggs and eggs of lower quality than one should have at her age.

“That really threw a wrench into things,” Alicia Petrucci said. “We thought, ‘The clock is really ticking now.’ ”

Determined to start a family of their own, the couple underwent two unsuccessful in vitro fertilization procedures before their efforts came to a standstill. In January, Alicia Petrucci was diagnosed with aggressive triple-negative breast cancer.

Alicia Petrucci is now cancer-free after she underwent five months of chemotherapy and a bilateral mastectomy, and she and her husband are again hoping to achieve their dream of parenthood. But she is no longer able to carry a child herself. On Monday, she was expected to have a hysterectomy, after genetic testing revealed she’s at high risk for developing breast and ovarian cancers.

“We’re not yet ready to give up the dream of having an infant and raising an infant,” Alicia Petrucci said.

It’s not that the two don’t want to adopt a newborn.

“Surrogacy feels more feasible to us,” Alicia Petrucci said.

International adoption agencies typically aren’t willing to work with couples who’ve experienced cancer without a five- to seven-year waiting period, Alicia Petrucci said. A domestic adoption can range from $20,000 to $50,000, and the couple is still paying off medical bills associated with Alicia Petrucci’s cancer and their infertility treatments.

Their website received a boost recently after the Petruccis’ story was featured in The Huffington Post, drawing attention to Walker’s most recent project, the ART of IF: Navigating the Journey of Infertility. The educational photo exhibit is currently on display at the Gago Center for Fertility, 2250 Genoa Business Park Drive, Suite 130, in Genoa Township.

“The world of infertility is heartbreaking in any respect,” said Walker, the couple’s Resolve peer-led support group host. “It’s full of bad news a lot of times, and David and Alicia have had more than their fair share.”

The Petruccis have received 12 inquires from potential gestational carriers to date. They’re in the process of making a decision.

They hope to “become pregnant by 2016,” and eventually would like to adopt siblings for their child.

Amanda Whitesell, Livingston Daily

Commercialized Conception Casualties: "Brave" Baby Making?

Aldous Huxley (Brave New World, 1932), Margaret Atwood (Handmaid's Tale, 1985), and Lois Lowry (The Giver, 1993) all explored procreation and parenthood and government control of breeding.

Not even these iconic visionaries, however, conceived (forgive the pun) of the opposite: A total lack of government control in a free-for-all marketplace where regulation is unable to keep pace with reproductive science and the multi-billion dollar fertility-industry that serves some 8 million infertile women in the U.S.

None imagined genetic selection (aka designer babies) for health, gender, intelligence and looks of offspring or children born with up to four "mothers" -- mitochondrial transfer donor, genetic/egg or embryo donor, pregnant carrier and birther, and social/legal mother; nor did they imagine the sale of frozen embryos.

Surrogacy

Surrogacy is banned in much of Europe. The United States, however, has no national regulation, just a variety of state laws. In 1988 following the New Jersey birth of "Baby M" to paid surrogate, Mary Beth Whitehead, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled surrogacy contracts unenforceable. At the time, religious leaders and ethicists denounced the practice. "Surrogacy," said the NJ Catholic Conference, "promotes the exploitation of women and infertile couples and the dehumanization of babies. In short, it traffics for profit in human lives."

Incredibly, despite these objections and the Supreme Court decision, several businesses, such as IVFNJ, Fertility NJ, Extra Conceptions, and Fertility Authority currently advertise surrogacy services in the state.

Hiring surrogates and purchasing sperm, eggs, or others' leftover frozen embryos, have become accepted as choices on a menu of options; a "right" of those who can afford it. Oprah Winfrey and others argue that surrogacy offers poor women the "right" to use their bodies to earn money just as legalized prostitution does. Legalized prostitution, however, involves consenting adults, not the creation of a third, autonomous human being who is contracted for and is not legal within most of the U.S. Furthermore, surrogacy does not provide a sustainable income for the indigent and most American surrogates claim their motive is not financial.

Arun Dohle of Against Child Trafficking is critical:

"Surrogacy is a form of modern day slavery. It has to remain outlawed and not legitimized through "regulation". ... it doesn´t protect anyone, but rather legitimizes the human trade."
Whether for personal satisfaction, altruism, or for compensation, surrogacy risks the life of the surrogate:

• Surrogate Karma Daigle of Westbury, Connecticut, developed preeclampsia that left her with heart damage.

• Carrie Mathews of Windsor, Colorado nearly died birthing twins for a couple in Austria and owes more than $217,000 in medical expenses stemming from pregnancy complications.

• Premila Vaghela, 30, of Ahmedabad, India, died due to complications delivering a surrogate baby for an American couple, leaving her own two sons motherless.

Despite these serious issues, surrogacy was casually introduced to American television viewers in 1998, by Lisa Kudrow's character Phoebe on Friends, as a totally altruistic, in-family (as opposed to commercial) gift for Phoebe's brother and sister-in-law. This was followed by normalizing paid surrogacy for hetero and same sex couples on shows like Modern Family, Rules of Engagement, Sisters, Glee, Army Wives, and The New Normal.

Currently a battle over the child ordered and abandoned before birth by Sherri Shepherd plays out while celebrities such as Neil Patrick Harris, Sarah Jessica Parker and most recently Jimmy Fallon and Melissa Harris-Perry have announced the arrival of babies "via surrogacy" as nonchalantly as having a baby "via caesarian section."

Custody Disputes

India has become very popular for surrogacy because it is more economical for those seeking a child than American surrogacy, but Dr. Harsh Vardhan, the Indian Minister for Health, expressed concern that the thriving, unregulated surrogacy industry "poses a great threat to the country's poor, disenfranchised women."

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Indian law requires that those purchasing the services of a surrogate accept custody of the child or children regardless of any abnormality. In contrast, American surrogate contracts commonly require "abortion in case of severe fetus abnormality." One wonders where the pro-life outrage is to legal contracts demanding abortion under certain circumstances. Contracts that provide an "out" for those paying for children have led to legal disputes over custody when intended parents chose not to accept "defective" or multiple children:

One such case involves Helen Beasley, 26, who is pregnant with twins ordered by Charles Wheeler and Martha Berman of California, who demanded she abort one of the fetuses because they only wanted one child. Beasley wants to put the twins up for adoption. But under Californian law, parental rights in a surrogacy agreement go to the intended parents, not the surrogate mother.

Other litigation includes a three-year battle for visitation involving a Tennessee woman who conceived a child for an Italian couple.

Even in-family surrogacy can end up in protracted litigation. A NJ gay couple has battled years for custody of twins born to the sister of one of the men who was impregnated using a donor fertilized egg and the sperm of her brother's partner.

Questions for the Future

Many reproductive technologies involve anonymous paid "donors," ignoring the decades of struggle by adopted persons fighting for the right to know their progenitors and medical history, as well as the more recent children of anonymous sperm donors searching desperately for their genetic fathers.

Originally all surrogate births were achieved by impregnating the surrogate mother with the sperm of the intended father or fathers, or with purchased sperm. These are now referred to as "traditional" surrogate contracts. Today, most surrogate births involve a process known as gestational surrogacy where the "carrier" is impregnated with an already-fertilized egg. These children have the advantage of being genetically related to both parents who contract for them and who hopefully will raise them. Both forms of surrogacy, however, exploit the less fortunate and violate prohibitions on trafficking in human lives, particularly the buying and selling of infants.

