The National Adoption and Surrogacy Center

Surrogacy in China

2010-08-21T12:10:00.000-07:00

Surrogate sweep comes up empty

Alerted by a report in a local Chinese newspaper, the Hongkou District Health Bureau swooped into an office building on Tianbo Road in Shanghai yesterday, looking for evidence of a secret business in surrogate mothering.

Officials found no sign of any illegal practice in the raid on the 10th-floor office. But they said they would continue to investigate the company, whose alleged activities were described by the Shanghai Evening Post.

Surrogates are women who are not genetically related to the babies they carry. They make an arrangement with clients who can not go through a pregnancy, or choose not to.

Commercial surrogacy is banned in China, but goes on through underground agencies. There are no firm statistics on how many surrogate cases are arranged in Shanghai.

Many such agencies advertise online. Shanghai Daily yesterday called one company in Beijing and was told it is an agency working with hospitals in the central city of Wuhan. It said its surrogacy business, started in 1994, has produced more than 3,000 births.

The Shanghai Evening Post visited the Tianbo Road company on Wednesday and said it used a trading company name as cover.

A woman surnamed Lai, described as being in charge of the agency, told the newspaper on the phone that success can be guaranteed in most cases, adding the agency "has good reputation after years in service."

The cost is about 500,000 yuan (US$73,650) including medical procedures, payment to the surrogate mother and agency fares, the newspaper said.

The newspaper saw two couples visit the company for consultation within 15 minutes.

According to the company's introduction materials, its business is centered in Shanghai and Wuhan.

"For those clients whose age below 35 years old, the surgery costs 60,000 yuan," said the material. "The cost will be raised by 10,000 yuan each time the client is one year older."

During the newspaper's investigation, a woman who identified herself as a surrogate mother showed up to talk to the company.

Calling herself "a volunteer," the woman, 30, said she was very poor back in her hometown in central China's Henan Province. She said she needs the money.

"I can not even pay formula milk for my own baby," said the woman.

She said she had successfully given birth to a baby for a couple, earning 150,000 yuan.

During her pregnancy, the woman said, the couple visited her and brought nourishment products.

"I am not worried that I would have affections with the baby I helped to bear," said the woman. "What would make me depressed is that the clients suddenly decide not to want the baby."

The surrogate mother might not get paid if the clients back out.

Local health officials said surrogacy is an area fraught with ethical and legal concerns. "Any professional facilities or staff involved in it will face penalties and even imprisonment," said Song Guofan, an official from Shanghai Health Bureau.

Song warned residents to avoid surrogacy, noting that any parties having a dispute with the service can hardly be protected by laws.

Source:Shanghai Daily

Surrogate Mothers win Insurance Battle!

2010-07-17T04:04:00.000-07:00

Surrogate Mothers Win Insurance Battle In Court
Wisconsin Supreme Court Ruled Unanimously Friday

Text SizeAAAMADISON, Wis. -- Surrogate mothers have won a fight over insurance benefits in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The court unanimously ruled Friday that insurance companies may not refuse to pay maternity costs to surrogate mothers.

The case involves a dispute between MercyCare HMO of Janesville and two surrogate mothers denied coverage by the company during their pregnancies.

The company had a policy of covering pregnant women, but excluding surrogate mothers who act as "gestational carriers" for others' babies.

The Supreme Court said insurance companies may not make routine maternity services unavailable to surrogate mothers based solely on the reasons or methods of becoming pregnant.

The decision overturns a lower court's ruling in favor of the HMO.

Surrogacy: Mitzvah or Money Maker?

2010-05-28T12:18:00.001-07:00

Surrogacy: Mitzvah or Money Maker?

Israeli anthropologist studies the issue and controversies surrounding it
May 27, 2010 - Daphna Berman, Jewish Exponent Feature

What motivates a surrogate mother to carry a baby that is not genetically related to her through nine months of pregnancy, only to give the child up just moments after it's born?

Elly Teman, an Israeli anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania, has been researching this question -- and other issues relating to surrogacy -- for the past decade. In her recently published Birthing a Mother: The Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self, Teman explores the cultural assumptions about surrogacy, debunking some along the way, as well as misunderstandings that surround the controversial process.

"There is a common belief that surrogate mothers bond with the baby they carry, and later decide to keep it," she said in a recent interview. "The truth is that less than one-tenth of 1 percent of cases end up in court. Surrogates don't bond with the babies. They bond with the women -- the women they are making into mothers."

Teman's research focused on Israel, one of the few countries where surrogacy is legal and also tightly regulated. Unlike in the United States, where surrogacy is legal only in select states, close distances between the surrogate and the intended mother in Israel meant that the women were constantly interacting.

Teman followed these women as they embarked on an exciting and emotionally charged journey that transformed them from strangers to something much more complicated.

"In the U.S., the surrogate could be in Oregon and the intended parents could be in New York, so most of the communication is done through e-mail and the phone," she said. "But in Israel, the intended mother sees the surrogate's belly growing, and she goes with her to ultrasound appointments. The Israeli version is intensified because they see each other so often."
Elly Teman

In Israel, some of the intended mothers even started to develop symptoms of pregnancy -- rashes, bloating, weight gain -- because they were so close to the women who were carrying their genetic child.

"People would say that the intended mothers were glowing," Teman said, "and for them, feeling 'a little pregnant' meant a lot."

The costs of surrogacy are prohibitive for many couples in the United States, often running upwards of $100,000, which includes the cost of in-vitro fertilization. In Israel, where IVF is covered by the state, the cost is about half.

Surrogacy has been legal in Israel since 1996; the first baby born to a surrogate mother came two years later. The bill to legalize it passed through the Knesset in record time, and as a result, Israeli law is very strict in regulating the process.

Criteria for the surrogate, as well as the intended couple, are determined by a state committee.

And the committee is strict: a woman must be married to be eligible, and she needs to have gone though at least seven failed IVF attempts or have other medical problems to prove her infertility.

The United States, however, has no such legal safety net. Surrogacy in New York is illegal, but in Pennsylvania, for example, it is not expressly prohibited, which means that women often cross state boundaries to contract surrogates.

California, meanwhile, is a "mecca" for surrogacy, Teman said, though it isn't regulated at all. The result is that couples from around the United States, as well as countries throughout Europe and Japan, often travel there to contract a surrogate mother, but individual agencies -- rather than the states themselves -- are then responsible for screening.

Also, "there is no back up in court. No one knows what will happen in a court of law if the surrogate wants to keep the baby," she said.

Money and the Mitzvah

Teman, who was born in New York and raised in Portland, Ore., immigrated to Israel with her family at age 12. She studied at the Hebrew University and became interested in the issue of surrogacy after meeting a woman who was born with ovaries, but no uterus, and was looking into options.

Teman also said that her research -- which was conducted between the years 1998 and 2006 -- was made possible because of Israel's liberal approach to the issue. The state's Jewish character, she noted, caused it to go "very far" in legislating surrogacy.

"Surrogates are doing it for the money and for the mitzvah," she said. "These two don't contradict each other, and they don't take away from each other. That's sometimes hard for people to digest.

"People think that if there's money involved, then it's a business transaction, and if there is no money, then it's a mitzvah. But the surrogate gives more than money can buy

Surrogacy in India: not an option for gay and lesbian couples

2010-05-28T12:13:00.000-07:00

NEW DELHI: Gay and lesbian couples, Indian or foreign, can't have children born with the help of an Indian surrogate mother.

According to the draft `Assisted Reproductive Technology Regulation Bill 2010' prepared by a 12-member committee headed by Dr P M Bhargava under the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), which was submitted to the health ministry recently, till gay and lesbian relationships are legalised in India, gay couples would not be allowed to have children through a surrogate.

Ministry officials told TOI that India was seeing a growing number of male couples from foreign countries hiring surrogates to bear children. This is mainly because assisted reproductive technology (ART) is not regulated here at present.

"However, once this bill is endorsed by the law ministry and becomes an Act, such couples will not be allowed to have surrogate children in India," said member secretary of the committee Dr R S Sharma.

According to Dr Sharma, under present laws, the definition of a couple is "persons living together and having a sexual relation that is legal in India".

"But though homosexuality has been decriminalised in India, it has not been made legal. Till gay and lesbian couples get legal status in India, they can't avail surrogacy," Dr Sharma said.

Some time back, a gay Israeli was prevented by a Jerusalem judge from taking his twins, born with the help of a surrogate mother in Mumbai, back to his home town.

The draft bill also says that foreigners or NRIs coming to India to rent a womb will have to submit two documents -- one confirming that their country of residence recognises surrogacy as legal and second that it will give citizenship to the child born through the agreement from an Indian mother.

As reported by TOI earlier, the draft bill also includes a provision which says that foreign couple will have to identify a local guardian in India to take care of the surrogate mother during her gestation period as well as after the delivery, till the child is handed over to the commissioning parents. However, if the foreign parents fail to take delivery of the child born to the surrogate mother within one month of the child's birth, the surrogate mother and the local guardian will be legally obliged to hand over the child to an adoption agency.

Only in such a case will the baby get an Indian citizenship, says the bill.

So what makes India an attractive destination for surrogacy? Experts cite two reasons. In the US, surrogacy costs up to $120,000 while in India, couples pay only a fourth or so of that amount. Having a child could cost anything between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 25 lakh here. The second reason is lack of regulation of the ART sector making India an easy place to have a surrogate baby.

The Law Commission, however, strongly pitched for legalising surrogacy in India last year and recommended several steps to protect the interests of the surrogate mother and also the baby.

In its 228th report submitted to law minister Veerappa Moily, the commission recommended banning of sex-selective surrogacy, financial support for surrogate child in the event of death of commissioning parents or unwillingness to take the child later and providing life insurance cover for surrogate mother.

Surrogate Twins in India finally get to head home to Germany!

2010-05-26T06:43:00.000-07:00

Twins head for Germany, apex court seeks law on surrogacy

New Delhi: As the last hurdle was cleared Wednesday in the travel of surrogate twins to Germany with their natural father Jan Balaz, the Supreme Court said the central government should enact a legislation to take care of surrogacy and related issues.

A vacation bench headed by Justices G.S. Singhvi and C.K. Prasad said that no surrogate child should undergo the difficulties faced by Nicolas and Leonard.

Justice Singhvi said: 'We can only wish good luck to them.'

The travel was cleared after Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam informed the court that the ministry of external affairs had already issued the 'exit permit' for the twins, born in 2008 to a Gujarati surrogate mother from Anand.

The twins have been in India since their birth due to immigration problems.

Solicitor General Subramaniam told the Court that even before it (the court) expressed its concern over the absence of statutory backing to surrogacy, he had impressed upon the government to enact such a law. The court which would go into the legal dimensions of the case then adjourned it till October 2010.

However, the surrogate twins have to cross yet another obstacle of acquiring German citizenship. Jan Balaz would move the German Court for acquiring German citizenship for his children. The big hiccup in the final lap is that the German government does not recognize surrogacy as a means of parenthood. Surrogacy is illegal in Germany.

It was on this count alone that the hearing into the matter was prolonged in the apex court because of the apprehension that after leaving India the twins may become stateless.

The case, which took many twists and turns, eventually saw the central government issuing identification papers to the twins and the German government issuing visa.

Surrogate mother abandons child in hospital

However, before boarding the plane to Germany which they, according to Jan Balaz, might take tonight itself, the twins needed 'exit permit' from the ministry of external affairs.

On this score, the hearing into the matter in the morning was adjourned till 2 p.m. and the solicitor general was asked to state the position of the centre government on the 'exit permit'. Soon after the court assembled after lunch break, Subramaniam informed the court that the 'exit permit' had already been issued and was with the court registry.

Vietnam Lacks Sperm Donors

2010-05-23T09:15:00.000-07:00

Vietnam’s sperm banks lack “capital”

VietNamNet Bridge – In Vietnam, around 5-10 percent of infertility cases are caused by problems with men’s sperm count. The need for donors at sperm banks is high, but men are not eager to donate their semen.

A couple in Hanoi’s Gia Lam district has been married for six years, but they have no children yet. Doctors report that the husband is unable to produce sperm, so the couple has turned to in-vitro fertilization. Since the hospital has limited sperm donations, they asked the couple to find a sperm donor in exchange for the service.

Doctor Vu Minh Ngoc from the Hanoi Obstetrics Hospital explained that many couples are unable to find sperm donors and that hospitals face the same trouble. The hospital’s sperm bank is almost empty.

Physicians note that men don’t want to donate sperm because the collecting process and regulations are complicated. Sperm donors in Vietnam must be less than 40 years old and healthy, so physicians must perform many tests to determine that the donors don’t have sexually transmitted diseases, hepatitis B, HIV, etc. The donors also have to return to the hospital three months later to complete a second round of tests. After that, if the results are all fine, the hospitals can then collect their semen.

Dr. Ngoc still remembers one man who went to the Hanoi Obstetrics Hospital to donate sperm several years ago. “The first tests were okay. We collected three samples of sperm and made a second appointment for three months later. If the second tests were all good, then the sperm samples could be used. The man never came back,” Ngoc recalled.

People also worry that if they donate, terrible mix-ups may happen, such as their children may get married by coincidence.

Dr. Ngoc observed that sperm donation and use of donations is based on a privacy rule that the donors and the recipients don’t know each other. The donors also give up the right to find out any information about recipients.

Patients who wish to receive donations from sperm banks must seek donors for the hospitals so that the supply remains steady. In return, they can receive sperm from a previous donor.

Hospitals collect three samples of sperm from each donor. If one sample is used and a recipient becomes pregnant, the two other samples will be destroyed.

Surrogacy Bill in India looks to protect children

2010-05-23T09:06:00.000-07:00

Surrogacy bill looks to protect child's interest
Manoj Mitta, TNN, May 23, 2010, 05.22am IST

NEW DELHI: Having emerged as the hottest destination for surrogacy, it is but natural for India to take the lead in evolving a law that safeguards the interests of all the parties concerned, including the child born through assisted reproductive technology (ART).

There is no precedent to the proposal under consideration that foreigners or NRIs seeking to rent a womb in India be made to give evidence that their country of residence recognized surrogacy and would give citizenship to a child born through agreement.

Both conditions are reasonable as they are designed to deal with the legal uncertainties thrown up by a couple of surrogacy cases that did not pan out in the agreed manner. In the Manji Yamada case, the baby was embroiled in litigation as the commissioning Japanese parents had divorced by the time it was born in India.

And in the subsequent case involving German parents, the twins found themselves in a no-man's-land as their country did not recognize surrogacy as a means of parenthood.

The bill drafted by an ICMR expert committee is in keeping with the recommendations made by the Law Commission in August 2009.

There is no way the surrogacy agreements will be enforceable unless the commissioning parents are in a position to take the child back to their country and it is accorded citizenship, which it would have automatically received had it been born to them in the natural course.

Correspondingly, the proposed law will recognise the surrogate child as the legitimate child of the commissioning parents, without there being any need for adoption or even declaration of guardianship. Such an enabling provision cannot however be enforced unilaterally. So, the government cannot just go by the word of the commissioning parents. The safeguards of the child's interests need to have official imprimatur in the form of certificates from the foreign government concerned.

As a corollary, the legislation also provides that the birth certificate of the surrogate child given by the Indian government will have names of only the commissioning parents. In a bid to prevent abuse of the child, the government is also considering provisions stipulating that at least one of the commissioning parents needs to be a donor of the sperm or the egg. This is based on the assumption that a biological link between the commissioning parents and the surrogate child would reduce chances of abuse.
Under the scheme of the proposed law, surrogacy cannot be misused for sex selection and it will be governed by the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act to prevent unauthorized abortions.

It also seeks to provide a measure of privacy to the commissioning and surrogate parents.

Three Taiwanese Men under Investigation of Importing Surrogates from Uzbekistan

2010-05-22T12:09:00.000-07:00

Taipei, May 20 (CNA) Three Taiwanese men are under investigation by police on suspicion of importing women from Uzbekistan specifically for childbearing purposes.

The three men -- a doctor, a businessman and a pharmacist identified only by their last names Kuo, Shao and Lien, respectively -- are believed to have brought four Uzbek women to Taiwan since 2007 to serve as surrogate mothers.

According to the police, two of the women had three children with Kuo, one woman had one child fathered by Shao, and the other woman left Taiwan without having any children. Three of women have already left the country, the police said.

Shao, who operates a factory in Uzbekistan, is married to a Uzbek woman and they have one child, the police said.

Shao claimed that his wife was unable to have any more children and admitted to bringing a Uzbek woman to Taiwan in 2007 at cost of US$30,000 to serve as a surrogate mother, according to the police.

The woman came to Taiwan under the pretext of studying Chinese and was impregnated with Shao's sperm through artificial insemination, the police said. She was paid US$1,000 for each month of her stay in Taiwan and she left in August 2008 after giving birth to a baby boy who was later adopted by Shao, the police said.

According to the police, Shao's wife was kept in dark about the whole process.

Surrogate parenting is not allowed in Taiwan and doctors who knowingly perform artificial insemination prodecures for such a purpose could have their licenses suspended.

