Here’s how one single father spent a decade planning for his dream family via surrogacy

Planning for your dream family via surrogacy

There are many paths to parenthood, and the journey is often a lot more costly for parents who rely on surrogacy. 

For Jon, 41, the road to becoming a father to 5-month-old Theo involved a patchwork of financial moves: a career change, years of saving, employee benefits, family help and a grant for discounted services. Jon asked to use his first name only for privacy.planning dream family

“I worked for a decade to make this family happen,” the Atlanta-based single father said.

In total, the cost of surrogacy can vary widely, ranging from $150,000 to well over $200,000, depending on several factors, according to Rebecca Willman, chief community engagement and programs officer with Family Equality, a nonprofit dedicated to LGBTQ+ families. “If someone is quoting you a really low number, you may end up with a lot of additional costs,” she said.

‘People get really creative’ to pay for surrogacy

Jon saved around $80,000 over 10 years before starting the egg donor process in 2019. “I assumed I’d pair up with someone and they’d help pay for surrogacy,” he said. “But that never happened.”

His company didn’t initially offer fertility benefits for men. But a group of employees, mostly women, successfully pushed for expanded benefits for in vitro fertilization, adoption and gestational carriers. The enhanced coverage, which reimbursed employees for out-of-pocket expenses, reimbursed Jon $40,000 from his $170,000 total. His total included the cost of an egg donor, in vitro fertilization and gestational carrier.

“The tech sector and the financial services sector have been very proactive in offering fertility benefits,” said Anthony Brown, an attorney and manager of client services at Circle Surrogacy. “And some of them have become creative so that they get around the technical definition of infertility,” extending the benefit to same-sex couples, he added.

By Kate Dore, CNBC.com July 9, 2023

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in Personal Stories / Recently Added / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Will Obergefell Survive The New Supreme Court? The Answer is Yes… For Now

Will Obergefell survive the new Supreme Court?

12/14/2020 – IMPORTANT UPDATE

This morning the Supreme Court denied the Indiana Attorney General’s petition in the Henderson v. Box case.  This is very good news for fans of equality.  This signals the court’s willingness to uphold the Obergefell decision and allow marriage equality and family equality to apply to same-sex couples!!

My Original Article

This is the greatest concern / fear of many in the LGBTQ community.  From the moment we learned of the heartbreaking death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, this question became the most frequently asked by scholars, activists, lawyers and members of the LGBTQ community.  What started as a hypothetical question became real on Monday, November 23, 2020.Will Obergefell survive the new Supreme Court

What happened? 

The Attorney General for the state of Indiana petitioned The Supreme Court in the case of Box v. Henderson, which poses the question, “Does a married same-sex parent have the same rights as a heterosexual married parent in regards to the presumption of parentage which attaches to marriage?”  The presumption of parentage is the rule of law that creates a legal relationship between the spouse of a woman who gives birth to a child and the child to the spouse of the birth mother.  How does this effect the Obergefell decision, which made marriage equality the law of the land in June of 2015?  The answer to that question poses serious issues of equality and judicial conduct that we are just beginning to understand.

What did Obergefell say?

Will Obergefell survive the new Supreme Court?  First, we need to understand exactly what Obergefell said.  In the Obergefell decision, the court stated not only that all states must issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, that other states must recognize same-sex marriage licenses and that same-sex couples are entitled to marriage, “on the same terms and conditions as opposite-sex couples.”  That means that all protections, including the marital presumption of parentage, shall redound to same-sex married couples. 

Judicial bias?

The arrival of Box v. Henderson at The. Supreme Court is questionable for a few reasons.  First, the case was last heard in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, where a conservative three judge panel unanimously upheld the protections conferred in Obergefell to the 8 plaintiff married couples who are the heart of this case.  But, they waited 3 years to issue an opinion.  The average time between when this court hears a case and when it issues its decision is 3 months.  If this case was handled in the normal time frame, it would have been before a Supreme Court that had already decided this issue twice before in favor of extending all marriage rights to same-sex couples.  But now the court make-up is different, which leads me to the second issue that raises concern: the current Supreme Court requested that the Indiana Attorney General make the Writ of Certiorari, the petition to hear the case, directly.  Why would a court that has twice decided an issue ask to rehear that same issue?