Adoption is promoted to help orphans and foster children. What effect will creating babies through reproductive technologies have on those children? Adoption also provides some semblance of screening to protect the welfare of the children being transferred, whereas in surrogacy, only the baby carrier is screened for physical and mental fitness, but there is no screening of the intended parents. This opens the door further for pedophiles or other predators to obtain children.

Alana S. Newman of The Institute for American Values, in a compelling essay entitled "Children's Rights, or Rights to Children" concurs, writing:

"Third-party reproduction is inherently unethical, because it serves as a market to manufacture children for any adult who wants them... If it's okay to pre-sell and pre-order children via third-party reproduction, what is so wrong with buying and selling children who are already born or conceived?"
If practices such as surrogacy and selling eggs are acceptable options for those obtaining a child, are parents equally accepting of their daughters becoming surrogates or selling their eggs? Are these noble pursuits or akin to legalized prostitution? Harris-Perry says the woman she paid to bear her child has become "family" but she refers to her as a "gestational carrier" which elicits a vision of a crate for a pregnant animal.

Will baby-making simply continue in this wild-west fashion? Is having a baby a "right" for everyone and anyone who can afford it, no matter how it is accomplished, with the means determined only by what is possible?

Mirah Riben

Infertility, surrogacy in India

Infertility is a growing problem worldwide. A World Health Organization report estimates that 60-to-80 million couples worldwide currently suffer from infertility.
In India, the WHO reports that infertility afflicts 3.9 percent to 16.9 percent of the population. Another study by the International Institute of Population Sciences in India says 15 million to 20 million couples in India suffer from infertility.
Holly Donahue Singh is a postdoctoral fellow at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. For the last decade, she has studied the phenomenon in Lucknow, the capital city of the largest state in India. Her commentary, The World's Back Womb? Commercial Surrogacy and Infertility Inequalities in India, appears in in this month's American Anthropologist.
Singh sat down to discuss her research.
Q: What gets you excited about your research?
Singh: It really gets us examining and maybe thinking differently about fundamental issues of who we are and how we organize human life and how we think about human life. There's a very prominent medical anthropologist named Paul Farmer, who I'm drawn back to again and again. He says, "The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world." I think that's one of the key things when thinking about reproductive rights, reproductive justice because it's not only about the people who are alive, but it's also about a vision about what future generations are going to be like. And we bring all of our biases, all of our preconceptions into that, and that's as true in the United States as it is in India, as it is in Europe, as it is in Africa.
Q: As somebody who works with infertility in India, what struck you about the news in November about the 13 Indian women who died after undergoing sterilization surgeries in a free government-run program?
Singh: It's shocking but not surprising because these kinds of camps have been going on for a long time. People in India are familiar with the '70s and the suspension of democracy and forced sterilizations that were carried out in that period. But because of that period, vasectomies got a lot of stigma attached to them, a lot of suspicion toward the government, and the slippery slope between what's birth control and what's population control. It's also very tricky. There are various levels of coercion that can be involved, and some people talk about even payment for sterilization as becoming a coercive force.

Q: During your research, what kinds of options did you see for couples with infertility?
Singh: In India, there are a lot of potential sources. A few government or public hospitals have started to offer some services, and there are various clinics in the private sector. This is something I heard in the field that family planning is not only about controlling and reducing fertility, but family planning is also about trying to plan a family, and that could take the form of assisted reproductive technologies.
One interesting example is when the tsunami hit in 2004, the state government of Tamil Nadu offered parents who had lost their children in the tsunami, and who had already been sterilized, to have that operation reversed so they could try for more children. Tamil Nadu is often used as a model for maternal, infant health, mortality, birth control, all of that.
Across India, total fertility rates, infant mortality and maternal mortality looks quite different from one state to another. Some southern states have fertility levels comparable to Europe where women have on average fewer than two children. But if you go north to states like Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, it's more like three to 3.5 average births per women. There's a vast difference from one part of the country to another.
Q: Where does surrogacy fit in with infertility?
Singh: Clinics that could be offering infertility services could also be involved in surrogacy dealings because people who are infertile and looking for a surrogate could come to those clinics. Surrogacy is suddenly in the news in India because of a couple Bollywood stars who had surrogate children.
It is a complex issue. Compensation is one. It really quickly becomes about "Are you commodifying life?" Is this baby selling and baby buying? It all gets very complex in moral terms.
Also, who has rights to a baby that is born and who has obligations? They're real questions that people are attempting to deal with and that judges end up having to deal with when some of kind of dispute arises, when a child is abandoned, when a marriage breaks up in the middle of a surrogate pregnancy, as has happened, in the Baby Manjii case. A Japanese couple divorced in the middle of having a surrogate child in India.
Q: What really surprised you from your research?
Singh: One thing that really surprised me was the resilience of so many women that I talked to. I had come into this research with a lot of ideas about how women are victimized. Women are given such a hard time. Women are already starting out with a bad deal.
What really surprised me is just how many people I talked to who were really dealing with very difficult situations, which could be stigma, family problems, financial problems, pressure from lots of people. But they were still optimistic, not only about getting a child but also optimistic about continuing their lives and dealing with it.

by Mandira Banerjee

2014: the year international surrogacy came to the fore

This year the international spotlight turned with full-force on cross-border commercial surrogacy. The reality of children being born this way and the potentially devastating consequences of babies being abandoned and stateless shocked our collective consciousness.

Such was the case of Baby Gammy, born with Down syndrome and left in Thailand with his surrogate mother by commissioning parents David and Wendy Farnell. His story made the Australian public confront the often-disturbing reality of the international commercial surrogacy industry.

This industry provides on-demand, made-to-order children, allowing commissioning clients to circumvent the often prohibitive laws on commercial surrogacy in their home countries. It is a high-risk, high-stakes transaction for all involved.

Through Baby Gammy and more recently, the situation of a twin-child left in India by Australian commissioning parents (which senior Australian judges have said may amount to child-trafficking), we have witnessed the heightened vulnerability of children born this way.

A problematic practice

When I began working on international surrogacy issues in 2009, there was little public awareness about people from Australasia having children in places such as India and Thailand through surrogate mothers. The fact that such children were sometimes conceived using the eggs or sperm from third parties in other countries was even less known.

Fast-forward to 2014, and times have somewhat changed. Far less explanation is necessary about what international surrogacy is and what it entails. But reactions still range from the morally outraged, to a permissive “why not?” attitude.

Yet despite more community understanding, ignorance surrounding the ethical, legal, and human rights challenges triggered by the practice persists. And this gap means positive action to protect children in international commercial surrogacy in a comprehensive and systematic manner is seriously lacking.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states all children have rights to nationality, birth registration, preservation of their identity, to be cared for in a family environment, know their parents, not be discriminated against and not be sold or trafficked. Children with disabilities have additional particular rights.

But children born through international commercial surrogacy are routinely at risk of having these rights violated. Indeed, many children born this way have ended up stateless and stranded in their birth country (for example, Baby Manji, Baby Samuel Ghilain, and the Balaz and Volden twins).

Some have been left without legal status and legally recognised parents (as in the Mennesson and Labassee cases, recently adjudicated by the European Court of Human Rights), or abandoned, devoid of a family environment.

The vast majority of children born through international commercial surrogacy face difficulties in preserving aspects of their identity due to the involvement of anonymous genetic donor parents, surrogate mothers, and the fact they’re born with the intention of being supplanted into another country and culture.