Kuo, a doctor who worked at a clinic owned by Shao and located in Cidu, Keelung City, was quite taken with Shao's two blonde children was eager to have one of his own, the police said.

However, since Kuo was in the process of divorcing his wife at the time, he hatched a plan for Lien -- a friend and colleagues of his and Shao's -- to engage in a fake marriage with a Uzbek woman and bring her to Taiwan, the police said.

According to the police, the woman bore Kuo a baby girl in February 2008 through artificial insemination and has since remained in Taiwan and assumed the family name of Kuo.

Using a similar ploy, the doctor impregnated another foreign woman and brought her to Taiwan, supposedly to study Chinese, the police said, adding that in March 2010 she gave birth to twin boys.

Before that, in March 2009 Shao had brought in another Uzbek woman to have a child for him but during a routine check at the artificial insemination clinic the woman was found be HIV positive and the clinic alerted the Keelung City Health Office, the police said.

In a bid to foil the system, Shao asked the Uzbek woman surnamed Kuo to pose as the other woman and to request another HIV test, this time at a Taipei City clinic, the police said.

When the test came up negative, the police said, the discrepancy in the two results was brought to the attention of the health authorities who began to look into the case and found that the blood samples had come from two different persons.

The woman who was found to be HIV positive left the country before health officials could track down her and the whole scheme was exposed, according to the police.

All the other people believed to be involved in the case were taken by police to the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office Wednesday for questioning.

Kuo, Shao and Lien were released on bail, while the Uzbek woman surnamed Kuo was taken to an immigrant shelter as Lien had thrown her out after the scheme was exposed, the police said.

The Catholic Church's view on IVF, Donor Egg, and Surrogacy

2010-05-22T12:07:00.000-07:00

Questionable Practices

http://www.catholic.net/index.php?option=zenit&id=29274

By Father John Flynn, L.C. ROME, MAY 16, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The Catholic Church's opposition to in vitro fertilization (IVF) is well-known, but recently some of these practices are being questioned even by secular observers.

A May 10 article published by the New York Times looked at the topic of paying women to produce eggs for other couples. It cited a recent issue of a bioethics journal, The Hastings Center Report, which found that payment to young women is often above industry guidelines.

The study, by Aaron Levine, an assistant professor of public policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, found that a quarter of 100 egg ads in college newspapers offered more than the $10,000 limit of the voluntary ceiling established by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

Higher payments were offered for women at prestigious colleges and for those who had above average academic results.

According to the New York Times almost 10,000 children were born through donor eggs in 2006, around double the number in 2000.

The article also referred to concerns over the health risks for donors, particularly as young women may not be aware of the serious nature of some of these side effects.

The health risks were explained in an article published March 3 by LifeNews.com. In the piece Jennifer Lahl, president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, urged women to rethink any plans they have to donate their eggs.

Risks

Possible risks include stroke, organ failure, infection, cancer, and loss of future fertility, Lahl warned.

She also argued that egg donation is not similar to organ donation. In the latter a donor takes risks in order to save a sick or dying person. By contrast the recipient of an egg donation is not sick, but a consumer purchasing a product.

"Society rightfully condemns the selling or payment for organs in order to prevent abuses and save lives, whereas the large sums of monetary compensation to women egg donors causes them to be exploited by their need for money," said Lahl.

It's not just college women who are being urged to sell their eggs.

Last year at a fertility conference Professor Naomi Pfeffer warned that women in poor countries are being exploited in a sort of prostitution by Westerners who are desperate for children, reported the Times newspaper, Sept 19.

"The exchange relationship is analogous to that of a client and a prostitute," she said. "It's a unique situation because it's the only instance in which a woman exploits another woman's body," Pfeffer commented.

Surrogates

Another practice that is being criticized is that of surrogate mothers. India is a popular destination for Western couples looking for women to bear their children. One reason it is favored is the lack of laws governing the procedure, something highlighted in an article the Times of India newspaper published May 11.

The article recounted how for the third time in the last year-and-a-half children born to Indian surrogate mothers faced obstacles in being legally recognized by countries of their genetic parents.

Previous cases involved a baby for a Japanese couple, which took six months to resolve, and then a German couple that had to wait months for citizenship of their baby born to an Indian woman. The latest case is that of an Israeli homosexual couple that is seeking citizenship for their two-month-old child.

The article cited experts who said that such problems would not occur if a draft law that has been debated during the last five years were made law.

The situation of Indian surrogate mothers was examined at length in a Sunday Times article published May 9. It looked at the Akanksha Infertility Clinic in the town of Anand, run by Doctor Navana Patel and her husband, Hitesh. Since 2003, 167 women have given birth to 216 babies at this clinic, with another 50 surrogate women currently pregnant.

Couples pay over 14,000 pounds ($20,682), of which about a third goes to the surrogate. The women are generally of lower caste and come from poor villages. The amount they receive is equivalent to about ten years' salary, according to the Sunday Times.

The article also explained that at the clinic in Anand once the surrogates are pregnant they must live in "confinement homes" and can only leave for medical check-ups. Their husbands and children are allowed to visit them on Sundays. The Sunday Times chronicled the anguish the women feel at being separated from their own children and the emotional wrench they face when they have to hand over their surrogate child.

An April 26 article published by the Toronto Star newspaper raised questions about the situation in India. In one case a Canadian couple paid a woman in India to be a surrogate, but when Canadian officials ordered DNA tests on the resulting twins it turned out that instead of the fertilized eggs of the couple the children born were from another unknown couple. The twins will now probably be sent to an orphanage.

Legal problems

Apart from concerns about the exploitation of women the spread of surrogacy is causing complicated legal problems. The Wall Street Journal had a look at some of the issues involved in a Jan. 15 report.

In America eight states have passed laws prohibiting some or all surrogacy arrangements. Courts in some states have refused to enforce such contracts, while ten states have passed laws authorizing surrogacy.

Some of the disputes involve disagreements over the rights of the surrogate mother, the Wall Street Journal explained. In a decision last December New Jersey state judge Francis Schultz ruled that, in spite of a signed agreement relinquishing her parental rights, Angelia Robinson has parental rights for a baby she bore for a homosexual couple, Donald Robinson Hollingsworth and Sean Hollingsworth. Robinson is Donald Hollingsworth's sister.

Another twist to complicate matters came shortly after, in a Jan. 26 article by the New York Times that posed the question as to whether a baby can have three biological parents.

Recent experiments by scientists have led to baby monkeys with a father and two mothers, by combining genetic material from the eggs of two females. If this were done for humans it would further complicate surrogacy disputes, the article affirmed.

Life and love

The use of surrogate mothers and third parties in IVF was one of the issues dealt with in a document published last November by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In "Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology," the bishops sympathized with couples who suffer due to fertility problems, but they stated that not all solutions respect the dignity of the couple's marital relationship. The end does not justify the means, and some reproductive technologies are not morally legitimate, they affirmed.

The temptation to have a child produced or made, as products of technology, should be resisted, the document urged. "Then children themselves may come to be seen as products of our technology, even as consumer goods that parents have paid for and have a "right" to expect -- and not as fellow persons, equal in dignity to their parents and destined to eternal happiness with God," it pointed out.

Moreover, introducing third parties, by using eggs or sperm from donors, or through surrogacy, violates the integrity of the marital relationship, just as it would be violated by sexual relations with a person outside the marriage.

"Fertility clinics show disrespect for young men and women when they treat them as commodities, by offering large sums of money for sperm or egg donors with specific intellectual, physical, or personality traits," the document added.

The bishops also noted that these cash incentives can lead women to put in jeopardy their health in the egg extraction process. There are, indeed, many good reasons to have serious objections to IVF.

Former American Idol Finalist expanding family through Surrogacy

2010-05-22T12:05:00.000-07:00

Former 'American Idol' finalist Chris Daughtry and wife expecting twins

Chris Daughtry is doubling his number of children.

The former American Idol fifth-season finalist announced Monday on his band's website that his wife Deanna is pregnant with twins, who are due in November.

"Deanna and I are overjoyed about this double blessing," said Daughtry in a statement.

"Thank you for your expressions of love and support and for respecting for our privacy during this special time."

Since Deanna underwent a partial hysterectomy in 2006, the couple used intravenous fertilization and had their embryos transferred to a gestational surrogate for the pregnancy, according to the statement.

The couple, who wed in November 2000, are already the parents of 13-year-old daughter Hannah, from Deanna's previous marriage, and 11-year-old son Griffin.

Tough Rules for Overseas Surrogacy for Australians going to India

2010-05-09T05:02:00.000-07:00

Rules get tough for overseas surrogacy STEPHANIE PEATLING NATIONAL
May 9, 2010

PEOPLE using surrogate mothers in India may no longer be able to do so after the Immigration Department said it would not guarantee citizenship to babies.

India - one of the most popular destinations for couples seeking surrogacy arrangements - is changing its laws to require prospective parents to obtain a guarantee of citizenship for their child before starting the surrogacy process.

But the Immigration Department has confirmed to The Sun-Herald that it will not change its requirements for parents wanting to bring babies born through foreign surrogacy arrangements to Australia.

A spokesman said a child born overseas as a result of surrogacy would only be ''eligible for Australian citizenship by descent if at least one of the biological parents is an Australian citizen who has been legally recognised as the parent of the child''.

To obtain citizenship for babies the Department of Immigration requires DNA proof of parenthood. This cannot be given in advance of any arrangements being made.

Australia Surrogacy, a private organisation that helps people make international surrogacy arrangements, said it had recently stopped working in India, in part because citizenship requirements were too onerous.

''Some parents were able to exit the country without any trouble but other parents were stuck in India for over eight to 10 weeks,'' a spokeswoman said.

The spokeswoman said people often chose India because its surrogacy clinics were less expensive but found themselves caught up in an industry that was only starting to be regulated.

The state and federal governments have recognised the growing popularity of domestic surrogacy, with attorneys-general deciding late last week to pursue nationally consistent laws.

Law Society of NSW president Mary Macken said a uniform approach would make it easier for people to enter into domestic agreements and not be forced overseas.

''There is currently much confusion within Australia as each state and territory mostly has different surrogacy laws,'' Ms Macken said.

''More importantly, it is preferable to have uniform surrogacy laws in Australia in order to provide for a safe clinical environment so commissioning parents who may become frustrated with the inadequate Australia state laws are not tempted to travel overseas and enter into a commercial surrogacy.''

Commercial surrogacy remains illegal but people are able to make ''reasonable payments'' to a surrogate mother who volunteers to carry a baby.

NSW will proceed with laws that would allow the courts to recognise couples as the parents of surrogate babies if the court believes the arrangement is in the child's best interest.

Everyone involved in the arrangement would have to undergo counselling and prove the arrangement was in place before the baby was conceived.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

Israeli Man stuck in India with babies

2010-05-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

Gay father of twins born to Indian surrogate denied permission to bring his sons home

Family court has refused to issue a standard legal order that would pave the way for the children to obtain Israeli citizenship.
By Tomer Zarchin

A homosexual father of twins who were born to a surrogate mother in India is being denied permission to enter the country with his infant sons. The move stems from a family court's refusal to issue a standard legal order that would pave the way for the children to obtain Israeli citizenship.

For the past two months Dan Goldberg and his twin sons, Itai and Liron, have been staying at a Mumbai hotel, awaiting permission from the Jerusalem Family Court to proceed with a paternity test that would determine whether he is indeed their biological father. Itai and Liron Goldberg have been denied permission to enter Israel.

Until the test is performed, the babies will not be granted entry into the country, nor will they be eligible to receive health insurance or medical treatments.

In dozens of prior instances, family courts have issued decrees requiring Israeli parents of children born abroad to undergo DNA testing to confirm they are in fact the biological parents - a prerequisite for the childrens' naturalization as Israeli citizens.

In Goldberg's case, the twin boys were delivered by a gestational carrier who had been implanted with an embryo from another woman. Goldberg cannot legally bring the babies into the country without permission from the court to perform a paternity test.

Judge Philip Marcus, unlike his colleagues on other family court benches, rendered a decision this past March in which he stated that he lacked the jurisdiction to issue a court order for Goldberg to take a paternity test. In addition to the Goldberg case, Marcus has also delayed issuing decrees in two other instances involving homosexual couples from Jerusalem expecting the birth of their children via surrogacy.

In explaining his decision, and as appears in the state protocol, Marcus stated: "If it turns out that one of the [purported fathers] sitting here is a pedophile or serial killer, these are things that the state must examine."

An appeal was filed on Goldberg's behalf with the Jerusalem District Court, yet a panel of primarily religiously observant judges agreed with the petitioner's claim that Marcus does have authority to issue an order for a paternity test, but ordered that a legal guardian be appointed to represent the minors, and that the case be referred back to Marcus.

"This is a state of contradictions," Goldberg, a 42-year-old Jerusalem restaurateur, said via telephone in Mumbai. "I'm an Israeli citizen, I served in a combat unit during two intifadas and I still serve in the reserves. I've also volunteered with the police for years. But when I want to realize my right to be a parent, the state kicks me to the curb."

No time to reflect

Each of the three prospective fathers who have been denied the court order for a paternity test requested the assistance of a clinic in India to begin the surrogacy process, over the course of the last year. Each also signed a legally binding agreement with a woman, an Indian citizen, who agreed to carry the child to term after being implanted with an embryo. The egg donor and the child's carrier renounced any claims to the children.

Late last year, each of the three men filed separate appeals with the Jerusalem Family Court to begin the process of confirming their paternity by DNA testing so that the children who were either born or had yet to be delivered would receive Israeli citizenship. After appearing before Marcus this past March, the three men were surprised when the judge ruled that he lacked the authority to issue the order - despite the fact that other family court judges had repeatedly done so in prior surrogacy cases.

Homosexual couples in Israel who wish to conceive a child via surrogacy primarily pursue this option in the United States and India. As the practice has become more widespread, the Interior Ministry issued a set of guidelines that codify the process of naturalization for the newborns so that they would be legally permitted entry into the country. In the case of male homosexual couples, because only one parent can be the biological father, the other is usually required to go through the process of adopting the baby in order to receive recognition as the child's legal guardian.

In his conversation with Haaretz yesterday, Goldberg sounded frustrated. He has so far spent $45,000 to complete the surrogacy process, after looking for ways to have children for four years. After two failed attempts at in vitro fertilization in India, he finally realized his dream.

Goldberg, who is struggling to get by while in India, has not been able to find time to reflect on the experience. "The cost of living here over time is exorbitant," he said. "Since I need to provide my children with a good environment, the hotel is reasonable. But they have no insurance, I can't get them the vaccinations that babies usually receive in Israel, and I can't afford the costs of medical check-ups.

"I've burned through my savings and I have asked foreigners to help me financially," he continued. "Other couples that came to Mumbai after me have already left India with their children - who received citizenship because they received the court order for the paternity test from judges who are not in Jerusalem.

"Let me wage this legal battle with my children in Israel, not India," he said.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/gay-father-of-twins-born-to-indian-surrogate-denied-permission-to-bring-his-sons-home-1.289128

Woman and Grandson working with a surrogate

2010-04-30T04:10:00.000-07:00

'I'm in love with my grandson and we're having a baby'

http://nz.lifestyle.yahoo.com/new-idea/real-life/article/-/7124792/im-in-love-with-my-grandson-were-having-a-baby/

Pearl Carter is positively glowing with joy. She has a handsome new boyfriend, is enjoying an active sex life after many years of celibacy and, amazingly, is preparing to become a mother again.

But the retired grandmother isn't carrying the baby herself. She and her young lover have spent a staggering $54,000 hiring a surrogate to help them with their dreams of having a child.

What makes Pearl's decision to become a mum again even more shocking is that her new boyfriend is her biological grandson, 26-year-old Phil Bailey.

Phil is the son of Pearl's daughter Lynette Bailey, and the pair is braving public horror and even prison by breaking one of the last taboos – incest.

However, the pair makes no apologies for their controversial plan to start their own family.

'I'm not interested in anyone else's opinion,' Pearl says. 'I am in love with Phil and he's in love with me. Soon I'll be holding my son or daughter in my arms and Phil will be the proud dad'.

Phil adds, 'I love Pearl with all my heart. I've always been attracted to older women and I think Pearl is gorgeous. Now I'm going to be a dad and I can't wait.

'Yes, we get laughed at and bullied when we go out and kiss in public but we don't care. You can't help who you fall for.'

Pearl was 18 when she fell pregnant with daughter Lynette. She was living with her Catholic parents in Indiana and they insisted she give the baby away, so as not to bring the family into disrepute.

They organised a private adoption and Pearl never again saw her baby girl.

Pearl went on to marry, but she never had any more children. Instead she searched for her lost daughter until finally giving up hope 15 years ago.

Finding each other

In 1983, Pearl's daughter Lynette had a baby of her own, who she named Phil. She raised him as a single mother.

'My mother told me she was adopted when I was 18, and at the same time she told me she'd been diagnosed with brain cancer,' Phil says. 'I was devastated.'

Phil nursed his mum for six months before she died. It was then he decided to track down his grandmother. It took three years before he found an address for Pearl and wrote to her.

'I was stunned to get his letter,' says Pearl, who was now single. 'My heart jumped that I'd be re-united with a grandson. I wrote back immediately and included my phone number.'