Will Obergefell survive the new Supreme CourtThe court first decided this issue in Obergefell, and then again in 2017 in the case, Pavan v. Smith.  In Pavan, the court held that states must issue birth certificates to same-sex couples in the same manner they issue them to opposite-sex couples.  This means that the presumption of parentage (once referred to as the presumption of paternity) would make the father of a child born to his wife, even if that child was conceived with donor sperm, the legal parent of that child.  The 8 plaintiff couples in the Box case are asking the court to have the presumption apply to their marriages the same way it applies to heterosexual married couples, even when there is not a biological connection between the spouse of the mother and the child. 

To answer the question, “will Obergefell survive the new Supreme Court?”, we must look to the strained strategy of the Indiana Attorney General, Curtis Hill.  Hill is falsely declaring that a state should have the ability to acknowledge the, “biological distinction between males and females.”  He is inferring that because only a man and a woman can biologically have a child together, only an opposite-sex married couple should have the protections that the martial presumption of parentage applies.  Furthermore, one plaintiff couple in the Box case includes a woman who donated her egg to her partner who then gave birth.  Both parents are “related” to the child under the law. 

States rights

This insidious “state’s rights” approach gives the new conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the ones who asked for this case to be heard in the first place, the ability to drive a wedge directly into the heart of marriage equality.  If the conservative Supreme Court sides with Indiana in Box, it will allow other states the ability to make distinctions between same-sex marriage and opposite-sex marriage.  It would mandate that same-sex parents go through a costly and invasive adoption process to secure their legal right as a family.  What the court would fail to realize is that the children would be the victims of this strategy.  Leaving a child in legal limbo only serves to create insecurity in that child’s family. 

Will Obergefell survive the new Supreme Court?  We will soon get a clue.  The new Supreme Court recently heard the case of Fulton v. The City of Philadelphia, which asked whether, among other questions, the government violates the First Amendment by defining a religious agency’s ability to participate in the state sponsored foster-care system mandating the inclusion of same-sex couples as foster parents.  This religious liberty approach to equality, I fear, will be the first sign of the new Supreme Court’s willingness to strip the rights of same-sex couples away. 

What can we do?

If there is anything to learn from this potentially disturbing road that the court appears to be heading down, it is to fight at your local level to ensure that protections are in place and that equality in marriage is preserved.  Do everything you can now to prepare for the worst: get your estate plan in place, petition for a step-parent adoption or birth order if your state allows and start telling all of your friends and family about what is going on. While we may have thought that battle was a thing of the past, we are still warriors.  We have always had to fight to protect our relationships and families, we know how to do it. 

Anthony M. Brown, Esq. – www.timeforfamilies.com November 28, 2020

in Anonymous/Known Donation / Estate Planning / Featured Articles / Known Donor / Legal / Religious / Second Parent Adoption / Supreme Court  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Paying gestational carriers should be legal in all states

Every year, hundreds of thousands of babies are born in the U.S. using assisted reproductive technologies, including the use of gestational carriers, a multibillion-dollar industry that is controversial and largely unregulated.

One of the controversies involves the use of paid gestational carriers, women who agree to carry a fertilized embryo, created from another woman’s egg, give birth, and give the baby to its parents. This is different from tradition (or genetic) surrogates, who provide both their own eggs and their own wombs. Gestational surrogacy now constitutes 95% of all surrogacy in the U.S.gestational carriers

State laws about arrangements for gestational carriers vary widely and are in flux. This kind of surrogacy is currently allowed in 10 states; prohibited but with various caveats and additional legal proceedings in 30; practiced with potential legal obstacles and inconsistent outcomes in five; practiced but with legally unenforceable contracts in two and prohibited in three. Several of the 40 states with real or potential legal hurtles require that couples be married and heterosexual, or allow surrogates to choose at any point to keep the baby.