Indeed, international commercial surrogacy is arguably a market in which children are bought and sold; where they are commodities at risk of trafficking. This raises questions about whether this practice can ever be consistent with our internationally agreed ban on the sale of children.

The right focus

Despite these problems, the practice shows no sign of waning. In India alone, although reliable data is lacking, the surrogacy industry is reportedly worth between US$450 million to US$2.3 billion. And it continues to grow. People from Australia and other developed countries drive demand, despite the many cautionary tales of what can and, sometimes does, go wrong.

We must agree, at national, regional, and global levels that children and protection of their rights must be at the heart of any approach dealing with international commercial surrogacy. A starting point for achieving this is the protection framework provided by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

That framework should inform the development of national legislation and policy regulating international commercial surrogacy (immediate, short-term goal), as well as an international regulatory framework (long-term goal).

What’s more, national and international efforts must make human rights protection their core focus. Both better national legislation and international agreement is urgently needed to deal with currently conflicting national laws and protection gaps jeopardising the child’s rights.

Placing the central focus on children does not mean the rights and interests of other people involved in international surrogacy are not at risk. They are, and they require protection too. The human rights of women acting as surrogates are particularly important, given they may not – in developing countries at least – become surrogates of their own free will. And they may be open to exploitation, including human trafficking.

We must act now to prevent international commercial surrogacy from developing further as an international human rights problem affecting a new generation of children and those who bring them into the world.

Work on the legal, ethical, cultural, and health issues raised by international commercial surrogacy is necessary and much needed. But the human rights issues it raises remain the most pressing. In particular, we must focus on the child, born into a situation of significant human rights risk through no fault of their own.

Claire Achmad

A second child through surrogacy in BioTexCom

http://mother-surrogate.info/a-second-child-through-surrogacy-in-biotexcom/

BioTexCom Is Your Best Choice for Surrogacy & Egg Donation!

Choosing BioTexCom medical center you receive 100% guarantee that the result of the chosen program will be positive! Such guarantee you will not able to find in any European or American clinic of reproductive medicine. When you decide in favor of BioTexCom you can be sure you are on the doorstep of great changes in own family life. As all our patients leave the clinic only with own newborn in arms or being pregnant. We return the full whack in the case of failure. Putting hand in the pocket you pay one fixed sum for the program and not a penny more. All procedures, services and medical supplies have been already included in the programs’ price.

   Depending on client’s diagnosis and test results our doctor will help to choose the most appropriate medical program which will optimally combine good price and the best chance for the successful result. Our packages are:

·         "Guaranteed Success" package (9,900€) includes an unlimited number of IVF attempts with donor eggs. In the case of negative result clinic refunds client paid sum;

·         "Economy" package (4,900€) includes one IVF attempt with donor eggs;

·         "Double" package (6,900€)- two IVF attempts with donor eggs;

·         "Ideal" package (29,900€) implies two IVF attempts with donor eggs and in the case of unsuccessful result transition to the surrogacy program (without additional payment);

·         "All inclusive" package (29,900€) involves surrogacy program with donor eggs (unlimited number of attempts until successful pregnancy will be reached);

·         "All inclusive" package (29,900€) involves surrogacy program with own eggs. Number of attempts depends on the medical examination results. In the case of unsuccessful result it will be made a transition to the surrogacy program with donor eggs.

   Patients who choose the surrogacy program pay for it on a phased basis:

1.      1^st payment - during the contract signing;

2.      2^nd payment - after the pickup / puncture procedure (or sperm);

3.      3^rd payment - when surrogate mother reaches 12^th week of pregnancy;

4.      4^th payment – after child’s birth;

5.      5^th payment - final stage of the program, when a married couple receives all necessary documents and leaves the clinic with their baby.

   All our patients are met at the airport and accompanied by the manager, translator. In the clinic patient have a detailed consultation by obstetrician-gynecologist of the first qualifying category and is diagnosed with the help of ultrasound investigation and standard analysis set. All these services patient receives free before the contract signing.

The Hidden Costs of International Surrogacy

When Rhyannon Morrigan and her husband Drew used an egg donor and surrogate to have their child at a clinic in Delhi, India, they knew the road would be long, but had no idea how rough. Their kids, John and Maizy Morrigan, were born at 32 weeks in India. Stuck in the paperwork limbo of international surrogacy, the Morrigans not only missed the birth but they had to wait nearly two weeks, receiving word of their infants’ health from across the globe.

John died at ten days due to a lack of oxygen. Morrigan heard of his death just as she was on her way to the airport in Seattle, ecstatic to finally be meeting her twins. Days later, she wrote on Facebook: “My son died. The fact that I have a daughter does not change this.”

When Morrigan finally met her surrogate—Mrs. S—the meeting was strained and awkward, full of unspoken emotion.

“The doctors kept beaming at us, almost desperately,” Morrigan said. “'Congratulations on your beautiful daughter', they said. But my surrogate and I felt anything but celebratory.”

Morrigan said the birth of her children was supposed to be the end of her story, but it has actually forced her to look at surrogacy and all its complexities more carefully. She wanted a story with a happy ending in an industry which has been recently marred by scandals and fraud. Instead, she’s left worrying whether her financial contribution to her surrogate will be enough.

“I left feeling very concerned for her because I get to come home to the U.S., and we have counseling services and a lot of privilege, and while I know that her economic life will be better, I’m not sure she’ll be able to handle this emotionally by herself. She was devastated. She is my son’s mother, too.”

Banned in many parts of the world, commercial surrogacy is available in roughly 14 states in the U.S.—but the cost is more than most parents can afford. According to NerdWallet financial analyst, Mike Anderson, surrogacy in the U.S. costs at least $60,000. For comparison, the median household income in America is just under $52,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“We realized relatively quickly that we did not have the money for a U.S. surrogacy”
Scott Buckley, the director of legal services at Circle Surrogacy, which has facilities in four states in the U.S. and Sweden, said depending on circumstances like egg donation, sperm donation, along with agency and clinic fees, surrogacy on national soil can cost upwards of $120,000. Meanwhile, the price tag for surrogacy in India is regularly cited as under $30,000. Surrogates are reportedly paid $800-$8,000, and clinics and staff pocket the rest. Victoria International IVF Center in India, for example, cites a 2-cycle deal: If the first embryo doesn’t take, the second embryo is implanted at discounted cost. It's $11,000 the first round, and only $5,000 the second round. These costs vary depending on whether the intended mother is using her own eggs or a donor’s eggs, and whether the couple uses the same surrogate for the second attempt or chooses a new one.

The fact that surrogacy often takes several attempts is a financial consideration. Whether using a U.S. clinic or one abroad, most couples choosing surrogacy as their choice for procreation can see multiple rounds of IVF fail before a surrogate successfully becoming pregnant. Morrigan started her journey in 2012, and only just became a mother through it this October. Each attempt can be costly and frustrating, rendering international surrogacy an even harder decision for couples to make.

“We realized relatively quickly that we did not have the money for a U.S. surrogacy,” said Morrigan. “Our attorney advised us that surrogacy can be a legal minefield here, and told us not to attempt it unless we could afford not only the surrogacy but the legal bills if something went wrong.”