When Phil phoned Pearl, the pair admits they were both rather nervous. Pearl told Phil about being forced to give up Lynette for adoption, and Phil told Pearl about his mum dying of cancer.

'We both cried but kept talking for three hours,' she says. 'When he emailed me a photo, I thought what a handsome and sexy man he was before pinching myself – he was my grandson!'

Confused, Pearl talked to a friend, who told her about an article she'd read on Genetic Sexual Attraction (GSA), which occurs when close relatives meet as adults and are attracted to each other.

'I could now understand my feelings and realise they weren't wrong,' Pearl says.

In 2006, Phil met his grandmother for the first time.

'From the first moment that I saw him, I knew we would never have a grandmother-grandson relationship,' Pearl remembers happily. 'For the first time in years I felt sexually alive.'

Phil admits that he had the same feelings towards Pearl.

'I wanted to kiss her there and then,' he says. 'My feelings were overwhelming.'

The pair spent the first week shopping, bowling and eating out. During the second week, giggly on wine after a night out, Pearl decided she wasn't going to deny her feelings anymore.

Unexpected feelings

'I called Phil into my bedroom, sat him on the bed, and then I leant over and kissed him,' Pearl says.

'I expected rejection but instead he kissed me back.'

Pearl then explained to Phil what she'd discovered about GSA.

'I was thrilled and excited,' Phil says. 'I could be with Pearl and it was OK because she'd never raised me or been in my life.'

That night, grandmother and grandson became lovers.

'Making love to Pearl was a real eye-opener. It was love combined with all this sexual tension that had been building up,' Phil openly explains.

Phil, a carpenter, agreed to live with Pearl and get a job with a local building firm.

'Living with Phil as my life partner has been amazing. He cooks and cleans and we make love three times a week. We can't keep our hands off each other.'

Twelve months ago, Phil made the shocking admission that he wanted a child. Pearl told him she was desperate for a baby as well, but it was one wish that she couldn't fulfil as she'd already gone through menopause.

The determined pair then decided to use Pearl's retirement money to find a surrogate mother and buy a donor egg to inseminate with Phil's sperm. They placed an ad asking for an open-minded surrogate, and Roxanne Campbell applied. The three met up a few times and hit it off.
'Initially I was shocked,' says Roxanne on learning the couple were related. 'But they're a brilliant pair and I saw how much they loved each other. I know the baby will be loved too.'

The couple sees 30-year-old Roxanne once a month and accompany her for scans, with Pearl playing the part of a pal or the baby's grandmother.

'I am just so happy,' Pearl says.

'I am finally going to be a mum and not forced to give up my child. Phil's going to be a great dad. I never in a million years thought at 72 I'd be "pregnant" and in love with my grandson. I make no apologies and I believe God's given me a second chance.'

Adoption Agency escapes punishment after breaking rules

2010-04-27T17:52:00.000-07:00

Adoption agencies break rules, escape punishment

AJC investigation: Weak oversight on private adoption agencies ShareThisPrint E-mail .By Alan Judd

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

She was 24, a fair-skinned, curly haired brunette from California’s San Joaquin Valley. She quit school after the 11th grade but wanted to go back to become a teacher or maybe a corrections officer. She said she liked “shopping, swimming, going out.” Her favorite food: Mexican. Her favorite places: the mountains and the beach.

The Freemans started trying in late 2008 to adopt a child through Valley of Hope. After many twists and turns, they were unable to proceed with the agency and finally adopted a child late last year using another agency.

For Krista and Luis Arduz, she represented their best hope for a baby.

Early last year, the Kentucky couple agreed to adopt the California woman’s infant through a Georgia adoption agency. Like many modern private adoptions, this was to be a complex multi-state transaction, conducted mostly through e-mails and cellphones, Web sites and text messages — not to mention wire transfers involving thousands of dollars.

And the way it unraveled sheds light on the state’s weak oversight of the 336 private agencies that arrange adoptions and foster care and operate group homes in Georgia, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows.

Just three times since 2008, the Journal-Constitution found, has the state imposed penalties against agencies that exclusively handle adoptions: two fines and one license revocation.

The newspaper’s review of more than 1,500 reports of inspections and investigations found that regulators repeatedly forgave violations of rules fundamental to safe adoptions: failing to check parents’ criminal records, for instance, or not documenting safe environments in adoptive homes.

Several agencies received citations for failing to show that payments to birth mothers covered only legitimate medical or living expenses. At least one agency — Valley of Hope Adoption Inc. of Woodstock, with which the Arduzes worked — was cited for having money for a birth mother’s expenses deposited into its executive director’s personal bank account.

None of those violations resulted in penalties.

State law allows fines as high as $25,000. But officials say they prefer to persuade agencies to comply with the rules than impose harsh penalties.

“We try to work with as many agencies as possible so there are viable options for Georgia’s children,” said Keith Bostick, director of the Office of Residential Child Care, which regulates adoption and foster care agencies.

“It is a balancing act,” Bostick said. “Often it’s not black, it’s not white — it’s gray.”

Valley of Hope is one of many agencies that existed in the gray area.

The agency eluded punishment for almost two years, even though state officials knew it was violating adoption rules. But the state didn’t share information about the agency with the public until late 2009.

Erin Chaffee, Valley of Hope’s founder and executive director, declined repeated requests for an interview. In an e-mail to a reporter late Friday, she said, “Adoption is a highly personal and confidential business and for those reasons it is not appropriate for me to engage in a discussion with you.” In another e-mail Saturday, she added, “We have helped over 100 clients adopt successfully and only a handful of clients have had failed adoptions.”

The Arduzes knew nothing about Valley of Hope’s regulatory history when they made the first of several payments that were to total more than $31,000. Neither did Brea and Jonathan Freeman, a Nashville-area couple whose own attempt to adopt through Valley of Hope overlapped the Arduzes’.

In late 2008, the Freemans decided to expand their family of three biological children and one adopted child. They considered several adoption agencies before settling on one that had only recently gone into business: Valley of Hope.

“We found them on the Internet,” Brea Freeman said recently. “I could find nothing bad about them, at the time.”

Valley of Hope broke the rules even before it completed its first adoption.

Chaffee, a licensed social worker who had worked for another adoption agency, established Valley of Hope in January 2008 as a for-profit business. State law requires adoption agencies to operate as not-for-profit organizations to guard against the appearance of baby selling.

Chaffee accepted the agency’s first adoption application fee from prospective parents in June 2008 — two months before Valley of Hope received a state license allowing it to do so, records show. In her e-mail Saturday, Chaffee said regulators “had trouble understanding” that she was working with those parents through a separate consulting company.

As at other agencies, an adoption handled by Valley of Hope could be expensive — $40,000 or more — and lacking guarantees. Birth mothers may change their minds at any time, leaving adoptive parents with little to show for their financial and emotional investments.

But on Valley of Hope’s Web site, Chaffee reassures both prospective parents and birth mothers. She describes Valley of Hope as a Christian mission offering the “free gift” of “everlasting life.” All children, the Web site states, are “wonderfully made by the Creator.”

Elsewhere Chaffee takes a more secular tone:

“So many couples come to us after spending a lot of money on their adoption without success, or they tell us they have been waiting forever to adopt and nothing has panned out,” Chaffee writes. By working with birth mothers in “states that have favorable adoption laws,” she says, prospective parents could expect a “match” in four to six months — half as long as at many other agencies.

On the Web site, several clients praise Chaffee and her agency.

“We were so happy with the level of personal service and support we were given at Valley of Hope,” a couple identified as Paul and Miriam of New Jersey say. “Erin was always available to talk to us, and seemed almost as excited as we were about the whole process. We could not believe that she found us a match after TWO WEEKS!!”

Another couple, identified as Pamela and Jason from Canada, wrote to Chaffee: “When we contacted you, we had come close to losing the dream of becoming parents. Now the pain is almost forgotten.”

‘My baby’

Krista and Luis Arduz also dreamed of becoming parents once more.

But Krista, a physician’s assistant in a dermatology practice, was in her 40s, and her last pregnancy and delivery had been difficult. She feared she would not be able to conceive again. Adoption, she said recently, seemed the best alternative.

In early 2009, the Arduzes hired an adoption facilitator to help sort through the Internet’s hundreds of posted “situations” — pregnant women offering their babies for adoption. The couple settled on what seemed to be a good match: a baby due April 17 to a 24-year-old California woman offering her child for adoption through Valley of Hope.

Chaffee faxed the Arduzes a contract, which they signed Feb. 13, 2009, the same day they wired $12,500 to Valley of Hope for the adoption fee. A few hours later, Krista Arduz said, Chaffee wanted another $2,000 sent immediately for the birth mother’s expenses. It was Friday afternoon, too late to send the money from the Arduzes’ credit union. Chaffee wouldn’t wait, Krista said. So the Arduzes wired the money from a Western Union outlet.

The birth mother, by then seven months pregnant and living on food stamps and Medicaid, remained in her small, remote hometown. She was married and had two boys, a 3-year-old and a 10-month-old. Her husband, who was not the father of her sons or the unborn child, did not know she planned to give up the baby, she wrote in a birth-mother questionnaire that Valley of Hope shared with the Arduzes. The biological father, whom she knew only as “Joe,” wasn’t aware of her pregnancy.

The birth-mother form posed a question: “If you could, what would you tell the baby about yourself and your decision?”

She answered: “I love you and I think I did what was best for the future of child.”

The next question: “Why are you placing this child for adoption?”

Her response: “I am not in any way financially stable or in the position to bring a baby into this world to suffer because I can’t provide.”

Still, she wrote that although she would allow the adoptive parents into the delivery room, she wanted to hold the baby first and to spend time alone with the child. She said she would let the adoptive parents name the child, so long as they told her what they planned to call “my baby.”

From the start, Krista Arduz said, everything was complicated and confusing. The Arduzes had so many questions: When should they buy airline tickets to pick up the baby in California? How long should they expect to stay there? What kind of relationship might they have with the mother?

“No guidance,” Arduz said of Valley of Hope’s responses to their inquiries.

“It would be nothing to call them two or three times and never hear back from them,” she said. “We were very frustrated.”

Cautionary tale

In Nashville, Brea and Jonathan Freeman were frustrated, too. When they began working with Valley of Hope in late 2008, they had been impressed. Brea Freeman had imagined Chaffee as someone who could be a close friend if they lived in the same city. And Chaffee had called frequently with possible adoption matches, exuding what Freeman called “a sense of urgency.”

But, she said, Chaffee began asking whether the Freemans might exceed their self-imposed $20,000 cap on adoption expenses. After they said no, Brea Freeman said, they heard from Chaffee less often, a criticism made by others in complaints to state regulators. “If there was a chance you might be willing to spend money,” Freeman said, “she would call you back in 30 seconds.”

Freeman took copious notes of her conversations with Chaffee and saved dozens of e-mails. Her documentation, which she shared with a reporter, depicts an increasingly muddled and contentious adoption.

The Freemans thought they had been “matched” with a birth mother in Atlanta. Valley of Hope later told the couple the match had been only preliminary.

By early April, the Freemans were worried. The birth mother’s due date came and went. Chaffee was supposed to arrange a telephone conference call between the birth mother and the Freemans, but that fell through. Communication from Chaffee became less frequent.

“When you get matched with somebody, it’s like being pregnant and waiting to give birth,” Brea Freeman said. “To pull the rug out from under us, it was devastating.”

On April 5, Chaffee e-mailed the Freemans to say the birth mother was waffling. But she said she hoped to keep the adoption on track by acting “more like a friend” to her, and reminding her that by keeping the baby, she would forfeit the money for her expenses.

“She made comments like, ‘I have to do the plan,’ meaning the adoption plan, and then later said, ‘I really don’t want to give up my baby,’” Chaffee wrote in an e-mail to Freeman. “I explained to her in great detail about the benefits of an open adoption.”

Freeman felt uncomfortable with Chaffee’s strategy. The next day, she and her husband backed out of the adoption.

The woman kept her baby. After Freeman complained about the outcome, a Valley of Hope caseworker sent her an e-mail describing the woman as “not stable,” adding that her erratic nature was why the agency had not asked the couple to pay fees in advance.

By e-mail on Saturday, Chaffee said: “I have never pressured a birth parent to place a child.”

Freeman discussed the episode at length on her blog. She sees it as a cautionary tale.

“I couldn’t imagine,” she said, “looking my child in the eye one day and saying, ‘You know, the agency pressured your mom to give you up.’”

‘Everything was fine’

The Arduzes’ birth mother was due April 17. Krista Arduz booked a flight for April 15, reserved a room in the town’s new Holiday Inn Express, and waited for word about the woman’s latest visit with her doctor.

With five days to go, Luis Arduz e-mailed Chaffee: “I wanted to inquire if you have had contact ... after her doctor appointment.”

Chaffee replied from her BlackBerry: “Her mom told me everything was fine at the appt, but no details.”

That weekend, the Arduzes got a call from a California lawyer who was handling legal work on the adoption. He had just heard that the baby had arrived at least a week earlier — and the birth mother had backed out of the adoption.

The child was born, the lawyer told the Arduzes, before Chaffee purportedly spoke with the woman’s mother.

The news enraged the Arduzes. Why, they wondered, had Chaffee not told them about the birth? Did she even know about the baby? If so, why had she misled them about the birth mother’s appointment with the doctor?

Chaffee says that when birth mothers change their minds, “the adoptive parents are notified as soon as the agency has confirmation of the decision.”

Regardless, last April 13, a Monday, Krista Arduz sent Chaffee a seemingly innocuous e-mail: “Wondering if you talked with [the birth mother] to find out about her visit to the hospital this past week. We’re anxiously waiting to know how she’s doing and would appreciate any info you have (even if you haven’t spoken with her).”

Chaffee wrote back: “I spoke with her Tuesday and everything was good. ... Her doctor’s office said there was no new information since her last visit.”

On the telephone that evening, Luis Arduz confronted Chaffee about the mother’s decision. Chaffee, the Arduzes say, repeatedly said she didn’t know what she could have done differently.

Luis Arduz was incredulous.

“You,” he asked Chaffee, “are the last one to know?”

No evidence of fraud

Later in the month, Krista Arduz filed a complaint against Valley of Hope with Georgia regulators. Already, they were looking into a similar case that had been reported in March.

It wasn’t until July 7, though, that an inspector visited the adoption agency’s offices in Cherokee County.

Generally corroborating the Arduzes’ allegations, the inspector found numerous rules violations: a failure to document why money was wired to birth mothers, the depositing of mothers’ expense money into Chaffee’s bank account, a variable fee schedule that suggested different prices for different babies.

Other citations alleged that Valley of Hope had not adequately screened adoptive families. For instance, the agency didn’t check whether at least one prospective parent had a criminal record, didn’t document another’s mental health evaluation and could not show it had confirmed the character references for a third.

And, the inspector said, Valley of Hope still was operating illegally as a for-profit adoption agency. (It changed its corporate registration to non-profit in December 2009, records show.)

But the inspector recommended no punishment; she found no evidence of fraud, and concluded the agency had not intentionally broken rules.

Chaffee now denies violating the rules, although she never contested state citations.

By this February, officials determined Valley of Hope had neither corrected deficiencies nor submitted a plan to do so. “All of it added up to something that didn’t look right,” said Bostick, the chief state regulator.

On Feb. 15, the state revoked Valley of Hope’s license.

As far as Bostick is concerned, the agency is out of business. But its Web site is still active. It is advertising three “situations” to prospective parents on adoption sites, although Chaffee says her company is accepting no new clients. Regardless, she continues to operate her separate adoption consulting firm.

A closed chapter

The failed adoptions left the Freemans and the Arduzes in different places.

The Freemans worked with another agency, in Houston, and adopted a child later last year.

The Arduzes hired a lawyer to request a refund from Valley of Hope. Finally, they got back $3,000, half the money they had paid for the birth mother’s expenses. But they still are out $15,500.

With that, the Arduzes gave up on adoption.

“We lost so much money that I’m still paying for,” Krista Arduz said. “We sort of closed that chapter.”

Shortly after the adoption fell through, Arduz’s appendix ruptured. In bed for weeks with plenty of time to think, she wrote a letter to Chaffee — “woman to woman, mother to mother,” she said. She asked for a full refund, or at least an apology.

She never heard back.

--------------------

Isreali Gay Men turn to US for surrogacy

2010-04-25T13:23:00.000-07:00

The quest for a family

Israeli gays turn to the United States for surrogate births -- illegal in their country
Sunday, April 25, 2010

By Evan Pondel, GlobalPost

TEL AVIV, Israel -- At an age when most people are welcoming their first grandchildren into the world, Avishay Greenfield, 59, gets little sleep as a father of twin babies.

For Mr. Greenfield, it is a dream come true, after waiting several decades to have children with his partner. But this later-in-life scenario isn't only a function of family dynamics and finances.

In the last several years, the coming of age for gay rights in Israel has encouraged a growing number of same-sex couples -- including Mr. Greenfield and his partner -- to consider surrogacy as an option for having children.