Commercial surrogacy first gained wide attention in the 1980s through the Baby M case. Elizabeth Stern had multiple sclerosis and feared that pregnancy would worsen it. Through a newspaper ad, she and her husband connected with Mary Beth Whitehead, who agreed to carry a fetus for them as a traditional surrogate, providing both an egg and a womb. But after giving birth, Whitehead decided to keep the child. A New Jersey court awarded the Sterns custody of Baby M, but banned all such future surrogacy contracts.

Since then, practices have changed and the use of gestational carriers has grown dramatically. In many states, however, prospective parents need to travel to other states, like California, to avoid legal obstacles. Some seek surrogates in the developing world, which has its own set of problems.

Competing proposed bills in New York state highlight the conflicts involved in gestational surrogacy.

In June 2019, the New York state Senate voted to legalize gestational surrogacy. The pushback was swift and strong. Noted feminist Gloria Steinem argued strongly against the proposal, raising concerns that poorer women of color would disproportionately serve as gestational carriers. She also pointed out that the bill would require surrogates to be state residents for only 90 days, which could prompt human traffickers to bring women to New York to serve as surrogates. The State Assembly then rejected the proposal. Lawmakers are now considering at least two different revised versions of the bill — one from Gov. Andrew Cuomo and one from the bill’s original sponsor — that address these criticisms.

I believe the state should legalize gestational surrogacy, providing it includes protections to avoid the problems Steinem highlighted.

In the debates in New York, as well as those in other states, both sides have been arguing in the relative absence of data, without acknowledging this deficit. In fact, the limited data available so far do not suggest that women become gestational carriers because of financial distress, nor do the demographics reflect racial disparities.

StatNews.com, by Robert Klitzman, February 12, 2020

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in Assisted Reproductive Technology / Legal / Legislation / Politics / Recently Added / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

I Just Wanted a Baby, But Surrogacy Gave Me So Much More

When I started telling people I was having a baby with a gestational surrogate, the responses ranged from awkwardly supportive to just awkward.

A woman at a party congratulated me, praised me for being so clever, so ahead of the times. “Ugh, you’re brilliant,” she told me. I’d have someone else do the dirty work of motherhood for me. Genius.compassionate surrogacy

Others wanted me to know I was in good company: Kim Kardashian had just been through the process. So had Gabrielle Union. And Andy Cohen. And now me!

My traditional Indian mother, fiercely private and surprisingly sneaky, had another idea. She thought it might be better if we made up a story that the baby was adopted. “People aren’t going to understand this,” she said.

Misguided, to be sure, but my mother (as usual) had a point: There is still an incredible amount of secrecy around the gestational surrogacy process. And wherever there is silence, stigma isn’t far behind. It’s for rich people, it’s immoral, it’s dystopian, it’s exploitative…

I know that these are just a few of the thoughts swirling in people’s heads when I tell them that this month a woman named Amber in Kansas will deliver my son. For me, and for countless other families who struggle with fertility, surrogacy isn’t a luxury or shortcut: It’s the light at the end of a very long and lonely tunnel.

The first time I got pregnant, I had just started running for Public Advocate in New York City. It was unexpected, but welcome news. My husband, Nihal, and I were so excited. We told family and friends with abandon (12-week rule be damned!). We changed our destination wedding date so I wouldn’t have to travel in the third trimester. That was almost eight years ago, and we were blissfully, naively unaware of what was ahead of us.

I remember fantasizing about being pregnant while running for office. I imagined how I would march my big fat, swollen feet all over the five boroughs knocking on doors. I would be a symbol of feminine power on the campaign trail: a knocked-up Rosie the Riveter. My baby would be a born public servant, just like me.

When we went to the doctor for our first appointment and saw the solemn look on her face, we didn’t understand. We were no strangers to failure. I had publicly bombed a race for Congress two years before. Nihal, an entrepreneur, had learned resilience from running start-ups. But this was supposed to be easy. Isn’t this what we were born to do? We were shocked that something like this could happen, that we could lose our baby.

Two nights later I put on a brave face and got on stage to introduce President Obama at a fundraiser. It should have been the best night of my life, but I was dying inside, literally, the entire time.

Six months later I miscarried again, hours before I was slated to give a huge pitch for my nonprofit to the “who’s who” of New York City. My job was to be dazzling. I felt so much rage knowing it was easier to betray myself and go through the motions than to admit why I couldn’t.