However, Jon and Christy Anderson, co-founders of Expect Miracle Surrogacy and parents through domestic surrogacy, said when travel, accommodations, genetic testing to prove parentage for citizenship, and other bureaucratic issues are taken into account, the $30,000 price skyrockets to about the same cost as a surrogacy in America. The Andersons calculated that all the additional paperwork, international travel, and the possibility of being in political limbo, along with being unable to reach your newly born child make the stress of international surrogacy not worth the discount.

“After at least two international trips and extended stays in a foreign country at American-style hotels, and lost wages for up to three months while you wait to return home after the birth, the costs often average out to being comparable,” said Jon Anderson.

Another woman I met through Morrigan, A.B., was in the middle of what she calls “the hectic bureaucracy of Indian laws.” She laid out her costs as follows: $54,000 already paid to various agencies, egg donor services, and IVF clinics, and another $39,000 to be charged for further IVF treatments, surrogate care, embryo shipment, two flights to Delhi, and completion of Indian paperwork to okay the baby for U.S. citizenship. These numbers don’t yet include the cost of the genetic testing, hospital costs during and after birth, hotel stays, or additional extra paperwork. She estimated that her grand total would be over $100,000. Exhausted by the process, she recently decided to give up despite having spent over $50,000.

DARLENA CUNHA

Surrogate motherhood fails to win Azerbaijani mentality

Surrogacy has been a controversial issue in Azerbaijan since it was raised up for the first time in the country.
The issue provokes a variety of feelings among Azerbaijanis as it affects not only medical and legal norms, but also moral and ethical ones.
It was top on the agenda of Azerbaijan’s parliament but just recently the parliament decided to put an end to any debates on the issue.
”The issue of legalizing surrogate motherhood has been finally removed from the agenda of the parliament,” Hadi Rajabli, chairman of the parliamentary committee on social policy said.
The parliament decided not to discuss the bill any more taking into account the negative public attitude towards it, he added.
What Is surrogate?
Gestational surrogate makes it possible to harvest eggs from the mother, fertilize them with sperm from the father, and place the embryo into the uterus of a gestational surrogate. The surrogate then carries the baby until birth. A gestational surrogate has no genetic ties to the child. That's because it wasn't her egg that was used. A gestational surrogate is called the "Birth mother." The biological mother, though, is still the woman whose egg was fertilized.
While a traditional surrogate is a woman who is artificially inseminated with the father's sperm. A traditional surrogate is the baby's biological mother. That's because it was her egg that was fertilized by the father's sperm.
Opponents of the law maintain that artificial insemination and surrogate motherhood is contrary to the Azerbaijani mentality. Caucasian Muslims Office has several times protested the legislation of surrogate motherhood, noting that this step is against Islamic norms. The Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church have also condemned this medical method.
Since long time ago, Azerbaijani childless couples have been agreeing with their close relatives to adopt their newborn child. Adoption "in agreement" is still quite common in the country. In fact, it can also be called a kind of "surrogate motherhood."
Although this law has not been adopted in Azerbaijan, it is enough to surf the Internet to find a lot of ads on the western web-sites, about Azerbaijani citizens who are ready to become a surrogate mother or a donor.
The law-defenders suggest that lack of such a law usually mostly leads to frauds.
Now the number of those desiring to recourse to the surrogate motherhood is growing. Married couples who can not afford to have their own children, go in search of surrogate mothers in other countries, where their interests are protected by law. For many families this way is the only chance to have their own child.
Usually, Azerbaijanis apply to Turkey or Russia or Ukraine. Turkey has no law on surrogacy allowing any one to carry out such operations legally, instead of Ukraine and Russia, where it is allowed by the law.
But is the recourse of specialists abroad a law-break? "Everything which is not forbidden is allowed," lawyer Elchin Gambarov believes.
There is no violation here, he told a local newspaper. “Azerbaijani citizens have the right to go abroad to become a sperm donor or surrogate mother. All the more, they usually go to the countries, where this procedure is permitted.”
Barren women and men in Azerbaijan may recourse to the artificial insemination, which has been legally conducted in Azerbaijan since 2004. And some 40-45 percent of those who decide to undergo artificial insemination in the country have achieved positive results. This comes as the rate of successful inseminations in Europe is at 30-35 percent.
Caucasian Muslims Office maintains that the artificial insemination is possible only if a donor is the woman’s husband. It is unacceptable to conduct this operation with other donors.

By Amina Nazarli

Progress for parents and surrogate children in the UK: parental order time limit extended

November 20 2014
A small step has been taken towards improving surrogacy laws for intended parents and protecting surrogate children in this country.  Until recently, a six month time limit has been in place for parents to apply for a parental order in order to become the legal parents of a child in place of the surrogate mother. This requirement has long been criticised by surrogacy law specialists as there is no justification for an absolute deadline.

The conditions for making parental orders are set out in section 54 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008.  You can read all of the conditions here.  Under section 54(3) commissioning parents must apply for the order within 6 months of the child’s birth.  The legislation does not make any exceptions to this rule or allow for the time limit to be extended.

On 3 October this year, the President of the Family Division heard a case involving a child born in India, via a surrogacy arrangement, in 2011. The commissioning parents were unaware of the need to apply for a parental order within 6 months of the child’s birth and they did not do so.  Without a parental order, the surrogate mother is, and will remain, the legal mother of the child under English law, whether or not she is a genetic parent.  If she is married, the surrogate’s husband will be the legal father.

In Re X (A Child) (Surrogacy: Time Limit) 2014 the President was faced with a situation where a child was being cared for by commissioning parents, neither of whom had parental responsibility for that child and the time limit for them to make a parental order application to resolve this legal dichotomy had passed.  The surrogate and her husband had confirmed that they wished to relinquish their parental rights and responsibilities.  It was clear to all that sense needed to prevail so that the child’s status, identity and relationships with its parents could be properly confirmed.  As the Judge himself asks “Can Parliament really have intended that the gate should be barred forever if the application for a parental order is lodged even one day late?”

The Judge had to grapple with the wording of the 2008 legislation, the purpose behind it and arguments under the Human Rights Act. In this sensible and practical Judgment, the Judge extended the time limit for the parental order application to be pursued by the commissioning parents.

So what does this mean for other parents and surrogate children?

The Judge is very careful to state that every case will be fact specific. However, intended parents who were not aware of the need to issue a parental order application following the birth of their child, and did not do so, would be well placed to seek legal advice and re-consider their ability to issue such an application now.  Many clients in the past have asked me, do I really need a parental order? The answer is a resolute “yes”. Without it, the intended parents are not the legal parents and have no legal standing to make decisions on behalf of their child (they do not have parental responsibility).  For example, without parental responsibility, intended parents are likely to experience problems when renewing their children’s passports.

This case is good news for the thousands of parents involved each year in international surrogacy arrangements, particularly if they are stuck abroad unable to travel home immediately after birth or they were simply unaware of the need to issue a parental order application.

Kingsley Napley

Because I’m Happy!!! :)

Modern family: New Jersey woman shares her story of embryo adoption

When Inga Wismer miscarried in 2010, she was heartbroken — but ready to welcome children another way.

"I wanted to do something good and I decided to adopt," Wismer, who already had three biological children at the time, told the Daily News.

But the two children she adopted from Africa in May 2011 had significant behavioral and health issues, and reactive attachment disorder — severe difficulty bonding with their new family. Two years later, Wismer and her husband made the difficult decision to disrupt the adoption and have the children legally adopted by another family.

"I was feeling very sad and very guilty," said the 33-year-old teacher from Lebanon, N.J. "It was a hard year."