Yet despite the country's reputation as a world leader in reproductive technology, surrogacy is illegal for same-sex couples. A recently failed appeal challenging surrogacy laws serves as another setback for the gay community in Israel, forcing many couples to seek costly alternatives abroad.

"It is a basic human instinct and deep emotional need to want children," said Mr. Greenfield, who found a surrogate in the United States to give birth to his twins seven months ago. "It is absurd that we can't do this in our own country and must spend a lot of money to have children elsewhere."

The number of Israeli gay couples who have worked with U.S.-based agencies is unknown, but surrogate births to same-sex Israeli couples are expected to double this year at Circle Surrogacy, a Boston-based group that helped Mr. Greenfield find a surrogate. Israeli gay couples who worked with Circle in 2009 gave birth to 18 children.

The average cost for U.S. surrogacy services: $100,000 to $180,000, a price range that motivates many couples to seek out less-expensive alternatives in other countries, including India and Ukraine.

But it is significantly easier for Israelis to have children in the United States because of the countries' close diplomatic ties. And couples in search of surrogates in India and other places can hit a snag when trying to establish Israeli citizenship for their babies.

Finding the right surrogate is no easy feat either. In fact, surrogacy has never been a popular option for Israelis because of the strict laws governing who can be a surrogate.

Depending on religious beliefs, the rules are so cumbersome that surrogacy falls out of favor for many couples. For example, some religious leaders say the birth mother must be single and Jewish to ensure that the baby is Jewish; same goes for the egg donor. The pendulum swings the other way, too, as other religious leaders say it is not necessary to have a Jewish birth mother.

"Right now, the rabbinic opinion weighs toward the genetic mother as being the legal mother," said Rabbi Edward Reichman, a medical doctor and Albert Einstein College of Medicine professor in New York. "But it is hard to set legal precedents for surrogacy, because these things didn't exist in prior centuries."

In general, though, the concept of surrogacy for same-sex couples is frowned upon by religious Jews. "There is still ignorance and lack of acceptance among sectors of [Israeli] society," said Irit Rosenblum, founder and executive director of New Family Organization in Tel Aviv. About 50 percent of the Israeli population feels that same-sex couples are just as good at parenting as heterosexual couples, according to Ms. Rosenblum.

Procreation has a special meaning in Israel. "People in Israel, religious and secular, tend to take the biblical commandment, 'Be fruitful and multiply' seriously," Ms. Rosenblum said. "Having children is deeply rooted in Jewish culture and is a strong Jewish value. Israel is a very family and children-oriented society, and people respect parenting and family."

There is a subtle likeness to Mr. Greenfield in one of his twins. He and his partner each fertilized an egg that was then carried by the same surrogate.

The challenge was finding a surrogate who was aligned with the values that Mr. Greenfield envisioned for the birth mother of his children. The search began by riffling through dozens upon dozens of profiles. Eye color, height, education, religious beliefs and geographic locations were presented as if items on a menu.

Mr. Greenfield and his partner eventually found a match in an unexpected place -- Texas. The surrogate and her husband were former military and Christian. "But when we met them, we knew immediately that they were the right fit," Mr. Greenfield said. "They share the same values and are truly an extension of our family."

The process from finding a surrogate to the birth was about a year, but establishing Israeli citizenship for a child born in the United States posed other challenges.

After a child is born to a surrogate, parents must submit documents to Israel with DNA proof of parenthood. At the same time, the surrogate mother has to legally withdraw from parenthood, but only if a social worker appointed by the court attests that the circumstances justify the withdrawal. And finally, a conversion to Judaism may be performed to ensure the Jewishness of the newborn.

Mr. Greenfield said the process is emotionally draining, especially when family and friends are so far away. Of course, the biggest deterrent is cost. Health care in Israel is covered by the government for all citizens, whether it is a routine check-up or fertility treatments. That's not the case for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender couples who want to have children.

A court decision in 2005 granted lesbian couples the right to adopt a child born to the other partner by artificial insemination, and while it was a milestone event for a population that dreamed of parenthood, it fell short of entitling same-sex couples to surrogacy rights.

Etai Pinkas, a gay rights activist and Tel Aviv's youngest city councilman, was denied access to the Israeli surrogacy program last year. He recently appealed to the Supreme Court, but a couple of weeks ago was told by a representative that the surrogacy law does not apply to same-sex couples. Mr. Pinkas and his partner are now in the process of appealing to the Knesset -- Israel'si parliament -- to redefine surrogacy laws.

"This is pure discrimination that same-sex parenthood is not supported by the state of Israel," said Mr. Pinkas, who is also searching for surrogacy options outside the country. "I'm hoping to set a precedent here. We just want to have kids."

Even though the state rejected Mr. Pinkas' appeal, the state agreed that his petition is a wake-up call for Israel to re-examine the concept of family, parenthood and human dignity.

Einat Wilf, a Labor member of the Knesset, said the Israeli government is in the process of reviewing fertility laws. When asked whether the country would consider loosening such laws to increase fertility rates for Israelis, Mr. Wilf said the laws are focused on improving access to healthcare, not boosting demographics.

John Weltman, president and founder of Circle Surrogacy, said the very culture of Israel bodes well for surrogacy. "Family values are strong in this country," said Mr. Weltman, who was a commercial litigator before founding Circle in 1995. "But no matter where people are from, surrogacy shouldn't be perceived as just a process for those who want to have kids. It is about doing the most intimate thing in the world with a total stranger who will change your life forever."

Mr. Weltman began focusing Circle's attention on Israel after meeting Ron Poole-Dayan, an Israeli who moved to the United States to have children. Mr. Dayan said it was absurd a decade ago to think that Israeli same-sex couples would even consider having children.

"But there has been a critical mass of Israeli gay couples who have accumulated enough wealth," said Mr. Dayan, who has 9-year-old twins. "I do not think gay couples are attempting to fit into Israeli society. It's more of a genuine shared appreciation of the joys of having a family."

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10115/1053269-82.stm#ixzz0m95ItXNN

Frozen Embryo Dispute

2010-04-18T04:30:00.001-07:00

Couples Clash Over Frozen Embryo Custody

By JOE HARRIS

CLAYTON, Mo. (CN) - A Missouri couple has traded lawsuits with a California couple in a case that tests the bounds of child custody law. The couples are fighting over control of two frozen embryos stored in a California fertility clinic. The case raises ethical questions over the definition of family relationships and the word used to describe the transfer of embryos: adoption or donation.
Edward and Kerry Lambert, of Pleasanton, Calif., filed a lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court to secure custody of embryos they had given Missouri couple Jen and Patrick McLaughlin.
The embryos in dispute were created by the Lamberts, with Edward's sperm and an anonymous donor's egg. After the birth of their son, the Lamberts were left with four frozen embryos that they decided to give to the McLaughlins. The Lamberts say the other couple breached their contract by not returning the unused embryos after the McLaughlins gave birth to twins with the first two.
The Lamberts claim they do not want the remaining embryos implanted in Jen McLaughlin because of her violation of the contract and her "recent behavior in connection with the two embryos."
The McLaughlins fought back with a lawsuit in St. Louis County Circuit Court, claiming Jen's interests in "her unborn children" and the embryos' interest in their siblings "is of such uniqueness" to give the McLaughlins legal right to the embryos.

TECHNOLOGY & COMPLICATIONS
The embryo adoption agreement contains a stipulation that any unused embryos could revert back to the Lamberts after one year, should the couple so choose.
But the McLaughlins' attorney, Albert Watkins, challenges the validity of the provision. He said the contract is a glorified form contract, written up years earlier by an attorney at the urging of the Catholic Archdiocese.
At the time, Catholicism was trying to help its followers explore the new technology of in vitro fertilization, Watkins said. But the technology was not foolproof. Watkins said dozens of eggs were frozen and up to 12 to 14 eggs were implanted in a woman at once, often causing traumatic multiple miscarriages.
"There would be women who would go through 12 to 14 miscarriages in the span of a day or two and after that horrible experience, they would say 'I'm not going through this again,'" Watkins said. "Then you would have all these frozen embryos in limbo. So the Catholic Church included this inversion paragraph in the contract."
But technology improved, resulting in Jen McLaughlin getting pregnant and giving birth to twins on the first attempt.
Jen said she promised the Lamberts to "do whatever it took to give those embryos the best chance to be born. I've done that to the best of my abilities."
She said she would like to do the same for the remaining embryos, but needs time to recover from giving birth and to allow her growing family to adjust to the new arrivals.
The twins made seven kids for the McLaughlins; the first five were adopted. The couple cited family togetherness as a major reason they want to keep the remaining embryos.
"This is not about me," Jen said. "If I wanted a frozen embryo, there are three clinics available immediately. The issue is my family. It's about my children and protecting them."

FAST FOOD & MOTIVES
Watkins is critical of the Lamberts' suit. He compares it to an interpleader action, settling a dispute over property -- not human lives.
"This isn't a sack of tacos that you pick up through a drive-thru at Jack-in-the-Box, bring to a party and you bring the rest home," Watkins said. "These are siblings, two of which are already born."
Jen McLaughlin said she wasn't aware of the Lamberts' intentions to market the remaining embryos to other couples until she received a Dec. 9, 2009 email from Kerry Lambert announcing her intentions. The email came a full two months before the contract with the McLaughlins expired. It included forwarded messages between the Lamberts and the new family, and stated that the new family had spent a week with them this summer and that they lived within seven hours of the McLaughlins so the siblings could possibly grow up together.
"I was stunned to find this out," Jen McLaughlin said. "My intention was that we wouldn't make a final decision until the first two were born."
The twins were born on Jan. 8 of this year. McLaughlin said she immediately sent Kerry Lambert an email stating her position on the embryos, and the two discussed it on the phone that day.
Later that evening, McLaughlin said she received another email from Kerry. The email was a forward of a chain of emails between the Lamberts and the new prospective family, which included information about the family and pictures.
So why did the deal go sour?
The Lamberts' attorney, Jed Somit, of Oakland, Calif., refused to comment.
"I can only speculate as to the reasons behind the actions of the Lamberts," Watkins said. "It is my opinion that those actions are not in the best interests of the kids."
Jen McLaughlin said she couldn't explain it, either.
"It makes no sense," she said. Kerry Lambert "is a social worker by trade. She goes to court on behalf of kids and I'm assuming that when she goes, she fights to keep siblings together. ... She's an adoptee herself, so she knows what its like" to be separated from family, Jen said.

LIFE & DEATH
The court will not have to decide when life begins in this case. Watkins said the point is moot, because both sides agree that the frozen embryos are living beings.
Instead, Watkins said the court will have to decide whether the rights of siblings to be together outweigh the contract's wording.
"They (the frozen embryos) have a right to their siblings and their siblings have a right to them and their mother and father have a right to them," Watkins said. "Those provisions must take precedent over a form doctrine.
"This isn't a situation where the eggs lie in limbo, but it's a situation where they just haven't been used yet because of scientific progress."
Jen McLaughlin has an even deeper fear.
The second email chain Kerry Lambert sent her on Dec. 9 contained personal information about the new family, including medical information about the prospective mother. After researching the mother's medical condition online, Jen believes that the woman would likely miscarry the embryos.
"I don't believe she can carry to full term," she said. "I sent all of the medical information to the (Lamberts). I copied all of the information I found to the email and included links to the medical sites where I found it.
"I told (the Lamberts) that I consider this a death sentence to those babies."
The Lamberts seek sole custody of the two embryos, and the McLaughlins want a judge to grant Jen "the legal right to direct the disposition of the unthawed embryos."
The Reproductive Science Center of the San Francisco Bay Area, where the embryos are stored, is staying neutral until the issue is decided in the courts.
A hearing to address McLaughlin's request for a temporary restraining order is set for April 14. There are no pending hearings on the Lamberts' suit, according to the Alameda County Court's Web site.
Meanwhile, Jen McLaughlin says she hopes a civil resolution can be reached. She still refuses to identify the Lamberts by name, instead referring to them as the donor parents, to honor a confidentiality agreement the couples had, even though the Lamberts' name became public record once the lawsuits were filed.
"I'm praying that at the end of the day, we can mend our fences," Jen said. "I'm willing to forgive and forget."

Russia Suspends Adoptions by Americans

2010-04-15T13:41:00.000-07:00

Russia Suspends Adoptions by Americans
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
Published: April 15, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/world/europe/16adopt.html?emc=eta1

BuzzPermalink MOSCOW — Russia formally announced on Thursday that it would suspend all adoptions of Russian children by Americans, responding to the case of a 7-year-old boy who was sent back to Moscow alone last week by his adoptive mother in Tennessee. The case of the boy, who was named Artyom in Russia before he was adopted last year, has caused widespread anger here, and Russian officials said new regulations had to be put in place before adoptions by Americans could proceed.

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The announcement by the Russian Foreign Ministry gave no indication of how long the suspension would last. The State Department in Washington is sending a high-level delegation to Moscow to hold talks on reaching an agreement, and both countries have expressed hope that the matter can be resolved quickly.

“Future adoptions of Russian children by citizens of the United States, which are now suspended, are possible only if such an agreement is reached,” a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Andrei Nesterenko, said at a briefing on Thursday.

Officials at the United States Embassy in Moscow said they had not received official notification of a suspension and were seeking more information from their Russian counterparts.

Without formal notification, some American officials said they would continue operating as if no suspension had been put in place. But Russian officials said in interviews that no adoptions would be allowed for now. More than 250 American families have nearly completed the adoption process and are poised to pick up their Russian children, but their cases will not be allowed to conclude until the new rules are approved, Russian officials said.

In all, some 3,000 American families have begun the adoption process, according to the Joint Council on International Children’s Services. Russian officials said they would continue to accept applications and process paperwork from potential adoptive parents.

Russia was the third leading source of adoptive children in the United States in 2009, with 1,586, after China and Ethiopia, officials said. More than 50,000 Russian children have been adopted by United States citizens since 1991, according to the United States Embassy.

Artyom, who was named Justin by his adoptive American mother, arrived in Moscow last week after flying by himself from Washington. He presented the authorities with a note from his adoptive mother in which she said she could no longer handle him.

The mother, Torry Ann Hansen, a registered nurse from Shelbyville, Tenn., said the boy was “violent and has severe psychopathic issues.” She added that she “was lied to and misled by the Russian orphanage workers” about his troubles.

The authorities in the United States are now investigating her conduct.

Russian authorities, who now have custody of the boy, have said he behaves normally and have harshly criticized Ms. Hansen for sending him back.

Cases of children adopted from Russia being harmed in the United States have received intense publicity here. Fourteen Russian children have died of abuse or neglect at their hands of the adoptive American parents since 1996, Russian officials said last year.

Last Friday, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, calling Artyom’s case “the last straw” and said he was proposing the suspension.

Adopted Russian Boy Returned to Russia

2010-04-09T15:45:00.000-07:00

Adopted Boy Is Returned to Russia
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-EU-Russia-Adopted-Boy.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=world

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia should freeze all child adoptions with U.S. families, the country's foreign minister urged Friday after an American woman allegedly put her 8-year-old adopted Russian son on a one-way flight back to his homeland.

Artyom Savelyev arrived in Moscow unaccompanied on a United Airlines flight Thursday from Washington, the Kremlin children's rights office said Friday.

The children's office said the boy, whose adoptive name is Justin Hansen, was carrying a letter from his adoptive mother, Torry Hansen of Shelbyville, Tennessee, saying she was returning him due to severe psychological problems.

''This child is mentally unstable. He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues,'' the letter said, according to Russian officials, who sent what they said was a copy of the letter to The Associated Press. The authenticity of the letter could not be independently verified.

The U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, said he was ''deeply shocked by the news'' and ''very angry that any family would act so callously toward a child that they had legally adopted.''

The boy is now in the hospital in northern Moscow for a checkup, Anna Orlova, spokeswoman for Kremlin's Children Rights Commissioner Pavel Astakhov, told The Associated Press.

Orlova, who visited Savelyev on Friday, said the child reported that his mother was ''bad,'' ''did not love him,'' and used to pull his hair.

Savelyev was adopted late September last year from the town of Partizansk in Russia's Far East.

He turned up at the door of the Russian Education and Science Ministry on Thursday afternoon accompanied by a Russian man who had been hired by Savelyev's adopted grandmother to pick him up from the airport, according to the ministry. The chaperone handed over the boy and his documents, and then left, officials said.

The education minister said later Friday that it had decided to suspended the license of World Association for Children and Parents -- a Renton, Washington-based agency that processed Savelyev's adoption -- for the duration of the probe.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in televised remarks that the ministry would recommend that the U.S. and Russia hammer out an agreement before any new adoptions are allowed.

''We have taken the decision ... to suggest a freeze on any adoptions to American families until Russia and the USA sign an international agreement'' on the conditions for adoptions and the obligations of host families, Lavrov was quoted as saying.

Lavrov said the U.S. had refused to negotiate such an accord in the past but ''the recent event was the last straw.''

Last year, nearly 1,600 Russian children were adopted in the United States, according to Tatyana Yakovleva of the ruling United Russia party.

Rob Johnson, a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Children's Services, said the agency is looking into the allegations, although they do not handle international adoptions.