Vogue.com by Resma Saujani, January 24, 2020

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in Family Stories / Personal Stories / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Gay Dads Cover ‘Parents’ Magazine; Christian Group Launches Petition

A Christian group opposed to LGBT rights has launched a petition in response to a gay dads being featured on the cover of Parents magazine.

Gay dads Shaun T. and Scott Blokker and their one-year-old twins cover the February issue ofParents, making them the first same-sex couple to appear on the magazine’s cover in its nearly 100-year history.

One Million Moms condemned the magazine’s decision to feature a gay couple on its cover, saying that it was promoting a “pro-homosexual lifestyle.”

“Parents is using its magazine as a platform to promote the pro-homosexual lifestyle,” the group said. “Even if families do not personally subscribe to the publication, they should be warned that it could be displayed in waiting rooms of dentist and doctor offices, where children could easily be subjected to the glorification of same-sex parents, particularly gay dads. Many families subscribe to Parents and should be aware of the upcoming change of content in this magazine. After all, most conservative and Christian families will disagree morally with the magazine’s decision, and subsequently, will not want to support its content.”

“Mothers and fathers are seeing more and more similar examples of children being indoctrinated to perceive same-sex couples as normal, especially in the media. Likewise, the magazine’s website, Parents.com, and their other social media pages also push pro-homosexual content. Parents is the latest print media company to abandon what it does best in order to force a lifestyle on the American public that the medical community identifies as unhealthy. Rather than focusing on parenting tips, the publication shames Americans into embracing such a lifestyle,” the group continued.

ontopmag.com, January 22, 2019, by Carlos Santoscoy

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in Parenting / Recently Added  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

UK surrogacy law embraces single parents from today

UK surrogacy law embraces single parents from today

compassionate surrogacy

Today the clock also starts ticking on the six month window during which existing single parents through surrogacy can apply for a parental order retrospectively. The window will close on 2 July 2019, with applications beyond that possible but more complicated. If you are a single parent of a child born through surrogacy and would like more information about whether and how to make an application then contact us by emailing hello@ngalaw.co.uk or calling 0203 701 5915.

To mark today’s law change, we wanted to reflect on our campaigning journey of the last ten years. It all started in 2008 when, as part of making UK fertility law more inclusive, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill 2008 proposed broadening who could apply for a parental order from just married couples to married, unmarried and same-sex couples. Single parents remained excluded so, through her work as part of a stakeholders’ group supporting progressive reform, NGA Law founder Natalie Gamble proposed and drafted an amendment to the Bill which would have included single parents too. Her amendment was tabled by Dr Evan Harris MP when the Bill was in Committee, but not pursued when it became clear the government did not support it. On behalf of the government Dawn Primarolo MP said:

Surrogacy is such a sensitive issue, fraught with potential complications such as the surrogate mother being entitled to change her mind and decide to keep her baby, that the 1990 Act quite specifically limits parental orders to married couples where the gametes of at least one of them are used. That recognises the magnitude of a situation in which a person becomes pregnant with the express intention of handing the child over to someone else, and the responsibility that that places on the people who will receive the child. There is an argument, which the Government have acknowledged in the Bill, that such a responsibility is likely to be better handled by a couple than a single man or woman.

There was no evidence basis for such a statement, but it was clear that discrimination against single parents was government policy rather than oversight.

At both NGA Law and Brilliant Beginnings we continued to help single parents through surrogacy as we have always done. The lack of availability of parental orders hasn’t stopped single mums and dads having children through surrogacy. It has, however, made things harder and restricted the legal recognition of their families. All but two of the single parents we have worked with have had to go overseas to find a surrogate and almost all have then lived under the radar, without parental responsibility and with their surrogate remaining their child’s legal mother in the U.K., hoping that no one would ever question their authority to parent. We have shared their frustration about how unfair and discriminatory the law was.