Wismer, who left her mother behind when she emigrated to the U.S. from Russia more than a decade ago, felt the void that those children had left.

She decided she wanted to adopt again, but in a different way. Instead of adopting a newborn or a foster child, Wismer adopted an embryo from a young couple and had it transplanted to her uterus, and is expecting her child on Aug. 3.

With traditional in vitro fertilization, a woman typically uses her own eggs. But Wismer didn't want to use her own eggs — or her husband's sperm for that matter. Both of them had found out via genetic testing that they carried a mutation for cystic fibrosis.

And Wismer, a fierce believer that life begins at conception, wanted to take care of an already-created human.

"Frozen embryos are a first stage of human life as opposed to just egg or just sperm by themselves," she told the Daily News. "I believe that if they have a potential to become a full grown baby, they need to be given that chance."

Embryo adoption: The basics

Never heard of embryo adoption?

Don't worry, you're not alone — the process is a fairly recent phenomenon brought about by modern fertility treatments. It happens when a couple undergoing fertility treatment is left over with more embryos than they want or need, according to Dr. Lawrence Grunfeld, an associate clinical professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital.

"Those embryos have various options: one would be to destroy them, another would be to donate them to stem cell research and another would be to give them to an infertile couple," he told The News.

Wisner and her husband Michael also liked that embryo adoption is considerably less expensive than traditional adoption and in vitro fertilization. Wismer's embryo adoption cost her $6,000, with half of the cost being covered by her insurance.

Conversely, traditional adoption can start at $30,000, according to Dr. Edward Nejat, a reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist at Neway Fertility in Midtown.

For embryo adoption, the donating couple has to undergo rigorous medical testing to determine that both partners don't have any communicable diseases that could be passed on to the baby.

The recipient also has to undergo testing to ensure that she can have a healthy pregnancy. Wismer had a hysteroscopy, in which a camera scanned her uterus for any problems, plus a trial transfer without an embryo to make sure her body could handle the procedure. She also had blood work to check her hormone levels.

And beyond the scientific complexities, there are still old-fashioned human emotions at play. To that end, all parties must go through counseling to understand the magnitude of the decision. There also ethical guidelines from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine that say an embryo should not be created unless a recipient is ready to receive it.

Modern families

The practice of adopting an embryo is relatively uncommon, according to Nejat. Men and women more frequently donate sperm and eggs, respectively; it's rare that a couple will donate an already-created embryo.

"Most people that we see are interested in using their own eggs and that's almost always what we start with, but there are circumstances when using one's own eggs is not a viable option," he told the Daily News.

He said that women like that they can carry a child with embryo adoption, something "not to be underestimated."

But Wismer's husband, Michael, wasn't too keen on the idea at first.

"Initially, because we had been through such a traumatic event (with our traditional adoption), he did not want to go through another adoption," Wismer said. "(But) he realized this is what I really, really wanted to do with my life. I am very pro-life. I believe this is the right choice."

Wismer selected her embryo from the Delaware Valley Institute of Fertility & Genetics in New Jersey, choosing one from a young California military couple. The baby will most likely not look like Wismer since its DNA is from different biological parents, however, Wismer carrying the baby does mean that she could influence the baby's epigenetics — the turning on and off of certain genes in the body.

Great Expectations

After a week of hormonal pills — a shorter duration of prep than is common with typical IVF — Wismer's uterus was ready to accept an embryo.

Her implantation had to be timed according to her menstrual cycle. The embryo was defrosted, inserted into Wismer's uterus and within one week she had a positive pregnancy test — even though the odds the embryo would attach were only 50%. It was a one-shot deal — Wismer did not adopt multiple embryos because she did not want to risk having multiples. But she said if the embryo didn't take, she would just try the process again.

Now, Wismer is eight weeks along and experiencing typical pregnancy symptoms, but "as unpleasant as it is, those are actually good signs because it means everything is going OK," she said. She loves the bond that she's developing with her baby.

The adoption is closed, meaning that Wismer and her child will not have a relationship with the donating couple and will not know their identities. Though she wishes they could, the clinic does not allow it. Adoption agencies are usually more receptive to open adoptions, but come with an agency fee.

Wismer, who went through the fertility clinic directly, is not paying an agency fee.

Much to the expectant mother's relief, Wismer's fetus looked healthy during its most recent ultrasound on Dec. 5. In four months, she will find out its gender.

Wismer is sharing her story in hopes to enlighten more people about embryo adoption. She said that not many of her friends knew it even existed.

"I think it should become more popular," she said. "It gives you a chance to carry and it's a lot less expensive than traditional adoption or a surrogate. (Plus) it helps frozen babies that are just sitting there, waiting for a chance at life."

((http://www.nydailynews.com/))

More women are having IVF than ever before

More cycles of IVF were undertaken in the UK last year than ever before - but there has been no rise in the success rate, figures released today show. 

They reveal more than two-thirds of women undergoing treatment are aged 37 and under, while the average age for treatment remains static at 35. 

Women over 40 represent the minority of all patients treated, with women aged over 45 accounting for just two per cent of treatment.

The report, from the UK's fertility watchdog, also shows that the majority of these older women are using donor eggs rather than their own when trying to conceive. 

In 2013, 49,636 women had a total of 64,600 cycles of IVF, more than ever before.

And a further 2,379 women had a total of 4,611 cycles of donor insemination - also up from the previous year.

However the overall success rate has remained constant at around 25 per cent, according to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

The new figures also reflect changes in society.

The number of IVF treatment cycles involving same-sex female couples has increased by nearly 20 per cent year-on-year, rising from 766 treatments in 2011 to 902 in 2012. 

Meanwhile, donor insemination cycles involving same-sex couples rose by nearly 15 per cent, from 1,271 in 2011 to 1,458 in 2012. 

However these amount to a minority of all treatments undertaken, the HFEA said. 

The report also shows that the number of IVF treatment cycles using both donor eggs and donor sperm has doubled over the last five years, while the use of frozen embryos is now involved in more than 20 per cent of all treatments.  

Elsewhere, the campaign to reduce multiple births is shown to have had good impact, with numbers declining.

Having a multiple birth (twins, triplets or more) is the single greatest health risk associated with fertility treatment, so guidelines now state only a single embryo can be transferred at a time.

Multiple births carry risks to both the health of the mother and to the health of the unborn babies, with twins or triplets more likely to be premature and to have a below-normal birth weight.

The report shows that multiple births occurred in 16.9 per cent of treatment cycles in 2012, down from 18.8 per cent in 2011. 

Sally Cheshire, Chair of the HFEA, said: 'This report offers unrivalled insight into one of the world's most advanced IVF sectors, helping to inform the decisions of patients and clinicians alike.

'We are very pleased to see that outcomes in most categories are improving each year, and are particularly heartened by the continuing downward trend in multiple births, something we've worked hard with professionals to achieve.

'But as well as providing data, over time these reports offer us a unique insight into the changing nature of social norms, whether that is same-sex parenting or older mums. 

'In that sense they have become a fascinating resource not just for patients and clinicians, but for everyone.' 

Commenting on the figures, Professor Sheena Lewis, Chair of the British Andrology Society, and Professor of Reproductive Medicine, Queen's University Belfast (QUB), said: 'It is very disappointing that success rates have not improved, yet again. 

'In my opinion, one of the reasons for the low success rate is an unsatisfactory diagnosis of the male partner. 

