Russia drafts law to ban gays from using a surrogate mother

10/10/2013 – GayStarNews.com

A Russian lawmaker has proposed a ban on gay people from using a surrogate mother to have children. Vitaly Milonov, co-sponsor of the ‘non-traditional relationships’ propaganda bill, has suggested an amendment to banning same-sex couples from having children. ‘At present, Russian law has a loophole through which members of sexual minorities are allowed to inform children about homosexuality,’ his office said, as translated by GSN. ‘By and large, thanks to surrogacy homosexuals have the ability to inform a child about their lifestyle, values and views on gender roles and relations.’ Milonov explained allowing gay people would ‘recruit’ children if they were allowed to become parents by ‘breaking their psyche’.

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He’s Having a Baby! Men Having Babies Conference in NYC Offers Practical Assistance to Gay Men Dreaming of Parenting

Huffington Post, September 26, 2013

Sebastian, a 24-year-old New Yorker from Puerto Rico, adores his little nephew, loves playing with him and teaching him Bob Marley songs, and hopes one day to have a child or children of his own.  But as a gay man who is newly diagnosed with HIV, he isn’t sure whether he can have biological children of his own or when he might be in a solid-enough relationship to share parenting responsibilities, or even when he might have a stable-enough career and finances to afford raising a kid.

“It’s not so much about being gay for me,” he says. “Fatherhood is about becoming a man. I grew up without a father, and I think becoming one will help me understand my own masculinity. The HIV is something that is now in the way, you know? I’m just looking to see how that obstacle can be gotten out of the way. Are there prudent, realistic solutions for such a problem?”

Help for Sebastian might be at hand at the Men Having Babies conference, which returns to New York City on Oct. 6 to offer workshops and panels for gay men thinking about becoming parents. In addition to advice from experts, parents, and surrogates; 24 breakout sessions; and an exhibit with more than 30 service providers, the conference will hold a new panel specifically for men with HIV that it debuted in May at the Los Angeles version of the conference.

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Woman ordered to pay $1.7 million to victims of Modesto-based surrogacy scam

The Modesto Bee, September 10, 2013

A woman who pleaded guilty earlier this year to defrauding clients of her Modesto surrogacy business was ordered Monday to pay them more than $1.7 million, U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced.

Court documents show that from November 2006 through March 2009, Tonya Ann Collins, 37, carried out a scheme to defraud prospective parents, surrogates and banks through her company, SurroGenesis, and the associated Michael Charles Independent Financial Holding Group.

Victims from as far as Germany lost money, some of them their life savings. Many went into debt to finance their dream of having children.

Collins used the business accounts for personal purchases including automobiles, homes, jewelry, clothing and vacations for herself and others without the clients’ knowledge or consent. Collins used client trust funds that were supposed to be held in escrow accounts to directly pay for her personal purchases.

Read more here: http://www.modbee.com/2013/09/10/2912209/woman-ordered-to-pay-17-million.html#storylink=cpy

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Louisiana House gives final approval to surrogate parenting bill that would bar unmarried, gay couples

By Lauren McGaughy, NOLA.com The Times-Picayune

June 03, 2013

Unmarried and gay couples in Louisiana will be blocked from becoming surrogate parents if Gov. Bobby Jindal signs a bill approved by the House on Sunday. The bill would set up surrogacy contract rules in the state as well as define who is eligible to enter into such contracts.

The final version of Senate Bill 162 defines “intended parents” as “married persons,” thus barring unmarried partners and same-sex couples from becoming parents through surrogacy. However, much of the opposition to the heavily amended bill came from religious and conservative groups who consider all surrogacy “anti-life.”

Louisiana law currently states any surrogate contract in the state is “unenforceable” and absolutely null and void, which proponents of the bill says has led to problems surrounding the legal rights of surrogate mothers, their spouses and the intended parents.

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Letting Go of a Baby, but Not the Emotions

By KERRI MACDONALD – New York Times – May 10, 2013

In the days after Liam Pursley was born in April, the woman who carried him for nine months barely saw him.

Liam spent most of his time with his mother and father, Jamie and Jacob Pursley. His surrogate mother, Kristen Broome, stayed in a separate hospital room, trying to navigate the swirl of emotions.

“I held him and cried,” Ms. Broome said of the first time she saw Liam, about an hour after he was born. “I cried because I realized he was not mine and I had zero connection. It was an amazing emotion. I did not hold him again until almost 36 hours later; I had zero urge to.”

That made reality easier.

In an essay she plans to publish soon on her blog, Ms. Broome, 24, writes: “I have been asked more times than I can count how I felt when I gave Liam away. My first response is always that I didn’t give Liam away; he was never mine to give.”

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Science led to gay families: Law should follow

By Debora L. Spar. Special to CNN
Wed April 3, 2013

(CNN) — Of all the arguments swirling around the legality of same-sex marriage, it’s clear that a major concern is, as always, the kids.

Supporters argue that same-sex parents need to provide their children with a stable and supportive family home, complete with the legal protections afforded heterosexual married couples. Opponents claim that children raised by same-sex parents are wounded in some fundamental way by being denied the “normal” benefits of having both a mother and father at home.