By Natalie Gamble, NGA Blog, January 3, 2019

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

Cambodia’s surrogate mothers go free after agreeing to raise Chinese children but some see it as a mixed blessing

  • Cambodia banned commercial surrogacy in 2016, and police in June raided two flats where Sophea and 31 other surrogate mothers were being cared for in Phnom Penh
  • They were charged the following month with violating human-trafficking laws, but authorities released them on bail last week, under the condition they raise the children themselves
Cambodia

Sophea was eight months pregnant when Cambodian police told her she would have to keep the baby that was never meant to be hers – and forfeit the US$10,000 she was promised for acting as a surrogate for a Chinese couple.

Cambodia banned commercial surrogacy in 2016, and police in June raided two flats where Sophea and 31 other surrogate mothers were being cared for in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.

They were charged the following month with violating human-trafficking laws, but authorities released them on bail last week, under the condition they raise the children themselves.

Campaigners say Cambodia’s surrogacy crackdown is unlikely to end the trade as poverty means many women will continue to risk arrest for the chance to earn life-changing sums of money.

For some of the newly freed women, keeping their baby is a burden as they struggle to get by. For others, it is a relief.

Despite the financial loss, 24-year-old Sophea said she was happy the authorities intervened, and that her family had welcomed her baby boy.

South China Morning Post, December 11, 2018

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

Tom Daley on becoming a dad and why UK surrogacy laws need to change

Tom Daley is sitting on a sofa in a central London hotel suite with his husband, Dustin Lance Black, while their seven-week-old baby, Robbie Ray, snoozes peacefully beside them – and it’s clear the new fathers (both dressed in baby blue) are entirely besotted with their son.

“We don’t ever turn on a TV anymore, we just stare at the little one,” Tom Daley, 24, tells The Independent. “It’s been so crazy. It feels kind of surreal still, the fact that we have a…”

He stops mid-sentence to coo at baby Robbie, which I soon realise is to become a regular occurrence during our interview.surrogate lawyers, surrogate lawyer, surrogate attorney, legal surrogate, surrogate legal

“But he’s brought so much love and joy to the family,” Daley continues.

Born to a surrogate in June, Robbie is apparently a very well-behaved newborn. “He’s a great baby,” says Black, 44. “I think we got a starter baby, I think we got the best baby on the planet.”

“But we might be biased,” adds Daley.

The Olympic diver and his Oscar-winning screenwriter husband met in 2013, married in 2017 and revealed they were going to be fathers in 2018 – an announcement which wasn’t met entirely positively by the public.

“I think that’s why we want to help educate people because I think a lot of them were under the impression that the baby was going to be ripped from his mother’s arms,” says Daley. “People will have their opinions and that’s fine. All we want is what’s best for the little one.”

The couple had their son through surrogacy but admit they didn’t know a great deal about the options open to them as a same-sex couple beforehand. “It was an education, we had to learn,” says Black. 

By Rachel Hosie, theindependent.co.uk, August 22, 2018

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in Assisted Reproductive Technology / International / Personal Stories / Recently Added / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

New Jersey Gestational Carrier Agreement Act Now Law

New Jersey Gestational Carrier Agreement Act Provides Legal Protections to Help Individuals Struggling to Conceive

The New Jersey Gestational Carrier Agreement Act sponsored by Assemblywomen Valerie Vainieri Huttle, Annette Quijano and Mila Jasey to provide legal protections to those struggling to conceive a child who wish to use a gestational carrier has been signed into law.new jersey gestational carrier agreement act

The law (A-1704), titled the New Jersey Gestational Carrier Agreement Act, authorizes a written contract under which a woman agrees to carry and give birth to a child created using assisted reproduction on behalf of an intended parent.

Unlike traditional surrogacy, in which a woman is artificially inseminated with the semen of the intended father and gives birth to a child through the use of her own egg, a gestational carrier does not make use of her own egg and therefore is not genetically related to the child.

The issue of surrogacy garnered national headlines in the late 1980’s with the case of “Baby M,” in which the New Jersey Supreme Court found traditional surrogacy agreements invalid because they violated various public policies and state statutes.  In 2009, a New Jersey Superior Court ruled that the findings in the Baby M case apply to gestational surrogacy as well as traditional surrogacy cases.