'We should test the man's sperm at a molecular level, looking at his sperm DNA quality to help guide couples to the best treatment for them.'

Dr Allan Pacey, a fertility expert from the University of Sheffield, added: 'The data shows that treatments such as IVF are now very much in the mainstream of UK medical practice.

'IVF is now performed more frequently than other well- know procedures such as having tonsils removed (there were 47,141 of those in the NHS in 2012-13). 

'Therefore, it remains disappointing that in many parts of the NHS Assisted Conception is still a Cinderella Service with the NICE funding guidance being ignored and many patients having to pay for their own treatment.'

However he said the report also shows the continued coordinated efforts of professionals to reduce the number of multiple births.

'While twins and triplets may seem like an instant family, health outcomes for children are better if they are born 'one at a time',' he explained. 

((http://www.dailymail.co.uk/))

The IVF egg donor: ‘I knew I didn’t want children. I’ve just found out I have three’

Vanessa Traill has never had sex, but last week she discovered she has three children: two girls and a boy. One day she’d love to meet them, but that won’t be for 15 or 20 years and Traill, 36, couldn’t be happier about that. She’s never gone a bundle on babies, and much prefers children when they’re older: in fact it was her lack of maternal instinct that led her to where she is now.

Traill is an altruistic egg donor. She’s one of a growing number of women, according to figures just released by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), who are offering to go through the physically demanding process of having their ovaries stimulated, and the medically invasive procedure to retrieve their eggs, in order to help a woman or couple they’ve never met, and never will, to have a baby.

The new figures show that over the last five years the number of IVF cycles where fresh donated eggs are used is up by more than 50%. Among women over 45, more now use donated eggs than their own when using medical assistance to get pregnant. Other HFEA figures released at the end of October revealed that the number of women registering as altruistic donors has risen every year since 2006.

More than half of those who register are, like Traill, over 30. It was around six years ago that she first started to think about becoming a donor. “I’ve given blood all my life, and I carry an organ donor card,” she says. “So when I picked up a magazine and saw an article about egg donation I thought: ‘I could do that.’ I knew I didn’t want children, and I thought I was probably fertile – and I guess I thought, ‘I don’t want to use my eggs but if someone else can, why not?’”

Traill is gay, though she says she has never had a relationship she wanted to take to the sexual phase. But her celibate status was irrelevant to the egg donation process. When she contacted theGlasgow Centre for Reproductive Medicine (GCRM), which she says she liked the idea of being associated with because it’s connected with Glasgow University where she works as an academic teaching medieval history, staff talked her through the complicated process of giving eggs. She also had extensive fertility tests – and they showed, as she had expected they would, that she had a good egg reserve and would make an excellent donor.

She made her first donation in spring 2011. “I had to inject myself daily with hormones for nine days, and I had several internal scans to check how things were going.” Then came the egg retrieval. “I had a general anaesthetic for that, though now it’s done with a heavy sedative, and they harvested seven eggs.” It hadn’t seemed too bad, so later that year she offered to do it again, and then twice more in 2012. “Altogether they retrieved 45 eggs,” she says. The discomfort and inconvenience seemed minimal. “I felt a bit bloated during the first round, but the later cycles were much easier because I had different drugs which agreed with me better. It really wasn’t a big deal.”

But it definitely was a big deal for the three couples who went on to have babies using her eggs, as Traill discovered on a return visit to the centre on Friday. “All I know about them is that the babies have been born, and that two are girls and one is a boy,” she says. “That’s all I can be told – although when they’re 18 they’ll have the right to make contact with me if they choose to do so. I feel quite excited about that – I’m curious about how much of them will be nature and how much will be nurture.” It’s possible that more babies will be born from her eggs in the future, because two of the couples have more embryos made using her eggs in storage.

Before she made her first donation, Traill wrote two letters – one to the potential parents, one to her genetic child or children – in which she described herself and the values that are important to her. “In the letter to the parents I stressed how important I think it is that they’re honest with the child and tell them from the outset how she or he was conceived. And in the letter to the child, I stressed how important it was to understand that your real parents are the people who care for you day in and day out and who raise you, not the person who provided the genetic material.”

Marco Gaudoin, medical director of the Glasgow centre, which is part of the Academic Reproductive Partnership of leading fertility clinics, says altruistic egg donation is likely to continue to rise in the years ahead, prompted partly by a change to the regulations in 2011, which means donors now receive £750 for each cycle of egg retrieval. “It’s not that women are necessarily volunteering because they’re swayed by the money, but the publicity around the change has led more women to think about whether they could do it, and we’ve seen a rise in the number coming forward,” he says. For her first two donation cycles Traill received just £40 for taxi journeys to and from the clinic – but for her third and fourth donations she was paid £750 a time. “It was a very welcome boost to my finances, but I would never have become a donor for the money and I don’t think any donor should think of it in that way,” she says.

Gaudoin believes egg donation will be an increasingly important part of the assisted fertility scene in the future, and despite the higher numbers of altruistic donors coming forward, the average waiting time for a donated egg at his clinic is between eight and nine months. “What’s happening at the moment is that more and more women are delaying motherhood until later in their lives, and as you get older the quality of your eggs diminishes. But using donated eggs from a younger woman pushes the success rate right up for older women – it can be the difference between 3 or 4% using their own eggs, right up to as high as a 60% success rate using donated eggs. The thing is that the womb doesn’t age in the way eggs do, so a woman can carry a child at almost any age.”

Over the last few years many donated eggs have come from a practice known as egg-sharing, in which privately funded IVF patients agree to allow some of their eggs to be used for other patients, in exchange for a reduced fee. “Typically the women who donate through egg-sharing will have polycystic ovaries or will have partners who have a low sperm count, so they are able to give healthy eggs to women who can’t produce them,” says Gaudoin. But egg-sharing has its pitfalls, not least that a woman desperate to have a child might fail to get pregnant herself, but end up being told that another woman has given birth to her genetic child.

Meanwhile, Traill says that, occasionally, she allows herself the pleasure of feeling good about having made such an extraordinary difference to the lives of strangers she will probably never meet. “When I was at the clinic I’d be in the waiting room and I’d see couples there waiting for their appointment, and I could see how hard it all was for them. At the end of the day, the bit I did was the easy part.”

((http://www.theguardian.com/))

Ignorance is not a sin! But it’s a grave sin to judge someone without even trying to understand him!

"You have put the human on the same footing as goods! You sell children as gingerbread on the fair! Your actions are immoral and ungodly! Surrogate mothers are witches who sell wealthy couples children!" List of such accusations can go on endless. All of them are directed towards surrogate mothers and clinics which conduct such programs. But, its better get to know more about thing you are against. Surrogacy is a procedure that has been using since the biblical times and gains popularity in the 21st century. If you consider surrogacy to be immoral and inhuman maybe it’s only because you have never faced with infertility problem. And it is certainly good! After all, not all but just a few is able to withstand years of effort to become pregnant, suffering from depression and failed attempts, endless visits to the medical institutions, strong drugs and, ultimately, doctor throws up his hands and say that he can do anything… diagnose is infertility. Surrogacy is the only way to become biological parents for infertile couples who cannot conceive a child in a natural way. And there is nothing reprehensible in this situation. After all, we have nothing against a donor kidney for ill patient, prosthesis instead of amputated leg or artificial ceramic teeth. So why some people are so harsh and peremptory become ardent opponents of surrogate motherhood in the 21st century. After all, the question is not in the desire to keep a figure 90/60/90, and not a whim, caused by the presence of multi-million accounts. Infertility is a global problem that visits every fifth family, according to the world statistics.

If it’s possible, infertile woman undergoes synchronization, take strong hormonal medications, and then goes through a painful puncture procedure, in order to give eggs for in vitro fertilization. Surrogate mothers are women who are worthy of respect and infinite gratitude. They give new life, make infertile people happy and help own families sometimes risking their health. Yes, surrogate mothers get paid for such service. What's wrong with that? Visiting store you pay money to get food, when you want to organize a holiday for children you pay for the animators’ work, and you open the wallet once again when you go to the pharmacy, theater, shopping center and so on. In today's modern world, almost all services are paid. So why services of a surrogate mother should be free? Many people would argue: "It is not correct to compare surrogacy with store visit! These are completely different things! ". Yes, these things are different but the core is the same - one person provides a service, the other one pays for it. And believe me, in spite of vigorous resistance and resentment by some society representatives, surrogacy, in the nearest future will be the same procedure as going to the dentist. Society has been developing, and the world moves forward. Community blocks with hostile attitude all new. For example, people not at once caught fancy of cashless payment. At first, people were afraid of cards and considered them to be uncomfortable. Therefore society preferred to keep real money in hands. Now, most people do not even have purses, but only a bank card in the pocket. The more human will become a human, the more he would tend to infinity and indestructible movement to the new.

Engineering Babies

In this Christmas season, Christians throughout the world celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, who brought a message of hope and redemption to the world. This celebration poignantly reminds Christians of the joy of Christ’s birth to a human mother, and God’s gift of life to all humans.

Christians celebrate this profound gift of life knowing that we live in an imperfect world where salvation depends on grace and faith in God’s design for the world. God imparted the gift of life to all creatures, great and small, and to humans He provided unique abilities of reason and conscience. With these abilities humans have made great progress, especially in the advancement of science. Scientific knowledge, while improving our understanding of the natural world, has created new challenges to human understanding of the meaning of life.

A Story of Hope in Adversity

The dramatic story of Crystal Kelley, the surrogate mother of a child born in 2012, reveals both the ethical dilemmas of life in a scientific age and the hope of redemption for everyone. As recounted by CNN.com (March 6, 2013), the story began in August 2011 when Crystal Kelley, then age 29, agreed to become a surrogate mother to a married couple who wanted a fourth child to add to their family. The couple had conceived their three children through in vitro fertilization and had two frozen embryos remaining from their fertility treatments. They offered to pay Crystal a fee of $22,000 to have the two embryos implanted in her under a contract to carry the embryos to term and relinquish any resulting baby at delivery. Crystal became pregnant. Both Crystal and the parents were thrilled, and the mother and Crystal communicated nearly every day.

In February, things began to fall apart when an ultrasound showed that the baby had a cleft lip and palate, a cyst on her brain and serious heart defects. Now 21 weeks pregnant, Crystal learned that the baby would need several heart surgeries after she was born and would have only about a 25 percent chance of a normal life. Following the examination, the parents wrote to Crystal’s midwife that given the “interventions” required to manage the baby’s medical problems, “it is a more humane option to consider pregnancy termination.” They noted that three of their children, conceived in vitro, had been born prematurely and two of them still had medical problems.

In a later meeting with them, Crystal remembers the mother crying. “They said they didn’t want to bring a baby into the world,” she recalls, “only for that child to suffer. . . . They said I should try to be God-like and have mercy on the child and let her go.” Crystal replied, “I told them that they had chosen me to carry and protect this child, and that was exactly what I was going to do,” adding, “I told them it wasn’t their decision to play God.”

The mother offered Crystal $10,000 to have an abortion. Crystal asked for more, then immediately regretted asking. She decided not to accept any money to have an abortion which was against her religious principles. Under threat of suit for breach of a contract she had signed in which she agreed to an “abortion in case of severe fetus abnormality,” Crystal contacted a Connecticut attorney who took the case for free.

In response, the parents changed their position, communicating through their lawyer that they now planned to exercise their legal right to take custody of their child—and then immediately surrender the baby to the state of Connecticut. Faced with a legal web being spun around her, Crystal left for Michigan, which does not recognize surrogacy contracts. In Michigan she found a woman and her husband who agreed to adopt the baby. Meanwhile, the legal battle continued in Connecticut, where the baby’s intended mother admitted in legal papers that the couple had used an anonymous egg donor. She was not even the baby’s genetic mother.

The baby was born June 25, 2012. The baby’s medical problems were even more extensive than suggested by early tests. Her internal organs were in the wrong places. She had two spleens, neither working properly. Her head was very small, and she had various heart defects and other health issues. Yet with all of her problems, the new adoptive parents see a little girl who has defied the odds. She makes eye contact, giggles at her siblings, grabs toys. The mother says her baby “wakes up every single morning with an infectious smile. She greets her world with a constant sense of enthusiasm.” The adoptive mother told CNN that “with love, opportunity, and encouragement, she will be the one to show us what is possible for her life and what she is capable of achieving.”

Crystal’s story is one of courage, conviction and redemption that reminds us of the blessings of life in this season of celebration. This story also illustrates some of the many injustices found within today’s surrogacy industry. These include the commodification of the bodies of impecunious women; the demands for abortion of less-than-perfect fetuses; the higher rate of medical complications resulting from implantation of multiple embryos and from the tendency to use relatively older women as surrogate mothers; the shifting of costs of these medical complications to third parties or taxpayers; and the purchase of babies by would-be parents who may be single men or gay couples who are not required to show their fitness to be parents. Such “parents” can deliberately design a baby who will never know a birth mother, a genetic mother, or even in many cases an adoptive mother. For a good overview of some of these issues, see Charlotte Allen, “Womb for Rent,” The Weekly Standard, October 7, 2013.

Catholic Teachings Against Surrogacy

Sister Renée Mirkes in her article “The Injustices of the Surrogacy Industry” in The Catholic World Report (August 1, 2013) articulates the importance of Catholic teaching in understanding this brave new world created by modern science. She notes that between 1978 and 1988 roughly 600 children were born to surrogate mothers in the United States. Surrogate birth rates nearly doubled between 2004 and 2008, producing a total of 5,239 babies in that period. Confronted with this new technology, the Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith adopted bold language in Donum Vitae (1987) and in Dignitas Personae (2008) to defend the traditional Catholic theory of the family and the rights of the child. In Donum Vitae, Church doctrine declares, “The child has the right to be conceived, carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up within marriage.”

Donum Vitae offers wise counsel to people considering commissioning a surrogate birth, reasoning that such an arrangement violates intrinsic human rights of the child:

On the part of spouses, the desire for a child is natural: it expresses the vocation of fatherhood and motherhood inscribed in conjugal love. This desire can be even stronger if the couple is afflicted by sterility which appears incurable. Nevertheless, marriage does not confer upon the spouses the right to have a child, but only the right to perform those natural acts which are per se ordered to procreation. A true and proper right to a child would be contrary to the child’s dignity and nature. The child is not an object to which one has a right, nor can he be considered an object of ownership; rather a child is a gift, ‘the supreme gift’ and the most gratuitous gift of marriage, and is a living testimony of the mutual giving of his parents. For this reason, the child has the right . . . to be the fruit of the specific act of conjugal love of his parents; and he also has the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception.

