Washington Blade, by Michael Lavers – June 24, 2015

A Florida man claims he and his husband are unable to leave Thailand with their infant daughter because the woman who gave birth to her objects to the fact they are a same-sex couple.

Gordon “Bud” Lake told the Washington Blade during a Skype interview on June 9 that he met the surrogate mother in person for the first time the day before his daughter, Carmen Santos Lake, was born in a Bangkok hospital on Jan. 17.

He said he visited her in the subsequent days, and brought his son Álvaro, who was born through a surrogate in India in August 2013, with him. Lake told the Blade that his husband, who is from Spain, did not accompany him. Lake said the surrogate — who is not the baby’s biological mother — agreed to list him on their daughter’s birth certificate as her father.

He told the Blade the surrogate also signed a consent form that allowed him to take her from the hospital. “All seemed to be going well,” wrote Lake in an email to the Blade earlier this month. “Carmen was beautiful, happy and healthy. The surrogate was fully cooperating and I was looking forward to heading home with my family in a matter of weeks, once all the remaining paperwork was finalized.”

Lake told the Blade he first became aware that the surrogate had an issue with the fact that he and his husband are a same-sex couple a few weeks after she gave birth to their daughter. “She had stated to our lawyer [that] she was fine helping out a couple that had problems that couldn’t have a child on their own and that we weren’t an ordinary family,” Lake told the Blade, recalling the surrogate’s objections. “That’s when I first found out about it. I don’t know if the agency told her before hand.” Lake told the Blade the surrogate — represented by the Women’s Lawyers Association of Thailand — did not show up for a scheduled meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok where he said she was to have provided him with the necessary paperwork that would have allowed him to leave the country with his daughter.

He said the surrogate was also supposed to sign for her American passport. The surrogate made the first of several appearances in the Thai media on March 3. Lake told the Blade that the surrogate on March 19 arrived at the Bangkok apartment building in which he and his husband had previously lived. He said they had already moved because their original lawyer told them “she could come and try to take the baby from us.” Lake said the surrogate and her teenage daughter waited in the lobby for eight hours.

“She asked me to come downstairs and bring the baby,” he said, recalling a conversation he said he had with the surrogate over a Thai social media network. “She wanted to see the baby.”

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By Susan Gately – 05 June, 2015 – CatholicIreland.Net (The implications of this case are huge for European surrogacy but please keep in mind that the tone of the reporting reflects the source.)

The European Court of Human Rights decided earlier this week to refer an Italian surrogacy case on appeal to the Grand Chamber of the Court.

The case Paradiso and Campanelli v. Italy was originally heard in the European Court of Human Rights in January this year.

The case involved a couple who obtained a child from a Russian company specialising in surrogacy.

Paradiso and Campanelli paid €49,000 for the baby boy who was produced through in vitro fertilisation and surrogacy. He had no biological connection with them.

Surrogacy is illegal in Italy, so the purchase of the baby was illegal, and passing him off as their own child, was seen as an act of fraud and a breach of public order. The Italian courts prosecuted the couple and the baby was placed with a foster family.

Paradiso and Campanelli appealed to the European Court of Human Rights maintaining that the interference was a breach of their right to “respect for private and family life” which is protected under the European Convention of Human Rights.

In its judgment on 27 January 2015, the Section of the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of the couple and ordered the Italian government to pay them €20,000 in damages and costs.

The Court considered that the Italian authorities had not given sufficient weight to the best interests of the child when balancing them against public-policy considerations.

The authorities had decided to remove the child and to place him under guardianship on the grounds that he had no biological relationship with the applicants and that the applicants had been in an unlawful situation (by contacting a Russian agency in order to become parents and subsequently bringing a child to Italy whom they passed off as their child, they had circumvented the prohibition in Italy on surrogacy and the rules on international adoption).

The Court said in particular, the authorities had not recognised the de facto relationship between the applicants and the child and had imposed an extreme measure, reserved for cases where children were in danger.

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Newsweek by Conor Gaffey – April 27, 2015

Israel has begun evacuating surrogate children and their Israeli parents from Nepal in the wake of the earthquake which has killed almost 4,000 people.

Families of 26 babies born to Nepalese women on behalf of Israeli parents appealed to Jerusalem for assistance, with the first three families arriving in Israel yesterday night.

Israeli law only allows for heterosexual partners to pursue surrogate pregnancy in the country, forcing single people and same-sex partners to go abroad to find surrogate parents.

The Times of Israel reported that the Israeli justice ministry also approved a request to receive four Nepalese surrogate mothers carrying babies for Israeli couples.

Approximately 100 surrogate mothers in Nepal are pregnant with Israeli children, according to the Jerusalem Post. Tel Aviv-based company Tammuz Surrogacy International said its 52 Israeli clients were awaiting evacuation in hotels or the Israeli embassy in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu.

The Israel Defence Forces said an 80-member humanitarian aid delegation would travel to Nepal today and would be joined by around 170 military personnel who will set up field hospitals for those injured in the earthquake. Some 150 Israeli travellers are also believed to be missing.

A bill to allow gay couples to go through surrogacy passed its first reading in the Knesset in October but has yet to be adopted into law.

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DailyMail.co.uk – April 18, 2015 by Jenny Awford

A surrogate mother has been banned from keeping her own daughter after it emerged that the woman who hired her had three of her children taken away.

The little girl was given up for adoption after a judge ruled that giving her birth mother, 28, custody would traumatise her other daughter.

The surrogate, from Tyne & Wear, who already has a five-year-old girl, said she broke down when the family court ruled she could not raise her own baby or even visit her.

‘They said if she was to come back to me it would affect the daughter I already have, it would get to her emotionally,’ she told The Sun.

‘But I couldn’t stop crying. I just broke down. I would have loved to have brought her up.’

She said she first became concerned when the parents she gave birth for vanished the day after she handed over the baby in 2013.

The 28-year-old then realised the couple, who she had met via a website, had lied about their address and background.

She refused to sign over parental control and it later emerged the other woman already had three children taken away from her by social services.

It then took more than a year before the girl was finally removed from their family home in the North East.

A family court later ruled they should not keep the child but instead chose a third adoptive family over the surrogate.

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