Torry Ann Hansen is listed as a licensed registered nurse in Shelbyville, Tenn., according to the Tennessee Department of Health's Web site. No work address is listed.

Her name appears in a list of August 2007 graduates from Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tenn., with a Masters of Science in Nursing degree.

United Airlines allows unaccompanied children as young as 5 years old on direct flights. Children age 8 and above can catch connecting flights, as well. A United spokesperson wasn't immediately available to comment.

----------------------

Associated Press writer Kristin Hall in Nashville, Tennessee, and Joshua Freed in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

Egg Donation in Oklahoma

2010-03-27T08:25:00.000-07:00

Egg Donor Option Preserved in Oklahoma!

A bill to make it unlawful to compensate egg donors in Oklahoma has been thwarted after a Senate committee chairman determined his panel will not consider the issue this session. The sponsor of HB 3077 contends the bill would not prohibit egg donation, only the practice of compensating for it, and promises to bring the bill back next year. By an overwhelming margin, the bill passed the state House weeks earlier and sent the medical and patient communities into around the clock action. Actively opposing the bill were ASRM, the Oklahoma State Medical Society and RESOLVE , The National Infertility Association. ASRM member Dr. Eli Reshef and his colleagues were instrumental in coordinating efforts to educate Oklahoma lawmakers about the detrimental effects on family building options for infertile patients, the purpose of compensation to egg donors, the minimal risks associated with the procedure and the informed consent process employed by doctors. ASRM applauds their diligent efforts. The egg donation process has come under increasing scrutiny as evidenced by legislation introduced in other states at the behest of organizations opposed to assisted reproduction. Exorbitant egg donor fees paid by some egg donor agencies have fueled the debate.

Surrogacy Legislation in Washington State

2010-03-27T08:24:00.000-07:00

Gestational Surrogacy Legislation Fails in Washington State

Legislation to allow payment to gestational surrogates passed the Washington House of Representatives in February, but failed to pass in the Senate before the legislative session ended. Current state law bans compensation for surrogate mothers. HB 2793 would have allowed women 21 years and older and who had previously given birth to be eligible to enter into paid surrogacy contracts. Additional requirements included obtaining medical coverage for the pregnancy and immediately after birth, passing mental and physical examinations, and signing a written consent form. Prospective parents also would have to meet certain requirements, including a mental health evaluation and an affidavit from a doctor attesting to a medical need for surrogacy. Gay and lesbian couples would have been exempt from the doctor's certification requirement.

High Fees for Egg Donors

2010-03-27T08:21:00.000-07:00

Egg donors offered up to $50,000
Fees far exceed ethics guidelines, study finds
By Clara Moskowitz

Fertility companies are paying egg donors high fees that often exceed guidelines, especially for donors from top colleges and with certain appearances and ethnicities, a new study finds.

The upshot: Parents with infertility problems are willing to pay up to $50,000 for a human egg they hope will produce a smart, attractive child.

The first baby conceived through egg donation was born in 1983. Since then, the practice, which involves transferring fertilized eggs from a donor into a woman's body, has grown dramatically. The rise has been seen particularly among women with ovarian failure, women over 40, and gay men who want to have children through surrogate pregnancy.

While there are few government regulations controlling the use of this technology, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), a professional organization, has issued guidelines. The ASRM ethics committee recommends limits on the amount of money egg donors should be paid, saying "sums of $5,000 or more require justification and sums above $10,000 are not appropriate." Yet the recent study found that out of more than 100 egg-donor ads from 300 college newspapers, about half offered fees above $5,000, with a quarter of the ads touting payments exceeding the $10,000 limit.

SAT scores matter
The study also found that the advertised fees correlated with the average SAT score (standardized test used for college admissions) at the college where the ad was placed, which suggests agencies are paying more to donors who appear more intelligent. This too is a violation of the guidelines, which state that compensation should not vary according to donors' "ethnic or other personal characteristics."

The guidelines were set up to avoid ethical dilemmas associated with putting a price on the seeds for human life, according to the ASRM. And scaling that price based on certain human genetic material that is considered superior is especially worrying to some.

"Commodification is a concern whenever any monetary value is placed on human oocytes [eggs], but particularly when high values are placed on human oocytes from donors with specific characteristics — a practice that also raises eugenic concerns," wrote the researcher, Aaron D. Levine, a professor of public policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in a paper in The Hastings Center Report.

Yet most of the ads Levine found in his study contained appearance or ethnicity requirements for donors.

The problem is that there are few oversights to make sure fertility clinics and egg donation agencies obey the guidelines, and there are few serious consequences for those who flout the rules.

Levine's study, completed in spring 2006, involved tallying the fees being offered and other characteristics of the various ads for recruiting egg donors.

Top dollar
He found that only about half of the ads offered $5,000 or less — within the guidelines. Advertisements in the Harvard Crimson, the Daily Princetonian, and the Yale Daily News offered $35,000, and an ad in the Brown Daily Herald offered $50,000 to "an extraordinary egg donor." Many of these high-end fees were promised on behalf of particular couples using agencies to recruit a donor.

Other objections to such high fees for egg donors rest on the worry that the money could induce women to overlook the risks or drawbacks of donating, potentially creating a situation in which women are being exploited. Egg donation typically pays much more than sperm donation, but that is thought to be justified because egg donation is a more medically invasive and time-consuming procedure.

Some people argue that the generous fees aren't necessarily unethical.

"It may lead some women to become egg donors who would not otherwise do so, but that does not mean that they have been exploited, much less unfairly induced," wrote law professor John A. Robertson of the University of Texas in a related commentary in The Hastings Center Report. Robinson is a previous chair of the ASRM ethics committee, and was not involved in Levine's study.

He pointed out that banning payments to egg donors would drastically reduce the number of donated eggs available, presumably because the financial compensation is a large part of the motivating factor for egg donors.

"The ASRM never says what is wrong with paying women who are healthier, more fertile, have a particular ethnic background, a high IQ, or some other desirable characteristics," Robinson wrote. "The charge of 'commodification'; is easily hurled but not easily justified. After all, we allow individuals to choose their mates and sperm donors on the basis of such characteristics. Why not choose egg donors similarly?"

The Hastings Center Report is a publication of The Hastings Center, a nonpartisan bioethics research institution in Garrison, N.Y.

Ethiopian Adoption nightmare for Australians

2010-03-21T05:08:00.000-07:00

Australians caught in Ethiopian adoption nightmare
By Cassie White

Updated Tue Mar 16, 2010 9:03am AEDT

Corruption allegations: A young girl in Ethiopia (AFP: Roberto Schmidt, file photo)

The Evidence
First warning: In 2005, a Federal Government report detailed concerns raised about Ethiopian adoptions.
Second warning: In 2008, Against Child Trafficking wrote to the Government highlighting similar concerns.
Supporting Documents
The US State Department's advisory on changes to its adoption program.
A parent of an adopted child implicates Australia's representative in Ethiopia in the child trafficking racket.
Government's Response
Attorney General website: What's New in Intercountry Adoption
Response from the Attorney-General's Department to questions from ABC News Online
Australian families have made serious allegations of corruption within Australia's inter-country adoption program with Ethiopia.

The ABC has spoken to several families who claim they have been lied to in the course of their adoption process.

They have told heartbreaking stories of their time in Ethiopia - from witnessing their new baby choking on vomit, to a young boy being kept in a bucket to stop him from moving about. One family had to pay a bribe and others found their paperwork falsified with their child's age dramatically altered.

The families say the Federal Government has been slow to act and has not fully investigated the allegations.

When Jody was holding her baby son in her arms, she was distraught to witness an Ethiopian mother discover she had lost hers forever.

"When I was walking [out of the women's centre] a lady screamed and yelled and cried and fell to the ground," she said.

"This mother had come back to the women's shelter [where] she'd placed her baby for adoption. She changed her mind and came back to get it within a couple of days - but it was already gone.

"That was just heart-wrenching and I felt sick."

She added that she thought the process was far too quick to have gone through the proper channels.

Last year Foreign Correspondent revealed corruption within US-Ethiopia adoptions, and more families have spoken out as a result.

It seems some Australians are not protected from corruption despite it being an Australian Government-run program.

The person in charge of the program is Ato Lakew Gebeyehu. ABC News Online made a number of attempts to contact Mr Gebeyehu, but was unable to do so.

Mr Gebeyehu is responsible for Koala House, a transition home for children going to be adopted by Australian families. This home, which is part of the Australian government program, is accused of not properly feeding the children and maintaining their health.

The office of Attorney-General Robert McClelland says a recent review found issues of concern within the program and is working to restructure the program.

ABC News Online has been told by a spokesman for Mr McClelland that Australia will sign a new agreement with Ethiopia, however whether Mr Gebeyehu remains in his position is still to be decided.

But the ABC has obtained documents showing the Howard government knew of serious concerns about the program in 2005 and that the Rudd government was warned again in 2008 by Brussels-based human rights organisation Against Child Trafficking.

Koala House

The families interviewed by the ABC have had their names changed because of fears they may lose their children and concerns that life will be made hard for surviving biological relatives in Ethiopia.

Australian parents pay thousands of dollars in fees, donations and aid for the care of their children in Koala House.

But all three families say their children were handed to them with a range of problems including severe malnutrition and pneumonia.

Sarah, who has adopted three Ethiopian children, believes the money she paid to care for her children never reached them.

"In our first adoption we took over about 80 kilos of aid. The majority of that was formula, and because we had a baby we also paid the formula fee for her," she said.

"We were also asked to replace all of the formula she would have consumed during her time she was at Koala House ... and it turned out she was actually fed cow's milk and was lactose intolerant.

"She was massively malnourished when we got her. She had full-blown pneumonia because she'd been swallowing her own vomit."

Sarah's older daughter later explained that she was hardly fed.

"She'd get given rice and carrot mixed together as a meal of porridge for breakfast. Except for when the Australian families came ... [they] would put on a big party ... and when that happened, there would be so much food. But when those families went, then it'd be carrot and rice," she said.

Jody says it was a similar story when she and her husband were in Ethiopia to collect their son from Koala House.

"Our son has attachment issues, but he was never held or cuddled until we got him. He was just picked up to be changed or had a bottle propped up on a pillow," she said.

"We were told when we picked him up that they used to sit him in a bucket so he couldn't learn to move around much. He'd worn all the hair off the back of his head from it rubbing against the bucket.

"A friend of ours had an older child who says they only get one meal a day, which was concerning because the amount of money that we raised for the centre. I raised thousands and thousands."

Program reinstated

Earlier this month Mr McClelland announced he will lift a temporary suspension of the adoption program, after concerns of possible breaches of the Hague Convention on inter-country adoption.

The convention is in place to ensure the welfare of children is the priority and that international adoptions are used only as a last resort. Australia is a signatory to the convention but Ethiopia is not.

It will resume operating on April 6 with some changes made, but it appears Mr Gebeyehu will stay in charge.

Against Child Trafficking spokeswoman Roelie Post says Mr Gebeyehu was arrested in Ethiopia and held for 12 days on suspicion of trafficking children to Austria in 2008.

Ms Post says her organisation received little response from the Australian Government after alerting it to this and other alleged concerning practices.

"The children are not orphans. The paperwork is often faked. Parents are declared dead who are not dead and children are given the wrong ages," she said.

"Our organisation sent a letter to the Australian Government with 1,600 pages attached to it with evidence of trafficking in adoptions relating to Australia and India.

"Also we alerted the Australian authorities to Ethiopia, especially to the Ethiopian representative whose name was mentioned in a trafficking case in Austria."

Ms Post does not accept the Australian Government's explanation that Mr Gebeyehu's arrest was just a case of mistaken identity. She thinks there are serious issues that need to be investigated and that the case was mishandled.

"The children come from the same pool, therefore the situation [in Australia] is comparable to adoptions in the US or the Netherlands or any other country."

Sarah says she is aware of older adoptive children recognising each other from Ethiopia and while she stops short of calling it child trafficking, she says it is "on the fringes".

"I have heard that has happened in Australia, where children have known each other prior to coming under Lakew's care - that's a very big coincidence," she said.

Blocked

All families interviewed by the ABC claim they were not supplied with paperwork and vital information about their children and were blocked by officials from finding information on biological families.

When Anne and her husband adopted their daughter, they say almost all the information about their child's origin was falsified.

They were told she was abandoned, but when through their own search they tracked down the biological parents, they discovered this was a lie.

"The [birth parents] were both devastated, particularly the father. They were so sad to think that their child would have grown up thinking she had been abandoned by them.

"They told us that they could never have done such a thing to their child. They agonised over the decision to relinquish their daughter and they did it legitimately.

"What makes us angry is that our daughter was stripped of her history and there seems to be no valid reason for this to have happened.

"Our child was given a new name and a new birth date and was passed off as having been abandoned."

Sarah adopted two sisters in 2002. She and her husband were told the "orphaned" children were four years old and nine months, with no living relatives.

They later found the eldest daughter was not four, but closer to eight. They also discovered the girls had a mother and that the eldest had two brothers whom she was allegedly warned never to mention.

"She told us exactly where they were and we located them two days later and the brothers told us at the time that she was eight years old," she said.

Jody was also told that her son was abandoned and there was no information about his mother. But years later when her family returned to Ethiopia for their second adoption, they discovered this was not the case.

"With a bit of what we call African persuasion, which is $500, we managed to get a photograph, full name and full details of his birth mother," she said.

"The whole place revolves around money under the table."

Are frozen embryos better then fresh?

2010-03-07T07:00:00.000-08:00

In IVF, frozen embryos may fare better than fresh
Lynne Peeples

Health

The Finnish study suggests that women who use frozen embryos are somewhat less likely to give birth prematurely, compared to children conceived from an egg that is removed, fertilized and implanted "fresh" within the same cycle.

The role of frozen embryos has grown over the last few years, especially in Europe where policies now favor implanting only one embryo at a time to prevent dangerous multiple pregnancies, Dr. Sari Pelkonen, of Oulu University Hospital in Finland and lead author of the study, told Reuters Health by email.

This limit leaves extra embryos available for freezing, but few studies have looked carefully at whether frozen embryos are linked to higher rates of premature babies and other complications.

For their study, published in the journal Human Reproduction, Pelkonen and her colleagues studied data from nearly 2,300 children conceived with frozen embryos, more than 4,100 born after fresh embryos were used, and 32,000 pregnancies that did not require IVF or other fertility treatments.

Overall, 258, or about one in 11, of the babies from the fresh embryo transfer group were born prematurely, compared to 120, or about one in 16, in the frozen embryo transfer group.

Frozen embryos were also less likely to be linked to low birth weight and being small for the length of the pregnancy.

Similar differences were seen between the fresh and frozen embryos in regards to low birth weight-180 (6 percent) versus 76 (4.2 percent)-and being small for the length of the pregnancy-91 (3.1 percent) versus 28 (1.5 percent).

Those relationships held after the researchers took various factors such as the mother's age and socioeconomic status into account.

The only potential negative effect of being born from frozen embryos was that on average, the birth weight of children born from frozen embryos was 134 grams (0.3 pounds) greater than a baby born from a fresh embryo. Although that increased weight is unlikely to lead to any complications, having much larger babies can increase the risk of requiring a cesarean section, for example.

When researchers compared frozen embryo outcomes to those from natural conceptions, they found more premature births among the frozen embryos. However, there were no significant differences in fetal or infant mortality among any of the groups.

"There's a sense people have that frozen aren't as good-that freezing and thawing could harm the embryos. This quiets those concerns," Dr. Helen Kim, Director of the In Vitro Fertilization Program at The University of Chicago, told Reuters in a phone interview.

Why frozen embryos result in more favorable outcomes is still unclear. The freezing and thawing process could filter out the "weak" embryos, leaving only the good quality ones, Dr. Gordon Baker, of the University of Melbourne and The Royal Women's Hospital in Australia, told Reuters Health in an email.

Frozen embryo transfer also allows doctors to time a woman's hormone cycles to more closely mimic natural conception, according to Baker. High estrogen levels and lingering stress from the egg collection procedure performed just a few days before IVF could impair implantation, as well as increase the risk of an unhealthy birth.

Considering effectiveness, price and safety, Pelkonen suggested that the best IVF option might be transferring one or two fresh embryos, followed by freezing the rest for future implantation-which could be done years later.

The average cost of a fresh in vitro fertilization cycle in the U.S. is $12,400, although the cost varies significantly among clinics. Freezing embryos for later use is extra. However, these additional services are relatively inexpensive, notes Baker, at less than one third the cost of a fresh cycle.

Kim agreed. "I always recommend that my patients freeze," she said. "It kills me to throw away perfectly good embryos."

However, a recent study of what happened to frozen embryos at one fertility clinic found that many women who successfully have a baby using donated eggs do not try to achieve a second pregnancy with the excess embryos they've chosen to store. (See Reuters Health report, February 12, 2010.)

Woman gives birth to Two children after ovarian transplants

2010-02-28T16:38:00.000-08:00

LONDON (Reuters) - A woman has given birth to two children after her fertility was restored using transplants of ovarian tissue, the first time the complex treatment has produced two babies from separate pregnancies.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61N2LD20100224?rpc=64

Science | Health | COP15

Claus Yding Andersen, the Danish doctor who treated the woman, said the case showed how this method of storing ovarian tissue was a valid way of preserving fertility and should encourage the technique to be used more in girls and young women facing treatment that may damage their ovaries.