Because advances in reproductive technology now allow for the transfer of an embryo into the body of a woman who is not genetically related to the child, traditional surrogacy agreements like the one in Baby M, and adoption, are no longer the only means by which a couple that is having reproductive difficulties may have children.

“Ignoring the legal issues that accompany technological advancements does not remove the challenges, it merely adds an additional burden on loving couples or individuals who are already struggling to have a child,” said Vainieri Huttle (D-Bergen).  “With this law, intended parents and gestational surrogates will have the legal protections that were denied to them before.”

The law takes into account the advances in reproductive technologies and permit gestational carrier agreements, which would stipulate that upon the birth of the child, the intended parent becomes the legal parent of the child and the woman – the gestational carrier – would have no parental rights or obligations.

insidernj.com, May 30, 2018

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in Legal / Recently Added / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Let’s set the record straight: There’s nothing wrong with surrogacy

This past December, Arizona Congressman Trent Franks resigned from office after asking two aides to be pregnant through surrogacy for him and his wife, reportedly offering one aide $5 million in return. According to reports, the women were concerned the congressman wanted to impregnate them through sexual intercourse.

The story went viral, causing confusion and stigma about one of the most life-changing medical advancements in history: the ability for females with prohibitive medical conditions, gay male couples, and parents of all ages to have biological children through surrogacy.

When it comes to fertility care, misinformation runs rampant. As fertility doctors, we’d like to set the record straight.

Surrogate mother word cloud concept

Surrogacy does not involve sexual intercourse

There are two main types of surrogacy: traditional and gestational. Traditional surrogacy means the female carrying the pregnancy (the surrogate) is using her own eggs. Different methods such as placing sperm in a uterus to help with fertilization (called intra-uterine insemination, or IUI) can be used to inseminate her with sperm from a male, who is often the intended parent. In this case, the surrogate is the biological mother. Gestational surrogacy, on the other hand, is when an embryo, which has been created using someone else’s egg and sperm, is transferred to a surrogate. The female carrying the pregnancy (the surrogate) is not biologically related to the child she is carrying.

Traditional surrogacy involves the insemination of the surrogate with sperm. Gestational surrogacy involves the implantation of an embryo. Neither requires sexual intercourse.

Surrogacy costs average $150,000, not $5 million

While pricey, surrogacy costs nothing close to the reported $5 million Congressman Franks offered his staffer. The average cost of surrogacy ranges from $100,000 to $200,000, depending on the fertility clinic used, number of IVF rounds, prenatal care, travel expenses, compensation for the surrogate, and additional medical and legal fees. These costs are mostly out-of-pocket and are prohibitively expensive for many people.

Facebook and Apple offer world-class fertility benefits that include surrogacy packages, but the tech firm juggernauts are in the minority. Most companies do not offer comprehensive fertility benefits that provide equal access to all employees. Unfortunately, far too many people still have to take out loans, borrow money from friends and family, raise money on crowdfunding sites, or forgo surrogacy altogether because of the high price point.

Surrogates undergo strict screening

It’s not easy to become a surrogate. Candidates go through a strict medical evaluation process before being approved as a carrier, including psychological screening, genetic screening, STD testing, and evaluations with reproductive specialists and a therapist. The American Society of Reproductive Medicine has recommended guidelines for gestational surrogates. 

Being approved is just the first step. As the surrogate prepares for an embryo transfer, she may take hormones daily. For gestational surrogacy, the intended mother or egg donor takes injectable medications to aid in retrieving eggs that will be fertilized to become embryos. The embryo is then ready to be transferred to a surrogate. And of course, once pregnant, surrogates attend routine prenatal visits and take on the burden of any pregnancy-related complications. 

Surrogacy is widely legal, but laws do vary

The legal landscape around surrogacy is often confusing, with laws varying between states and constantly changing. Though it’s widely regulated and legal throughout the majority of the country, most people are surprised to learn surrogacy is still illegal in some places in the United States Unfortunately, the complicated legal landscape can make access to this important aspect of fertility care more difficult.

TheHill.com, January 3, 2018 BY DR. ASIMA AHMAD AND DR. AMANDA ADELEYE

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in Ethics / Recently Added / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments