Coming to U.S. for Baby, and Womb to Carry It

Foreign Couples Heading to America for Surrogate Pregnancies

New York Times, July 5, 2014 – by Tamar Levin

At home in Lisbon, a gay couple invited friends over to a birthday celebration, and at the end of the evening shared a surprise — an ultrasound image of their baby, moving around in the belly of a woman in Pennsylvania being paid to carry their child.

“Everyone was shocked, and asked everything about how we do this,” said Paulo, who spoke on the condition that neither his last name nor that of his husband, João, be used since what they were doing is a crime in Portugal.

While babies through surrogacy have become increasingly common in the United States, with celebrities like Elton John, Sarah Jessica Parker and Jimmy Fallon openly discussing how they started a family, the situation is quite different in Portugal — as it is in most of the world where the hiring of a woman to carry a child is forbidden.

And as Paulo and João have discovered, even bringing home a baby born abroad through surrogacy can be complicated.In an era of globalization, the market for children crosses national borders; witness the longtime flow of Americans who have gone overseas to adopt babies from South Korea, China, Russia and Guatemala.

Other than the United States, only a few countries — among them India, Thailand, Ukraine and Mexico — allow paid surrogacy. As a result, there is an increasing flow in the opposite direction, with the United States drawing affluent couples from Europe, Asia and Australia. Indeed, many large surrogacy agencies in the United States say international clients — gay, straight, married or single — provide the bulk of their business.

The traffic highlights a divide between the United States and much of the world over fundamental questions about what constitutes a family, who is considered a legal parent, who is eligible for citizenship and whether paid childbirth is a service or exploitation.

In many nations, a situation that splits motherhood between the biological mother and a surrogate carrier is widely believed to be against the child’s best interests. And even more so when three women are involved: the genetic mother, whose egg is used; the mother who carries the baby; and the one who commissioned and will raise the child.

Many countries forbid advertising foreign or domestic surrogacy services and allow only what is known as altruistic surrogacy, in which the woman carrying the baby receives payment only for her expenses. Those countries abhor what they call the commercialization of baby making and view commercial surrogacy as inherently exploitive of poor women, noting that affluent women generally do not rent out their wombs.

Click here to read the entire article.

in International / Legal / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

European human rights court orders France to recognise surrogate-mother children

By RFI – June 26, 2014

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ordered France to recognise children born to surrogate mothers abroad even though surrogacy is banned on French territory. Refusal to do so undermines children’s identity, the court ruled in cases brought by two French families.

France has the right to ban surrogate parenthood but not to refuse granting legal to parent-child relationships of children born to surrogate mothers, the ECHR ruled on Thursday.

The “legal guinea pigs”, as one father described them, were two families, the Mennessons and the Labassees, who have children born to surrogate mothers in the US, where the practise is legal in some states.

Twins, Valentina and Fiorella Menesson, were born in 2000 in California, having been conceived from their father’s sperm and a donor’s oocyte, and have US citizenship.

Juliette Labassee was born in Minnesota in 2001 in similar circumstances, and is also a US national.

Click here to read the entire article.

in Adoption / In the News / International / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Jason Hanna and Joe Riggs, Texas Gay Fathers, Denied Legal Parenthood Of Twin Sons

by Michelangelo Signorile – Huffpost.com, June 18, 2014

It’s heartbreaking to think that a state has erased the parents of children and put a family in legal jeopardy, simply because of discrimination against gay and lesbian couples. But that’s what happened to a gay couple in Texas after what they described as the “magical” birth of their twin boys.

Jason Hanna and Joe Riggs are the proud fathers of Lucas and Ethan, who were born in April, after they’d connected with a surrogate mom, CharLynn.

Each of the men is a biological father to one of the babies. But, because Texas has a ban on gay marriage (it was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge last February, but the decision was stayed pending appeal), and because a judge can use his or her own discretion in these cases, neither of the men is currently on the birth certificates of either of the boys, nor have they been able to co-adopt each other’s biological child.

Only the surrogate mother — who has no biological relationship to the boys, since embryos were transferred to her — is on the birth certificates. In essence, the men are not legally defined as the parents of their own children. And though they have DNA tests for proof, they’re worried, particularly if something were to happen to one of them while the other still has not been able to co-adopt the other’s biological child.

Click here to read the entire article.

in In the News / Second Parent Adoption / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Surrogacy Shouldn’t Block Adoption, Court Determines

New York Law Journal – April 10, 2014

A Queens man may legally adopt his husband’s biological twins even though they were born to a woman under a surrogacy agreement that is illegal in New York state, a Family Court judge determined.

Judge Barbara Salinitro (See Profile) ruled that the best interests of the twins is the most important consideration in weighing the adoption petition of a man identified in court papers as “J.H.-W.,” not that the surrogacy agreement that reulted in their birth is “void and unenforceable” under New York law.

A home study provided to the court showed that the children are “thriving” in the care of J.H.-W. and his same-sex spouse, “M.H.-W.,” the judge said.

“The court is not being asked to enforce the surrogacy contract that forms the basis for the adoption, nor does the relief sought include claims relating to the surrogacy agreement itself,” Salinitro wrote in Matter of J.J., A-19-20/14. “Rather, the proposed adoptive parent…wants desperately to have equivalent legal status as the birth parent, which is what the couple had always envisioned as they proceeded on their bumpy road towards starting a family together, and is prepared to assume the rights and responsibilities that accompany legal parentage.”

To that end, the judge continued, the surrogacy agreement with the woman who bore the children in Mumbai, India, in 2013 is of “no consequence” to the adoption proceeding in Queens.