"This is the first time in the world that a woman has had two children from separate pregnancies as a result of transplanting frozen and thawed ovarian tissue," said Andersen, who reported the case in the Human Reproduction medical journal.

Andersen's patient, Danish woman Stinne Holm Bergholdt, had ovarian tissue removed and frozen during treatment for cancer, and then restored once she was cured.

She gave birth to a girl in February 2007 after receiving fertility treatment. She then conceived naturally and gave birth to another girl in September 2008.

Nine children have been born worldwide as a result of transplanting frozen and thawed ovarian tissue. Three (including Bergholdt's two) were born in Denmark after treatment carried out by Andersen, who is Professor of Human Reproductive Physiology at the University Hospital of Copenhagen.

Gillian Lockwood, medical director of Midland Fertility Services in central England and Pete Braude, head of women's health at King's College London, both said the key to the success of this kind of treatment was the woman's age.

"The fact that it's possible to get many more eggs from frozen strips of ovarian cortex ... means that it may well be a better option for young cancer patients," Lockwood told Reuters.

Braude said the fact that Bergholdt was 27 when her treatment began had boosted her chances. "It worked because there was a large store of eggs, and as you get older that store goes down," he said. "If she had been 35 or 36, the likelihood of this succeeding would have been much less."

Bergholdt, from Odense, was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma when she was 27 in 2004. Before she began chemotherapy, part of her right ovary was removed and frozen.

Her cancer treatment succeeded but, as expected, also caused a menopause. In 2005, after six strips of ovarian tissue were transplanted onto what remained of her right ovary, it began to function again.

In January 2008 she returned to Andersen's clinic for more fertility treatment to try to conceive again. But a test showed she was already pregnant with her second child.

"This showed that the original transplanted ovarian strips had continued to work for more than four years," Andersen said. "It is an amazing fact that these ovarian strips have been working for so long and it provides information on how powerful this technique can be."

Bergholdt, 32, said she had not decided whether to have more children. "The girls are still so small and need a lot of attention, but maybe in a couple of years we might think about it," she said.

(Editing by Janet Lawrence)

ScienceHealthCOP15

Fertility Law passed in the UK

2008-10-27T19:26:00.000-07:00

Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill passed
23 October 2008

The House of Commons last night voted to pass the controversial Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill by 355 votes to 129. The Bill represents the first major facelift of fertility law in eighteen years, and has provoked a saga of headline-grabbing controversies during its passage through Parliament – from lesbian IVF rights, to donor symbols on birth certificates, to animal-human hybrid embryo research.

Leading fertility lawyer Natalie Gamble of solicitors Lester Aldridge LLP welcomes the Bill and says it will introduce important new rights for fertility patients. Natalie (nominated by gay rights organisation Stonewall as Hero of the Year 2008) has been a vocal supporter of the new rights for gay and lesbian parents.

“The surrogacy rules will be widened” Natalie explains. “Currently only married couples can apply for a parental order (the legal mechanism for reassigning parenthood from the surrogate to the intended parents after the birth), but the law will be extended to allow applications from unmarried and gay couples as well. The Bill will also allow lesbian couples conceiving by donor insemination to be named on the birth certificate and to be full and equal parents from the moment of conception. Same sex couples will get essentially the same treatment as heterosexual couples who conceive using sperm donors or surrogates, ensuring that children born to same sex couples have the protection of having two legal parents rather than one.

“The Bill will also finally remove the obligation of clinics to consider the ‘need for a father’ before offering fertility treatment (instead considering the child’s ‘need for supportive parenting’) and this makes it absolutely clear that single and lesbian women should not be excluded from treatment.”

Natalie is keen to emphasise the other, less controversial and less publicised, changes which will be important in practice for fertility patients.

“Continuing the trend of increasing rights to information about donor conception, there are also several changes being made to the donor conception rules” she explains. “Donor-conceived children will, once they reach the age of 18, have a new right to be put in touch with any donor-conceived half siblings. They will also be able to obtain more information about donors at 16 rather than 18. Donors, too, are getting new rights, and will in the future be able to find out whether their donation resulted in any children being born.

“The rules on embryo storage are also changing, allowing storage for ten rather than five years. Prompted by the story of Natalie Evans (the woman who battled the law and was denied the right to use her embryos without her former partner’s consent), there will also be a new 12 month ‘cooling off’ period to give a partner who withdraws consent to embryo storage the opportunity to change his/ her mind before embryos are irrecoverably destroyed.

There are still some issues which have not been fully addressed, though, says Natalie.

“The extended storage regulations – which allow storage of embryos for longer than ten years in certain circumstances – will only be reviewed now the Bill has gone through, and there are some important issues to be discussed here, including whether couples contemplating surrogacy should be able to preserve their right to have their own genetic child indefinitely in the same way as other couples currently can.

“The issue of surrogacy generally also needs to be addressed more thoroughly. The existing law was designed to help patients conceiving with donors and in most surrogacy cases is complex and difficult. The government mentioned while the Bill was in committee that this was an issue they wanted to look at separately, and I hope they will do so as soon as possible.”

Overall, though, Natalie welcomes the passage of the Bill. “The new law will introduce important new rights for fertility patients, particularly same sex couples, and it represents a sensible updating of the existing law.”

The new law, after final ratification by the House of Lords and royal assent, is expected to come into effect in October 2009.

Deborra Lee Furness trying to change adoption regulations in Australia

2008-09-28T04:24:00.000-07:00

adoption-campaign

http://www.news. com.au/heraldsun /story/0, 21985,22189611- 661,00.html

ACTOR Deborra-lee Furness believes the Federal Government is fostering
an anti-adoption culture that thwarts thousands of childless couples
from adopting overseas babies.

The wife of Hollywood star Hugh Jackman says she and her celebrity
husband would be childless had it not been for her US residency.

Furness has told of the trauma of "red tape and bureaucracy" that
forced them to return to the US to adopt Oscar, 7, and Ava, 2.

And she revealed they were present at the births of their children.

Furness wants to meet Prime Minister John Howard to discuss
overhauling adoption procedures.

She wants a government body established immediately to take sole
responsibility for adoptions.

"We've experienced it first-hand -- we tried to adopt in Australia and
couldn't because we were overwhelmed by the hurdles and obstacles they
put in our way," Furness said.

But the adoption process in the US took less than a year.

Furness -- in Australia while Jackman films the Baz Lurhmann epic
Australia -- is on a crusade to help the couples with "horror stories"
of futile attempts to adopt.

"I'm fortunate," she says. "I have two beautiful children and that's
why people come to me and say, 'Deb can you help me?'.

"I tell them it will be long, expensive and may not happen."

Furness says it is "an outrage and an embarrassment" that Australia
ranks last in inter-country adoption throughout the world.

"It breaks my heart to think there are thousands of abandoned children
overseas waiting for loving families to take them, but the Government
is making it so hard."

A parliamentary inquiry found in 2005 that the "current system is not
working" and that adoption was a low priority for state and federal
governments.

It recommended the Federal Government plays a bigger role in the
process -- to make it quicker and less expensive.

While the Government said it "accepted" most of the inquiry's
recommendations, it did nothing to implement them. Instead, it devised
more restrictions -- announcing last week legislation to stop same-sex
Australian couples adopting a child overseas. The child would not be
granted a visa.

Furness is worried the Government's attitude may be a return of
a "White Australia policy".

"This is a humanitarian issue. Australia has a generous spirit, yet
this to me reeks of fear and a lack of generosity," she says. "You see
it with the refugee crisis as well."

SHE said she was prompted to speak out on the issue when she read of
the plight of a Sydney woman whose adopted baby was still in China
because the Immigration Department would not grant her a visa.

"When I hear these stories, it breaks my heart. I know what happens to
these babies; they end up institutionalised or on the streets,"
Furness said.

Denise Calligeros, 45, revealed this week she had been trying for 13
years to adopt but has been rejected for a second time because now she
is too old.

The adoption crisis has escalated since 1998 when Australia signed the
Hague Convention in respect to the protection of children and
adoption.

The agreement resulted in the Federal Attorney-General delegating the
administration to state governments. But that stopped voluntary
organisations from helping facilitate inter-country adoptions.

As a result, queues have grown into thousands and some states have
stopped taking registrations.

Furness says the Department of Community Services in NSW is too busy
coping with local issues of child abuse to worry about inter-country
adoptions.

"You have children who are abandoned and homeless and you have people
desperate to have a child, but because of this bureaucracy and lack of
resources they can't," she says.

Adoption has become such a long and expensive process for Australian
couples that many simply give up.

Some states have fees up to $10,000 to lodge the initial application --
and it is non-refundable, even if the couple is unsuccessful.

On top of that there are airfares, visas, medical and processing
bills. The total outlay can reach $40,000.

Ricky Brisson, whose program to assist couples to adopt was stopped by
the Government three years ago, said: "The costs are becoming more
prohibitive and a lot of families are giving up."

She said it now took about seven years to process an adoption, which
meant some couples failed because they grew too old.

"We have thousands of kids waiting for families and thousands of
people in Australia looking to adopt them, but we have a system which
is useless in delivering a proper service," she said.

In 2004-05, 410 overseas babies from 25 countries were adopted in
Australia -- compared with 21,000 in the US.

Furness said the process in the US was quick and inexpensive "and not
made impossible like it is here".

"We are the most blessed people in the world, but I have friends here
who are coming up against so many brick walls," she said

Be Careful of Adoption Scams!

2008-09-02T08:42:00.000-07:00

Beware of Adoption Scams
Attorney General Offices by State

Adoption scams can occur with birthmothers-to-be, adoptive parents, and adoption professionals.

Listed below are common situations which we have observed. Watch for the signs and be careful.

Do not jump to conclusions and try not to be overly suspicious and hurt honest people.
Agree upon and sign documents that commit all parties to an adoption situation. Memories can fail and be selective.
Forums and Email Groups
Adoption Plan Forums - Adoption Scams and Unethical Treatment
A network of warnings about possible scams from all areas of adoption. A watch list for suspecting an adoption scam, warns others of bad situations. names, area and pattern of the suspect.
Adoption Scams
Join this Yahoo email group to stay informed about adoption scams. This group can save you time and money. Read about the latest alerts.
Birthmother Scams
1. Usually the motivation for birthmother scams are to take your money. She needs money for rent, food, etc. Only give money to a birthmother-to-be through an attorney or qualified adoption professional. The amount limits and circumstances vary by state law. Do not give money directly to a birthmother.
2. If the birthmother is not available by phone and wants to call you because of an on going situation, beware! You should have a contact number and complete physical address that you can verify.
3. A birthmother may not even be pregnant or could be pregnant and has other plans for the baby, including keeping the baby or promising the baby to several waiting adoptive parents. Look for those signs.
4. The birthmother has at least one or more crisis in her life and you are part of the solution. This can include sad stories such as rape and incest. Be sensitive, but do not be drawn into the whole situation.
5. The birthmother offers a plan to bring the baby to you. Birthmothers usually want you to meet her and arrange to receive the baby at the hospital. This ploy is used to get a plane ticket which can be cashed in later. Do not give anyone a plane ticket. Many adopting parents have lost money by purchasing a plane ticket and never hearing from the, supposed, birthmother again
5. To have a match, you must meet face to face with the expectant mother. Big flag, the birthmother flakes out. She misses scheduled meetings with you or other professionals. Even with an unbelievable story she can be very convincing.
6. Proof or pregnancy or other documents are agreed upon, but never seem to arrive. She seems to always have a reason for not sending you identifying information or cannot believe that you have not received the information. A sudden miscarriage or hospitalization can happen when you request for too much information.
7. The birthmother does not want you to contact anyone else concerning her pregnancy. She does not feel comfortable meeting or talking with an attorney or other adoption professional. When pressed, she might accuse you of not trusting her and can even get angry.
8. The birthmother will not give you, but will get you the name of her doctor or clinic where she is receiving medical attention.
9. The birthmother will evade certain details regarding medical attention, signing parental rights, contacting social services or adoption professionals.
10. The birthmother changes her story about the pregnancy or her situation. If a birthmother is talking to several adoptive parents, her story can change because she cannot remember what she said to you.
11. Be careful if the birthmother is expecting twins. This is a popular situation with an adoption scam. In the natural course, ask for proof of pregnancy and how are you able to contact her doctor.
12. A favorite ploy is for someone to fix you up with a friend. That person might pose as an adoptive parent and not an adoption professional. Be careful that the friend is not the same person. If both have the same IP address watch out!
13. Fake birthmothers are very willing to match quickly and will say you are perfect, without knowing much about you. They are going to send you pictures and other thing, but never do.
14. They have always had complications with the pregnancy.....they usually claim when you cannot find them that they were at the emergency room.
15. The birthmother does not like or want to deal with an attorney or other adoption professional. She has had a bad experience with an attorney and does not want to work with them again.
16. The truth of the matter is that you need to get down to adoption business. Small talk is necessary, but keep it in prospective. The phone meetings are to establish if you are suited for a "match" and if yes, then both parties need to get the necessary paper work in order.
Adoptive Parents Scams
It seems that birthmothers-to-be also need to look for warning signs that adoptive parents may not be able to work with them or will not follow through with the agreed adoption. Birthmothers-to-be need to watch for these possible warning signs.
1. A family that tells you how much contact they want you to have and after the birth they change what they told you.
2. Adopting parents that makes demands rather than requests and makes you feel second rate.
3. A family that does not return your emails or phone calls and might not be honest with you.
4. A family that seems like they are desperate and will do anything to get your baby.
5. Adopting parent might temp you to break the law by offering you illegal funds or expensive gift beyond what the law allows.
6. The adopting parents might not be qualified, you will have to be the sole judge.
7. Adopting parents might pressure you when you are changing your mind about them, they could have many personal problems, check them out.
Adoption Professional Scams

1. Beware of any adoption professional on the Internet who cannot provide you with information. Get the basics and go from there.
2. If they are an agency, find out the state they are in and their agency license number. It is not necessary for an adoption professional to have a web site, but it helps validate their presence.
3. An adoption facilitator should be carefully looked at, in California, facilitators have to be bonded and in many state they are illegal. You need to research their business.
4. Find out the professionals legal business name, physical address, physical phone number, city business license.
5. If any adoption professional is offended by you asking questions, they are probably not your choice.
6. Check with the Better Business Bureau for any bad reports.
7. Join various Internet egroups or check boards on the Internet for any positive or negative reports.
8. Read any document you sign. Ask the "what if questions". Anything said verbally is always overridden by the contract. Make sure there is a contract.
9. Do not be lured by the fact if you sign a contract, you will have the baby you want. An adoption usually takes time.
10.If a facilitator does not have an established business with a track record and is unknown to the Internet adoption circle, DO NOT SEND MONEY UP-FRONT. A small application fee is about as far as we would recommend. Have your attorney verify the facilitators qualifications. You will need an attorney anyway.
This is a list of common occurrences, many others exist. Think about your actions and always use good judgment.

More Women Becoming Egg Donors!

2008-07-31T10:09:00.000-07:00

More Women Donating Eggs
Some Women Say They Donate For Money

POSTED: 9:16 pm PDT July 30, 2008
UPDATED: 8:11 am PDT July 31, 2008

LAS VEGAS -- Now more than ever, women are donating their eggs to make ends meet.

So, who's doing it, and how easy is the process?

Melissa, who declined to give her last name, admitted the main reason she's donating eggs is because she's struggling financially.

"My husband has had me stay home for the last five years. I stayed home for my children, so the money definitely benefited my family," she said.

At the Center For Egg Options in Illinois, the number of women donating has increased significantly since April.

"There's no reason to think that suddenly there's 30 percent more people who have suddenly had this inner feeling to help out people and what's changed, it’s the economy," said fertility specialist Ed Marut.

Across the country, fertility centers have also seen a surge in repeat donors and surrogates.

A woman who passes the health and psychological screenings can get thousands of dollars in return for her donation.

"The donors will make in the area of $7,000, and the surrogates will make anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000 plus," said Nancy Block, founder of the Center For Egg Options.

In the Valley, Dr. Bruce Shapiro at the Fertility Center of Las Vegas said compensation is closer to $3,000 to $5,000.

But he said he hopes the economy is not the main reason more women are donating.

“We really try to have people who donate for altruistic reasons. That's the best of all worlds. Sometimes you can't be absolutely certain. You can only be certain of what a person tells you,” Shapiro said.

He said it is a fairly simple process that takes about three weeks.

“It's more invasive than donating sperm, but still, it's painless, and there's more time involved, but we try to make it as smooth a process as possible,” Shapiro said.

He said the side effects of donation usually include some aches and cramps, similar to those of a woman's period.

Surrogacy Laws in Australia

2008-07-26T10:13:00.000-07:00

Surrogacy Update- Australia

The Western Australian Government's surrogacy legislation has received overwhelming support in the Upper House where members were allowed a conscience vote.

Five members voted against the Bill, which will allow couples unable to have a child, to have a baby through a surrogate mother.