What is lost, remarkably, in both these arguments is the science that enabled families headed by same-sex couples to exist at all.

Until recently, families had to consist, at least at the outset, of a mommy and a daddy, each biologically necessary to bring children into being. Even if the mother died in childbirth or the father disappeared shortly thereafter, the physiological basis of the nuclear family remained intact: one mother, one father, and a child conceived of their union.

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France: Children born via surrogates overseas to be granted citizenship

04 February 2013

By James Brooks

Appeared in BioNews 691

The French Justice Minister’s instruction to courts to accept citizenship applications for children born via surrogates in other countries has unleashed a political and popular furore.

The minister, Christiane Taubira, issued the instruction during a debate on gay marriage. Immediately, ministers from the opposition UMP party accused the government of attempting to underhandedly introduce liberal legislation on surrogacy and access to IVF for gay couples. Surrogacy is illegal in France and fertility treatment only available to heterosexual couples.

After Taubira had presented the instruction to the French parliament, the head of the opposition UMP party, Jean-François Copé, declared that the government had ‘let its mask drop’ and that the instruction should immediately be withdrawn.

UMP MP Laurent Wauquiez, who leads a movement calling for a popular referendum on gay marriage, told a full French parliament that ‘the law being presented is the start rather than the finish line and test-tube babies and surrogate mothers are the destination’.

According to the Associated Press, the debate ‘has sent thousands into the streets, turned the bridges over the Seine into billboards and prompted charges that women’s bodies will soon be for rent in a society that still has surprisingly deep conservative roots’.

Faced with such vociferous opposition, both Taubira and President François Hollande have sought to clarify their position. Talking to the press after a cabinet meeting, Taubira said: ‘There isn’t the slightest change in the position of either the President or the government. In law surrogacy is forbidden – there is no debate on that point’.

In fact the instruction concerns only children who are born via surrogacy overseas and ensures that they will be given French civil status – similar to nationality – when they arrive in France.

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India Bars Gay Couples From Surrogacy Services

BY Trudy Ring – the Advocate

January 18 2013

India, which has been a popular destination for gay would-be parents seeking surrogacy services, will be so no more, with new regulations barring foreign same-sex couples and single people from entering into surrogacy arrangements there.

The new rules, posted on the Indian Home Ministry’s website, “say foreign couples seeking to enter into a surrogacy arrangement in India must be a ‘man and woman [who] are duly married and the marriage should be sustained at least two years,’” Agence France-Presse reports. Some proponents of the move said they were concerned about exploitation of impoverished young Indian women by affluent foreigners. India legalized commercial surrogacy in 2002.

Several fertility specialists and activists, meanwhile, decried the new regulations. “This is a huge heartbreak for homosexual couples and singles,” fertility doctor Anoop Gupta told AFP. Gay rights advocate Nitin Karani added, “It’s totally unfair — not only for gay people but for people who are not married who may have been living together for years, and for singles.”

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NJ Court’s Split Decision Provides Little Clarity on Surrogacy

October 24, 2012
New York Times By

Unable to conceive, the New Jersey couple did what an increasing number of 21st-century parents have done: they got an egg from an anonymous donor, and made an agreement with another woman to carry the child for them.

And knowing that there are any number of ways that having a child by surrogate can end in heartache, they tried to protect against it. They had the surrogate legally renounce her right to the child, and had a judge pre-emptively order that their names appear on the birth certificate.

But for all their efforts, their case has become an object lesson in how much modern babymaking has outpaced the law, leaving even the most careful would-be parents relying on little more than crossed fingers.

On Wednesday the New Jersey Supreme Court deadlocked over how to handle the wife’s plea to be named the mother of the child that she and her husband are raising, ending a lengthy legal battle while providing little new clarity. The state had sued, successfully, to strip the wife’s name from the birth certificate. The couple argued this was discrimination: State law automatically makes an infertile husband the father if his wife uses a sperm donor, so why should the same presumption not apply to an infertile wife? An appeals court disagreed with that distinction, siding with state officials who argued adoption was the only option for a mother with no genetic connection to a child.

The court’s split had the effect of affirming the appellate court’s ruling and leaving the child, now 3, legally motherless. It also neatly captured the continued uncertainty across the country, 25 years after New Jersey was at the center of what remains the best-known surrogate custody dispute, over a child known as Baby M.

Three justices agreed with the couple that the law should not treat infertile women differently from infertile men. Three others argued that allowing women who hire surrogates to bypass adoption would give special privileges to those who can afford expensive reproductive technologies.

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Houston woman claims gay couple duped her into being a surrogate

DallasVoice.com, September 20, 2012

A Houston woman has filed a lawsuit after she gave birth to twins in July for a man who now says she served as a surrogate for him and his partner.

Houston businessman Marvin McMurrey III and Cindy Close met in 2005 and were both in their forties.

They’d never been married and never had sexual relations with each other, but wanted children. So, over time they decided to become co-parents, Houston’s Fox 26 reports.

McMurrey fertilized a donor egg through in vitro fertilization and Close carried the child, which turned out to be twins. But after delivering a girl and boy in July, a social worker informed her that she’d been a surrogate for McMurrey and his partner Phong Nguyen.

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