“The court finds where a surrogacy contract exists and an adoption has been filed to establish legal parentage, such surrogacy contract does not foreclose an adoption from proceeding,” Salinitro wrote.

Click here to read the entire article.

in Adoption / International / Legal / Second Parent Adoption / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

‘Do it yourself’ surrogate pregnancy ends in legal chaos with three-year-old boy effectively having two mothers

The Daily Mail – by Louise Eccles, March 5, 2014

A judge has warned of the dangers of informal surrogacy agreements after a woman found she had no parental rights to the baby she had asked her friend to conceive with her husband.

The ‘do it yourself’-style surrogate pregnancy ended in the High Court after the boy, now three, was effectively left with two mothers.

Unable to have children of her own, a woman asked a close friend to be artificially inseminated at home with her husband’s sperm.

But when the woman’s marriage broke down months after the birth of the child, she found she had no parental rights because she was not the boy’s legal or biological mother.

Yesterday, she was granted a residency order to care for the child, but the judge warned against anyone considering an informal surrogacy agreement, rather than through a professional agency.

Describing the case as a ‘cautionary tale’, Mrs Justice Eleanor King underlined the ‘real dangers’ of private surrogacy agreements and urged couples to use licensed and regulated fertility clinics.

Click here to read the entire article.
in In the News / International / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

And Surrogacy Makes 3 – In New York, a Push for Compensated Surrogacy

By

A month before their baby’s due date, Brad Hoylman and David Sigal got a call from the woman they had hired to have their child.

She was having contractions; come right away.

Mr. Sigal, a filmmaker, had the more flexible schedule. So after a sleepless night, he hopped on a plane to San Diego while Mr. Hoylman stayed in New York and frantically oversaw the dusty conversion of their TV room into a nursery.

The contractions turned out to be a false alarm, but Mr. Sigal stayed. And stayed, touching up his documentary in his hotel room, going to family outings — a picnic, a cheerleading event — with the surrogate and her daughters, and calling Mr. Hoylman “every 10 minutes” with updates.

Four weeks later, the baby was induced, and Mr. Hoylman flew in for the birth.

‘The timing was perfect,” Mr. Hoylman said. “I cut the cord and David —”

“Held her,” Mr. Sigal finished the sentence.

Such is the world of gestational surrogacy, in which a woman is paid to go through the pregnancy and birth of a child who is not genetically related to her and then promises to give that child away. To anyone who has had a baby, or known someone who has, the couple’s tireless zest for reciting their daughter’s birth story will bring a knowing smile, maybe a jaded shrug. But for Mr. Sigal and Mr. Hoylman, two gay men, the birth narrative carries with it an extra frisson of the illicit that seems to them more than a little archaic and unfair in the post-marriage-equality world.

Click here to read the entire article.

in In the News / Legislation / Personal Stories / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Important Information for U.S. Citizens Considering the Use of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Abroad

The Department of State has issued information regarding US citizenship of children born with assisted reproductive technology.  Here is one statement: “The Department of State interprets the INA to require a U.S. citizen parent to have a biological connection to a child in order to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child at birth. In other words, in order to transmit U.S. citizenship to a child conceived through Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), a U.S. citizen father must be the genetic parent and a U.S. citizen mother must be either the genetic
or the gestational and legal mother of the child at the time and place of the child’s birth.  (A gestational mother is the woman who
carries and gives birth to the child.) ”

The implications appear to favor a lesbian birth mother using the egg of her partner/spouse, however, it does not seem to shed any new light upon surrogate mother births for gay male couples.

Click here to read the entire article.

in In the News / International / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

France urged to act over US surrogate agency

Joshua Melvin | 16 Jan 2014 – The Local

Surrogate motherhood might be illegal in France, but that hasn’t stopped an American surrogacy agency from holding meetings here, much to the ire of a group of French lawmakers who want authorities to take action.

A conservative French pressure group, backed by several lawmakers has filed a legal complaint in France against American surrogacy agency Extraordinary Conceptions.

The agency brings potential parents in France into contact with American surrogates and has reportedly been hosting informal meetings in France, a country which outlaws surrogate motherhood.

Its website also has a French version called Meres-Porteuses.com, clearly aimed at targeting a French audience.

The conservative association has decided enough is enough and has filed a legal complaint which forces authorities in France to investigate the American company.

Two lawmakers from conservative French political party UMP added their names on Wednesday to a legal complaint filed last week by watchdog group ‘Jurists for Childhood’ (Juristes Pour L’enfance), which also fought against gay marriage, newspaper Le Parisien reported on Thursday.

It is believed to be the first time a legal complaint has been filed against the group in France.

Senators Bruno Retailleau and Gérard Longuet railed against “the complicity of the French legal authorities in the business of surrogate mothers”.

Their charges were reiterated by ‘Juristes pour l’enfance’ spokeswoman Aude Mirkovic who noted the surrogacy is strictly forbidden in France. She went on to say the practics is unfair to the children it produces.”

“They bring a child into this world that doesn’t know his parents. As soon as the child is born they take him away from his mother,” she said. “That happens enough already. It’s unfair.”

The complaint is for the present largely symbolic because Extraordinary Conceptions has for the moment only hosted meetings in France.

For their part, the agency’s bosses firmly defended their work of connecting would-be parents with surrogates.

To read the entire article, click here.

in In the News / International / Legal / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Speaking to children about surrogacy & gay parenting (part 1) / NYC 2013 Men Having Babies Expo

in Parenting / Surrogacy / Videos  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Personal stories panel / NYC 2013 Men Having Babies Expo

in Parenting / Surrogacy / Videos  by Anthony Brown 0 comments