The Bill was supported by 27 MPs.

Earlier this week, the Upper House amended the Bill to ensure the birth mother is aged 25 or older, and already has a child of her own.

Liberal MP Barbara Scott was among those who voted against the legislation.

"It is my view that every child has the right, an inherent right to know its origins, to know where it came from," she said.

"This Bill delivering us today in the third reading denies that to many children who'll be the result of a surrogacy arrangement."

The Health Minister, Jim McGinty, says there is no need for the Legislative Assembly to reconvene early, because the Government will immediately begin preliminary work on the legislation.

"I'm delighted that the surrogacy bill has now been passed," he said.

"It means that we can immediately get on with drawing up the protocols, getting the regulations in place so that we can start from today implementing the new law."

Babies from Frozen Embryos

2008-07-09T08:35:00.000-07:00

Babies from frozen embryos are just as healthy
IVF doesn't raise risk of mental, physical problems in children, study says

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25590308/

BARCELONA, Spain - More evidence is emerging that babies conceived in test tubes might be just as healthy as those conceived naturally, researchers said Tuesday.

Two studies presented at a meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology found that in-vitro fertilization and the freezing of embryos did not significantly increase the babies' chances of medical problems.

"These procedures are relatively safe and patients shouldn't be overly concerned," said Dr. Christopher Barratt, a professor of reproductive medicine at the University of Dundee in Britain.

Barratt, who was not connected to the research, said the studies were encouraging but more information was still needed.

About one percent of babies born in developed countries are conceived using techniques like in-vitro fertilization. Yet Dutch experts studying children born after in-vitro fertilization concluded that the invasive procedure is not dangerous for babies' early physical and neurological development.

"This is important in reassuring people worried about the risks of these techniques," said Dr. Sue Avery, director of The Assisted Conception Unit at Birmingham Women's Hospital in Britain. "There's naturally a fear when you start doing things like sticking needles into eggs." She was also not connected to the Dutch study.

Previous studies have shown that babies produced from artificial reproduction techniques are more likely to have major birth defects and to be underweight at birth. That is thought to be linked to factors in the parents, like the older age of mothers having infertility treatment, lifestyle or genetic factors.

Doctors have also worried that low birth weight of babies born following in-vitro fertilization could lead to disorders like cerebral palsy.

Dr. Karin Middelburg, of the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands and colleagues examined more than 120 babies born after in-vitro fertilization. Those children were compared to 90 babies born to parents with fertility problems who spontaneously conceived while waiting for fertility treatment and to 450 babies conceived naturally.

Middelburg and colleagues assessed the babies' brain development when they were several months old by observing how they waved their hands, made a fist, or kicked their feet.

"When a child is wired right in the brain, he is able to show a wide range of different movements," Middelburg said.

They found that the test-tube babies moved as well as babies spontaneously born to parents waiting for infertility treatment. That showed that artificial reproduction techniques are not to blame for any early developmental problems, Middelburg said.

When those babies were compared to babies naturally conceived in the general population, researchers did not find a difference in abnormal movements.

Babies from frozen embryos weighed more
Another study presented Tuesday concluded that children born from frozen embryos weighed more at birth than those born after a fresh embryo transfer.

Embryos are sometimes kept at minus 196 degrees Celsius for up to five years before being thawed and implanted into women. Doctors are increasingly freezing embryos across Europe as a standard part of fertility treatment, and some have wondered if the procedure might be riskier than using a fresh embryo.

Click for related content
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"With this study, we can be very encouraged that the data seem to point to the conclusion that these techniques are very safe," Barratt said.

Experts said one reason why frozen embryos resulted in heavier and healthier babies could be that women who produced enough eggs to freeze were probably healthier than women who only had enough embryos for a fresh transfer.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Surrogacy laws in France

2008-07-08T20:33:00.001-07:00

Surrogacy Laws in France

The French Senate revealed Wednesday the contents of a closed-door hearing to propose guidelines pertaining to the legality of surrogate mothers, a practice that was banned in France in 1994. The talks are a precursor to a revision in bioethical law, slated for 2009.

Under the proposed reforms, the birth mother would retain “the right of repentance,” or the right to change her mind for up to three days after giving birth. On the other hand, the adoptive parents would not be permitted to “return” the baby on the grounds of its deformity or handicap.

Presiding over the Senate working committee charged with presenting the argument, Michèle André, a Socialist Party member and women’s rights activist, stressed the need to address the issue. This, she said, was necessary “to avoid merchandising women’s bodies,” and to avoid “procreative tourism” on the part of French would-be mothers who find surrogates in countries where the practice is legal, such as the USA, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Issues to be ironed out included the question of whether gay couples would be authorised to use surrogate mothers, and whether providing financial remuneration for the biological mother was legal.

The decision will come as good news to women such as Florence, a 24-year-old woman suffering from a type of haemophilia that prevents her from undergoing a pregnancy.

The activist for Maia, a pro-surrogacy group, has been on an adoption waiting list for 9 months, and sees the use of a surrogate as her best option.

In an interview with FRANCE 24, she said, “I have no shame in using a surrogate mother.” But, she added, she could not bear the idea of finding one abroad. Florence said she would rather wait until the practice was legalised in France because it is “safer" and "sounder".

The debate over surrogate motherhood resurfaced in October 2007, when a French court made a landmark decision allowing a French woman who used a surrogate in the US to register the children as her own in France. The case involved twin girls.

Under normal circumstances, French law would not recognise legal custody for a mother who had gone around the system and found a surrogate. The court stopped short of making a larger statement about the validity of surrogate motherhood, but the case nonetheless started a dialogue culminating in Wednesday’s Senate hearing.

Questioned about the Senate committee’s report, the adoptive mother in the Oct. 2007 case said she was heartened by the report. “I’m moved,” she told the AFP news service. “It’s a huge step forward.”

André concurred, saying the overall positive feedback would “open the gateway to debate.”

Hoping to End the Ban on Gay Adoption in Florida

2008-06-02T16:42:00.000-07:00

Lawmaker Hopes to End Ban on Gay Adoption in Florida

A Florida state senator has introduced a bill that would reverse a 30-year law that bars gay and lesbian couples from adopting children. Sen. Nan Rich's proposed measure would instruct judges to consider the child's best interest when placing them in a permanent home, according to WFOR, a South Florida CBS TV affiliate. A gay friend or relative would be considered as an adoptive parent if they were the child's legal guardian when the parents died.

More than 3,900 children in Florida's foster care system do not live in a permanent home.

Gov. Charlie Crist, who has publicly supported civil unions for same-sex couples, has come out against Rich's proposed legislation. State senator Ronda Storms is also working against the legislation; she has pledged to maintain the adoption prohibition against gay couples. And she just happens to chair the committee to which the measure has been assigned, and she has refused to bring it up for debate or a vote, according to WFOR.

Rich has the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood, and the National Council of Jewish Women. She is the senate's Democratic policy chair and sits on the committees for children, families, and elder affairs. (The Advocate)

Gay Adoption

2008-06-02T16:37:00.000-07:00

Navigating gay adoption

David Strah wears blue and green Nikes. He's the father of a 10-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl. He lives in Chelsea - with his long-time boyfriend.

VIDEO COVERAGE
"I thought that the whole world was either gay people or straight people. When we [he and his partner] had children, it became people with children and people without children," Strah said.

Strah, a Gallatin graduate and author of the book "Gay Dads: A Celebration of Fatherhood," sought a domestic adoption for his two children. He considers himself lucky because he, unlike many parents who seek to adopt, had to decide whether he wished to adopt a boy within 24 hours of finalizing the petition.

He said yes.

But when his son was born, Strah and his partner faced an issue familiar to many gay people who wish to adopt. The doctors at the hospital would not recognize Strah as the parent of his newborn. Strah and his partner are just one of over 250,000 same sex couples to adopt children.

Last Thursday, NYU's Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Student Services held a workshop about queer adoption where 15 people and three panelists discussed the intricacies of adoption in the LGBT community. Julia Hall, Outspoken Peer Educator at Large and a student in the Silver School of Social Work, was inspired to plan the workshop after her internship at Sanctuary for Families, where she works in the clinical and legal department. It was there that she gained an interest in LGBT adoption.

In the two months she spent planning the event, Hall contacted Terry Boggis, director of Center Kids at the LGBT Center, who put her in contact with Strah and Carol Buell, a lawyer who dedicates one-third of her case load to alternative family cases. To round off the panel, Boggis was invited to speak as well. All three panelists are gay, and all three have adopted children.

Buell assures that the families she represents "are accepted and loved by the court system" but admits "it's taken a while to get here."

But there are still some areas in which the courts still hinder the LGBT community, according to Buell. She notes that it is a felony in the New York state to aid surrogacy arrangements.

"It has become a feminist issue," Buell said. "There are concerns about women being used as vessels, like the 'The Handmaid's Tale,' " referring to Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel about a dystopian society in which the role of certain women is simply to give birth.

The panelists recommended Family Focus in Queens for would-be parents inquiring about adoption. The organization, now in its 20th year of operation, just last year began recognizing LGBT adoptions. Many birth certificates also continue a hetero-normative tradition, according to the panelists. Some states only print certificates that read "mother/father," not "mother/mother" or "father/father." However, some states do print them as "parent/parent" according to Strah.

But in regard to birth certificates, Buell said "things gets complicated with transgender parents."

Also discussed within the topic of domestic adoption was the homelessness problem among LGBT youths. According to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, citing results from the New York City Council, nearly one-third of all homeless youths are LGBT. Hall noted the Ali Forny Center for homeless LGBT in Chelsea as a resource.

While New York City is a very open place to the LGBT community, Boggis says there are still hurdles.

International adoption is particularly hard for queer individuals. The Hague Convention, an agreement signed by the United States on April 1, 2008, bans adoption of international children by gay men and women.

"[People] find it threatening, a threat to ideology, to what an American family should be," CUNY graduate student and event attendee Lynn Horridge said. "Homophobia is a huge psychological underpinning."

Surrogacy in the Movies- Baby Mama!

2008-04-28T19:44:00.000-07:00

Baby Mama (2008)
New York Times Reviewed- http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/movies/25baby.html

In the new comedy “Baby Mama” Tina Fey plays a 37-year-old single career woman who, desperate for a baby, hires a womb of her own in the dizzy, slap-happy form of Amy Poehler. The film never comes fully to term, as it were: the visual style is sitcom functional, and even the zippiest jokes fall flat because of poor timing. But, much like the prickly, talented Ms. Fey, it pulls you in with a provocative and, at least in current American movies, unusual mix of female intelligence, awkwardness and chilled-to-the-bone mean.

Ms. Fey is of course best known for working in television, on “Saturday Night Live” and “30 Rock.” Until now her biggest movie role was the uncomfortable but earnest high school math teacher Ms. Norbury in the comedy “Mean Girls,” which she also wrote. (“You all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores,” Ms. Norbury warns the mean girls and their female prey. “It just makes it O.K. for guys to call you sluts and whores.”) Like a lot of comedies “Mean Girls” has its devilish cake and eats it too, wagging an unpersuasive finger at the very cruelty it skillfully deploys. Ms. Fey may not want girls to call one another sluts, but she’s all too happy to call them that herself.

There’s often a degree of sadism in this kind of comic one-two punch, and while some performers appear to direct the cruelty inward — think of Jerry Lewis and Ben Stiller wringing squirmy, uneasy laughs out of the humiliations rained down on their characters — that doesn’t seem to be Ms. Fey’s style. Certainly it isn’t what she’s called on to do in “Baby Mama,” in which she plays a snappy, sardonic individualist who, much like Ms. Fey herself, works in a male-dominated industry (here, as an executive in an organic grocery chain similar to Whole Foods) and favors the kind of sexy librarian look (high-heeled shoes, low-cut blouses and dark-frame glasses) that signals there’s a hot body to go along with that feverishly smart brain.

“Baby Mama,” which was written and directed by the newcomer Michael McCullers, yet another “Saturday Night Live” alumnus, opens with Ms. Fey’s character, Kate Holbrook, eyeballing babies like a hungry wolf. Everyone has a pitter-pattering Tater Tot but Kate, who lives alone in her generically appointed Philadelphia apartment (the film was also shot in New York) and has few contacts outside her job, extended family and wisecracking doorman, Oscar (Romany Malco). Basically she’s Rhoda with thinner thighs, which I guess means that she’s Mary Richards. But this being 2008 and not the women’s-liberated 1970s, it isn’t enough for Kate to be a swinging single: she wants a baby and she wants it now. Enter Angie Ostrowiski (Ms. Poehler).

At 36 Ms. Poehler is at least 10 years too old for the role, as the softly focused close-ups suggest, but she’s a pip. She’s the ball that bounces against Ms. Fey’s formidable wall, a nonstop, joyfully watchable whirligig. Drawn in broad, often crude strokes, Angie is dumber than the usual dumb blonde so beloved of the movies largely because she’s also coded as white trash, a kind of urban Daisy Mae, complete with short shorts, wads of chewing gum and a tag-along buffoon, Carl (Dax Shepard). If Angie works at all, it’s because Ms. Poehler puts a sweet spin on her character’s gaffes, whether she’s yelping in horror at the unfamiliar taste of water or squatting in a sink when nature makes an untimely call.

There’s more, though not much, mostly some amusing nonsense from Steve Martin as Kate’s boss, a belligerently New Agey entrepreneur with an unkind ponytail. Greg Kinnear also shows up now and again as Kate’s inevitable love interest, perhaps so things don’t overheat when Angie moves in. Not that anyone need worry about this female odd couple, given that Ms. Fey, who doesn’t have the acting chops that might invest her character with some personality, has been forced to play it straight and narrow. The close-up medium of television is more forgiving of those comics who tend to stand in the middle of the frame as if they had just been planted. But unlike Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, Ms. Fey doesn’t even have a funny voice.

That’s too bad, because she is genuinely funny. And if there’s anything the movies could use it is funny women, especially those who earn laughs by keeping their clothes on and their dignity (more or less) intact. Under the old Hollywood system, the studio boss might have ordered up a dance coach for Ms. Fey, maybe a few lessons on how to walk across a set or move her upper body once in a while. She might not have been able to rip loose as a writer-performer, which makes the idea of her developing a simultaneous on-and-off-screen presence all the more tantalizing. Real funny women — Mae West, Elaine May — come along every few decades, so the timing seems right. But the clock is ticking.

“Baby Mama” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Some gentle raunch.

The Life of Surrogates

2008-04-28T19:38:00.000-07:00

The Curious Lives of Surrogates
Thousands of largely invisible American women have given birth to other people's babies. Many are married to men in the military.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/129594

Jennifer Cantor, a 34-year-old surgical nurse from Huntsville, Ala., loves being pregnant. Not having children, necessarily—she has one, an 8-year-old daughter named Dahlia, and has no plans for another—but just the experience of growing a human being beneath her heart. She was fascinated with the idea of it when she was a child, spending an entire two-week vacation, at the age of 11, with a pillow stuffed under her shirt. She's built perfectly for it: six feet tall, fit and slender but broad-hipped. Which is why she found herself two weeks ago in a birthing room in a hospital in Huntsville, swollen with two six-pound boys she had been carrying for eight months. Also in the room was Kerry Smith and his wife, Lisa, running her hands over the little lumps beneath the taut skin of Cantor's belly. "That's an elbow," said Cantor, who knew how the babies were lying in her womb. "Here's a foot." Lisa smiled proudly at her husband. She is, after all, the twins' mother.

It is an act of love, but also a financial transaction, that brings people together like this. For Kerry and for Lisa—who had a hysterectomy at the age of 20 and could never bear her own children—the benefits are obvious: Ethan and Jonathan, healthy six-pound, 12-ounce boys born by C-section on March 20. But what about Cantor? She was paid, of course; the Smiths declined to discuss the exact amount, but typically, surrogacy agreements in the United States involve payments of $20,000 to $25,000 to the woman who bears the child. She enjoyed the somewhat naughty pleasure of telling strangers who asked about her pregnancy, "Oh, they aren't mine," which invariably invoked the question, "Did you have sex with the father?" (In case anyone is wondering, Lisa's eggs were fertilized in vitro with Kerry's sperm before they were implanted on about day five.)

But what kind of woman would carry a child to term, only to hand him over moments after birth? Surrogates challenge our most basic ideas about motherhood, and call into question what we've always thought of as an unbreakable bond between mother and child. It's no wonder many conservative Christians decry the practice as tampering with the miracle of life, while far-left feminists liken gestational carriers to prostitutes who degrade themselves by renting out their bodies. Some medical ethicists describe the process of arranging surrogacy as "baby brokering," while rumors circulate that self-obsessed, shallow New Yorkers have their babies by surrogate to avoid stretch marks. Much of Europe bans the practice, and 12 states, including New York, New Jersey and Michigan, refuse to recognize surrogacy contracts. But in the past five years, four states—Texas, Illinois, Utah and Florida—have passed laws legalizing surrogacy, and Minnesota is considering doing the same. More than a dozen states, including Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and, most notably, California, specifically legalize and regulate the practice.