Sister Renée Mirkes argues persuasively that the woman’s choice of surrogacy serves “neither her own good nor the good of others.” To gestate another couple’s child is “not only a self-inflicted injustice—a failure of the surrogate to give due response to her own personal integrity, freedom and dignity—but also a society- inflicted injustice, a failure by the intending couple and the reproductive medical community” to understand the depth of the injustice of surrogacy.

Damage Caused by Surrogacy

The psychological and physical effects of surrogacy on the surrogate mother and child are revealed by recent research. For the surrogate mother the preparation and implantation involve potential risks associated with in vitro fertilization (IVF), including sexually transmitted infection from the intended father’s sperm, ovarian hyperstimulation and a variety of physical maladies. IVF involves high risk of multiple pregnancy and increased risk of miscarriage, anemia, urinary tract infection, hemorrhage, caesarean delivery and placental abnormalities. Surrogate motherhood arrangements commonly use younger women to supply eggs and older women, who already have children of their own, to gestate the embryos. Pregnancy itself carries health risks which women are usually willing to incur to bear their own child, but which are arguably inappropriate to incur for the sake of a paying client. In addition to physical problems, some surrogate mothers suffer psychological trauma in relinquishing their babies. This has led to high-profile lawsuits by surrogate mothers and would-be parents.

The scientific literature on the children born to surrogate mothers, while necessarily limited for such a new trend, supports the wisdom of Church doctrine. Dr. Susan Golombok has conducted an ongoing study at the University of Cambridge comparing 30 surrogate families, 31 egg donation families, 35 donor insemination families and 53 natural conception families. The research team found that at age 10, children born to a surrogate mother had more emotional difficulties than children born to a biological mother (“Surrogate Born Children Are More Likely to Suffer Depression Than Those Carried by Their Real Mother,” MailOnline, November 4, 2014).

Patchwork of Surrogacy Laws

State law varies widely on surrogacy arrangements. Michigan, where Crystal Kelley fled to escape her onerous surrogacy contract, bans commercial surrogacy. Entering a commercial surrogacy agreement there carries a penalty of up to five years in prison. Surrogacy contracts in New York are not enforced by that state. Indiana prohibits contracted surrogacy. In the District of Columbia contracted surrogacy carries a $10,000 fine. In Nebraska and Maryland surrogacy is legal only if the carrier is not compensated, called “altruistic” surrogacy. Tennessee, where same-sex marriage is illegal, allows only married couples to have surrogacy agreements. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal vetoed a bill to legalize compensated surrogacy for married heterosexual couples. Many states do not address surrogacy at all.

California, on the other hand, is an especially friendly state that allows commercial surrogacy. In California situations where the surrogate birth mother does not want to give up the child, the state has the legal right to seize the child. Anyone with sufficient means can acquire a baby via surrogacy contract, including a single man, gay or straight married couples or domestic partners. No inquiry is made as to the suitability of the parent(s) to raise children.

Illinois is considered one of the most pro-surrogate states in the country, as reported by Chicago Tribune (“Surrogate Births Growing in Popularity,” October 9, 2013). Not only have Illinois residents taken advantage of the pro-surrogacy laws in the state, but clients from all over the United States and Europe are contacting Illinois groups such as the Center for Egg Options and Parenting Partners to arrange surrogate births. Illinois ranks third behind Massachusetts and New Jersey in the number of surrogate births.

Pro-surrogacy states take great pains to protect the rights of parties entering into this legal agreement (except, of course, the rights of the child, whose future reaction to his deficient parentage is not considered). The Illinois Gestational Surrogacy Act of 2005 provides that after the birth of a baby to a surrogate mother, parenthood passes immediately to the intended parents, whether a traditional couple or a same-sex couple. California law is similar. The would-be parents’ names are put on the birth certificate at birth. This eliminates the need for parents to go through a court adoption process after birth.

As a consequence, surrogacy has become a big industry. The growth of the industry has been helped by positive publicity from Hollywood celebrities such as Elton John, Nicole Kidman, Kelsey Grammer, Sarah Jessica Parker and Jimmy Fallon having children through surrogates. An international business has developed in India and other Asian countries, Ukraine and Mexico for wealthy couples and singles, both gay and straight, seeking to have children with the aid of surrogate mothers. The high cost of engineering a baby in this manner—upwards of $100,000 in the U.S. for purchasing a young woman’s eggs, creating the embryos, renting the surrogate mother’s womb, purchasing health insurance, paying broker fees and handling the legal arrangements—limits the business to rich would-be parents, some of whom seek to reduce cost by using Third World surrogate mothers.

Single and Gay Men Fuel Demand

Originally, demand for surrogate mothers came principally from heterosexual married couples where the wife was unable to bear children but was willing to mother a child conceived and born through assisted reproduction. As time went on, egg donation technology marched ahead and taboos against alternative family structures eroded, the use of purchased eggs became the norm, and not only husband-wife couples but also single men and gay male couples have fueled the demand for surrogacy. These men have made a conscious decision to become fathers without the love of a woman. This decision deprives their children of the love of a woman as well.

Another growing motivation for surrogacy is acquisition of U.S. citizenship for Chinese nationals’ genetic children born to U.S. surrogate mothers (“Chinese Look Overseas for Surrogates,” nytimes.com, September 23, 2013). Whatever the motivation, the use of surrogacy is clearly accelerating.

Stricter Laws in Some Countries

Most Western European countries and Canada take a dim view of acquiring babies via surrogate motherhood, banning or greatly restricting the practice. Legislators in these countries often sensibly take the position that surrogacy is never in the best interests of the child, or express concern about the psychological impact on a child of splitting his mother into up to three persons (the surrogate mother, the genetic mother and sometimes an adoptive mother). See Elyse M. Smith, “Surrogacy Through the Lens of the Best Interests Principle,” Ave Maria International Law Journal (Spring 2012).

Some critics, such as filmmaker Jennifer Lahl, in her documentary film Breeder: A Sub-Class of Women, focus on the evil of the exploitation of poor women by the surrogacy industry. But an equally important issue is protecting the rights of the children as to what kinds of families they will be raised in. Adoption procedures protect children by carefully screening the adoptive parents. The varying surrogacy laws provide little or no protection for surrogate children from couples or individuals who would not be allowed to adopt. In one outlandish case outside the U.S. illustrating the perils of unrestricted surrogacy, a wealthy 24-year-old Japanese businessman reportedly has fathered 16 children through Thai surrogate mothers and plans to father many more, claiming he has the means to support them (The Guardian, August 23, 2014).

An Australian couple sparked outrage in another case after they picked up a baby girl born to a Thai surrogate mother but apparently refused to accept the girl’s twin brother, who was born with Down syndrome. The surrogate mother has successfully appealed for funds to raise the boy. The father happens to be a convicted pedophile, according to CNN (khou.com, August 11, 2014).

Pressure is building for more states and countries to pass laws legalizing surrogacy arrangements. The Catholic Church and Christian activists should be vigilant to resist the spread of a bad idea. A man who fathers a child in this unnatural way, without a wife, will never have a good answer to the child’s eventual question: Where is my mother? Jesus Christ, whose birth is celebrated this month, never had to ask such a question, and gave the world a model of filial love for His mother.

Cardinal Mindszenty, who was devoted to his own mother, wrote, “The most important person on earth is a mother.” The laws should not facilitate deliberately bringing children into the world with no mother.

((http://www.dfwcatholic.org/))