Today, a greater acceptance of the practice, and advances in science, find more women than ever before having babies for those who cannot. In the course of reporting this story, we discovered that many of these women are military wives who have taken on surrogacy to supplement the family income, some while their husbands are serving overseas. Several agencies reported a significant increase in the number of wives of soldiers and naval personnel applying to be surrogates since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. At the high end, industry experts estimate there were about 1,000 surrogate births in the United States last year, while the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART)—the only organization that makes an effort to track surrogate births—counted about 260 in 2006, a 30 percent increase over three years. But the number is surely much higher than this—in just five of the agencies NEWSWEEK spoke to, there were 400 surrogate births in 2007. The numbers vary because at least 15 percent of clinics—and there are dozens of them across the United States—don't report numbers to SART. Private agreements made outside an agency aren't counted, and the figures do not factor in pregnancies in which one of the intended parents does not provide the egg—for example, where the baby will be raised by a gay male couple. Even though the cost to the intended parents, including medical and legal bills, runs from $40,000 to $120,000, the demand for qualified surrogates is well ahead of supply.

Another reason for the rise in surrogacies is that technology has made them safer and more likely to succeed. Clinics such as Genetics & IVF Institute in Virginia, where Cantor and the Smiths underwent their IVF cycles, now boast a 70 to 90 percent pregnancy success rate—up 40 percent in the past decade. Rather than just putting an egg into a petri dish with thousands of sperm and hoping for a match, embryologists can inject a single sperm directly into the egg. The great majority of clinics can now test embryos for genetic diseases before implantation. It's revolutionizing the way clinics treat patients. Ric Ross, lab director at La Jolla IVF in San Diego, says these advances have helped "drop IVF miscarriage rates by 85 percent."

IVF has been around only since the 1970s, but the idea of one woman bearing a baby for another is as old as civilization. Surrogacy was regulated in the Code of Hammurabi, dating from 1800 B.C., and appears several times in the Hebrew Bible. In the 16th chapter of Genesis, the infertile Sarah gives her servant, Hagar, to her husband, Abraham, to bear a child for them. Later, Jacob fathers children by the maids of his wives Leah and Rachel, who raise them as their own. It is also possible to view the story of Jesus' birth as a case of surrogacy, mediated not by a lawyer but an angel, though in that instance the birth mother did raise the baby.

Surrogacy in Japan

2008-02-05T09:14:00.000-08:00

Japan doctor says helped births through surrogacy

Sun, Feb 3 02:33 PM

A Japanese obstetrician said on Sunday he had helped two couples have babies through surrogate mothers over the past two years, criticising moves by academics to make the practice illegal.

Japan's obstetricians' association is opposed to births by surrogate mothers and academics recently drafted a proposal for the government to ban such births by law. A final report is due at the end of March, according to media.

Yahiro Netsu, one of a handful of doctors to have helped couples have children through surrogate mothers, said it was unfair to deny infertile couples the chance to have children.

"It's ridiculous to force values on people, to not allow something that has been agreed upon by two parties," Netsu, who runs a maternity clinic in Nagano, central Japan, said by telephone.

"Couples should be given the freedom to choose."

Surrogate motherhood has amassed wide media attention in Japan in recent years, in part due to a celebrity couple who had twin boys through an American surrogate mother in 2003.

The family made headlines last year when it lost a case in Japan's Supreme Court to have the boys registered in Japan. The children have only U.S. citizenship and are required to carry alien-registration cards.

Netsu, long known for defying the obstetrics' association and urging the medical community to review its opposition to surrogate motherhood, said he was currently helping another couple give birth through surrogacy.

He declined to give details on his patients, but said that prior to 2006, he helped five couples have babies through surrogate mothers.

A government survey last year showed 54 percent of respondents were in favour of allowing surrogate births, but academics have questioned the health risks for both the surrogate mother and child, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said.

Netsu said he also helped an unmarried 60-year-old woman give birth to a boy in December after she had gotten pregnant with an embryo created from donated egg and sperm.

Netsu, whose clinic cared for her after other medical institutions in Japan refused to see her, said the case showed that older woman were able to have children as long as they were in healthy condition.

Late childbearing, defined by the World Health Organisation as involving women over age 35, has been increasing in Japan as more women work and marry at a later age.

Surrogate Mother to Eight babies!

2008-02-05T08:47:00.000-08:00

Anita Brush is happy in her role as a surrogate mum to eight babies

By Rita de Brun
Monday February 04 2008

Six years ago, Dublin couple, John Mc-Mahon and Gerard Whelan became the proud fathers of triplets. The event came about with the help of Anita Brush, a surrogate mother from California.

Fiercely protective of their family unit, John talks about their experience only to help others considering surrogacy. The closeness and affection between John, Gerard and Anita is obvious and they all agree that they knew instinctively when they met, that they would have kids together.

They had a good feeling about Anita when they met. "We liked each other instantly," says John. "We all knew that our meeting was meant to be.

"Of course, when we discovered that we were having not one or two but three children, we were totally blown away but quite overjoyed, and we trusted Anita to do whatever she could to keep our babies safe.

"We knew she wouldn't drink, smoke or take drugs, as she simply wasn't the type. She's a genuinely caring person, so we knew she would take it easy and try to hold on to the babies until term;,and she did," John adds.

"Anita is a close friend of our family and often comes to stay with us. She and the children get on really well together. We have a very deep and special bond with her and we know that without her, we wouldn't have our kids, so we'll always be grateful."

At 41, Anita Brush has a figure that most women in their early twenties would be glad of. On looks alone, nobody would ever believe that she is a mother of 11.

"Ten years ago, my then husband was training to be a teacher, so I needed to go back to work," says Anita. "I wanted a job that would allow me to be around for our children, and something that would have a positive impact on others.

"I had previously worked in childcare and always loved children. Also, I enjoyed being pregnant and wanted to help childless couples."

Anita had three children of her own, the youngest being two, when she first became a surrogate mother.

"My first pregnancy was for a heterosexual Japanese couple," she recalls. "Then the following year I had a baby for a heterosexual American couple. The triplets arrived in 2001. Then, two years later, I had twins for a gay couple in the Midwest, and in October of the following year, I had a third child for that same couple. In all, I had eight babies in seven years for four couples."

Then, she laughs: "Well I didn't set out to have that many, you know."

Anita says that for her, the highs were in not having to worry about the practicalities of raising a child.

"I get immense enjoyment out of being pregnant, but I have no difficulty handing the baby over to the parents at the birth," she adds. "They take over the responsibilities, and I go home to my family.

"Of course, my body isn't aware of that arrangement, so I have to get used to the hormonal changes that happen after giving birth," she concedes.

"And there have been times, following the births, when I've felt the need to hold a baby close. When that happens, I just hold my friend's babies for a while and that does the trick."

As to her own children, and the impact of her surrogacy on them, Anita believes that their experience was positive.

"Their lives have been enriched by the wonderful people we've met along the way. We keep in touch with all the families, and this has been very positive for my kids. Also, they had me at home with them all the time, and that was a big plus for all of us."

Two years ago, Anita, as a guest on Good Morning America, cautioned women never to become a surrogate mother for financial gain. "Do not do this for the money," she said. "If you want to classify this as a job, it's 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

For five pregnancies, she earned a total of $130,000, and it couldn't have been easy.

"I drank a gallon of whole-milk every day for the benefit of the triplets and I gained 80lbs," says Anita laughing. I used to feel a little queasy, but never sick and it was worth it."

Describing herself as very accepting of varying points of view, Anita says that her life experience has shown that there is no such thing as an ideal family type.

"What counts is the love between the members of that family, and that's what makes Gerard, John, and their children a beautiful family."

Surrogacy in Ireland
MOST of us are familiar with Cork woman Maureen O'Connor who, with her partner Justin Pearlman (right), offered €5,000 in their search for a surrogate mother

While their story attracted substantial media coverage, there are no doubt far more Irish families who have children with the help of surrogate mothers than we know.

Most Irish couples considering the surrogacy option head overseas because there is no specific law or protections governing the process here, should complications arise.

Fiona Duffy, partner at Patrick F O'Reilly & Co Solicitors, explains that there is no specific legislation in place governing the law on surrogacy in Ireland.

But the topic was considered by the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction. Although their report, which was produced in April 2005, made many recommendations, none have yet been implemented.

At present, the surrogate mother will be registered as mother on the birth certificate. If she is married, her husband will be named as father. If she is single, the commissioning father can apply to be registered as father.

If she is not married, she alone is the guardian of the infant. This may be so even though there is no genetic link between her and the child.

The commission recommended that a child born through surrogacy should be presumed to be the child of the commissioning couple.

As to whether the identity of the donors should be withheld, their view was that this information should in the long-term be made available to any child who results from the procedure.

Of 43 surrogate families in a British study, nearly two-fifths involved full surrogacy, where the embryo is provided by the commissioning couple and therefore the carrier of the child does not have any genetic link to the child. Just over three-fifths involved partial surrogacy, where the male partner has donated his sperm through a process of insemination or IVF. The egg is provided by the host herself.

Two-thirds of the surrogate mothers were unknown to the commissioning couple prior to the surrogacy arrangement, while the remaining third of surrogate mothers were either a sister or a friend of the commissioning mother.

Researcher Fiona MacCallum said: "It is often assumed that surrogate mothers will have difficulties handing the child over following the birth.

"In fact, we found only one instance of the surrogate having slight doubts at this time."

- Rita de Brun

Embryos Created from 3 people!

2008-02-05T08:40:00.001-08:00

Embryos created with DNA from 3 people By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer

LONDON - British scientists say they have created human embryos containing DNA from two women and a man in a procedure that researchers hope might be used one day to produce embryos free of inherited diseases.

Though the preliminary research has raised concerns about the possibility of genetically modified babies, the scientists say that the embryos are still only primarily the product of one man and one woman.

"We are not trying to alter genes, we're just trying to swap a small proportion of the bad ones for some good ones," said Patrick Chinnery, a professor of neurogenetics at Newcastle University involved in the research.

The research was presented at a scientific conference recently, but has not been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal.

The process aims to create healthy embryos for couples to avoid passing on genes carrying diseases.

The genes being replaced are the mitochondria, a cell's energy source, which are contained outside the nucleus in a normal female egg. Mistakes in the mitochondria's genetic code can result in serious diseases like muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, strokes and mental retardation.

In their research, Chinnery and colleagues used normal embryos created from one man and one woman that had defective mitochondria in the woman's egg. They then transplanted that embryo into an emptied egg donated from a second woman who had healthy mitochondria.

The research is being funded by the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, a British charity.

Only trace amounts of a person's genes come from the mitochondria, and experts said it would be incorrect to say that the embryos have three parents.

"Most of the genes that make you who you are are inside the nucleus," Chinnery said. "We're not going anywhere near that."

So far, 10 such embryos have been created, though they have not been allowed to develop for more than five days. Chinnery hoped that after further experiments in the next few years the process might be available to parents undergoing in-vitro fertilization.

"If successful, this research could give families who might otherwise have a bleak future a chance to avoid some very grave diseases," said Francoise Shenfield, a fertility expert with the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. Shenfield was not connected to the Newcastle University research.

Similar experiments have been conducted in animals in Japan, and has already led to the birth of healthy mice who had their mitochondria genes corrected.

Shenfield said that further tests to assess the safety and efficacy of the process were necessary before it could be offered as a potential treatment.

A bill to allow the procedure to be regulated as a therapy for couples — once it is proven to work — is expected to be discussed in Britain's House of Commons in March

Foreign Adoptions in the US are dropping

2007-12-03T11:56:00.000-08:00

Foreign Adoptions in U.S.

By DAVID CRARY, AP National Writer

NEW YORK — The number of foreign children adopted by Americans has dropped for the third year in a row, a consequence of tougher policies in the two countries _ China and Russia _ that over the past decade have supplied the most children to U.S. families.

Figures for the 2007 fiscal year, provided by the State Department on Friday, showed that adoptions from abroad have fallen to 19,411, down about 15 percent in just the past two years.

It's a dramatic change. The number of foreign adoptions had more than tripled since the early 1990s, reaching a peak of 22,884 in 2004 before dipping slightly in 2005, then falling to 20,679 in 2006.

"A drop in international adoptions is sad for children," said Thomas Atwood, president of the National Council for Adoption. "National boundaries and national pride shouldn't get in the way of children having families."

Adoptions from China, the No. 1 source country since 2000, fell to 5,453. That's down by 1,040 from last year and well off the peak of 7,906 in 2005. Two main factors lie behind this: an increase in domestic adoptions as China prospers and tighter restrictions on foreign adoptions that give priority to stable married couples between 30 and 50 and exclude single people, the obese and others with financial or health problems.

One consequence, adoption agencies say, is that the waiting time to complete an adoption from China has more than doubled to 24 months or more.

Adoptions from Russia also dropped sharply over the past year _ from 3,706 to 2,310. Russian authorities suspended the operations of all foreign adoption agencies for several months earlier this year and have been reaccrediting them only gradually. Like China, Russia has been trying to boost the number of domestic adoptions.

U.S. adoptions from South Korea and Haiti also declined significantly, although the overall drop was partially offset by large increases in adoptions from Guatemala (up from 4,135 to 4,728), Ethiopia (732 to 1,255) and Vietnam (163 to 626).

Tom DeFilipo, president of the Joint Council on International Children's Services, said adoptions from Guatemala could decline over the coming year as its government _ under intense international pressure _ tries to impose tough new regulations on an adoption industry that was widely viewed as susceptible to fraud and extortion.

The State Department has advised Americans not to initiate adoption applications for Guatemala while that overhaul is under way. The proposed reforms are required under an international adoption treaty, the Hague Convention, which both Guatemala and the United States have agreed to adhere to starting next year.

Overall, DeFilipo _ whose council represents many international adoption agencies _ found reason for optimism in the new statistics.

"What you're seeing is fewer countries sending very large numbers of children and a broader range of countries participating," he said. "Over the long term, I think this is a healthy trend."

He mentioned Kenya, Peru and Brazil as countries not now among the major sources of children, but which might increase international adoptions in coming years.

Michele Bond, deputy assistant secretary of state for overseas citizen services, also viewed the new figures positively.

"Interest in intercountry adoption remains very strong," she said in a telephone interview. "People are increasingly well-informed. They're more likely to look at new countries instead of always looking at the same small number of countries."

By contrast, another adoption expert, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet, depicted the new numbers as "totally depressing."

She said China and Russia reflected a trend in which countries opened themselves up to international adoption, then scaled back. She attributed this in part to UNICEF and other international organizations encouraging countries to care for children within their homeland, even when domestic programs such as foster care might be inadequate.

"UNICEF is a major force," Bartholet said. "They've played a major role in jumping on any country sending large number of kids abroad, identifying it as a problem rather than a good thing."

UNICEF's child protection spokesman, Geoffrey Keele, said the U.N. agency does believe it is preferable to care for orphaned or abandoned children in their own countries if good homes could be found for them.

"The best interests of the child must be the guiding principle," he said. "We don't go about discouraging international adoption. We just want to be sure it's done properly."

Thomas Atwood, of the National Council for Adoption, said there should be no competition between domestic and international adoption. With an estimated 143 million orphans worldwide, he said, there was enough need to go around.

For U.S.-based adoption agencies, the biggest impact has been on those specializing in placing children from China.

The president of one of the largest such groups, Joshua Zhong of Colorado-based Chinese Children Adoption International, said the agency had placed about 620 children this year, down from about 1,200 in 2005, while average waiting times had increased from nine months to two years.

Some clients are so committed to adopting a Chinese child that they are willing to wait, Zhong said. "Others say forget about it."

For the second straight year, no Romanian children were adopted by Americans. The Eastern European country, which provided 1,119 children to U.S. families in 2000, has banned adoptions by foreigners, except for relatives.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Shortage of Donors in Scotland

2007-11-13T20:22:00.000-08:00

Donor crisis means IVF couples face 3-year wait

FRANK URQUHART

CHILDLESS couples are having to wait up to three years for a chance to conceive because of an unprecedented shortage of sperm and egg donors in Scotland, it was revealed yesterday.

Fertility experts say the crisis has been caused by new legislation, which ended the donors' right to anonymity, enabling children born after IVF treatment to make contact with their biological parents.

Dr David Farquharson, the clinical director, Women and Reproductive Services, at NHS Lothian, said: "We are looking at ways of reorganising the service so that we can offer first appointments for people more swiftly.

"An extra investment of £170,000 was made into the service and this resulted in a reduction of waiting times at one stage to 19 months. However, rather than have to disappoint patients, at present, we are saying to potential recipients of IVF treatment that there could be a wait of up to three years."

Launching a fresh appeal for donors, Dr Mark Hamilton, the lead consultant at the Aberdeen Fertility Clinic, said that before the right to anonymity was abolished, the clinic had never had a waiting list for sperm donations. But two years ago, after the regulations came into force, only two men came forward as volunteer donors for an area covering the whole of the north and North-east, as well as the Western and Northern Isles.

There is now a nine-month waiting list for sperm donations. Meanwhile, the number of egg donors has fallen from 17 to nine since 1998, with a waiting list of up to two years.

There are currently 29 couples waiting for an egg donor and 17 couples waiting for sperm donations in the area.

Dr Hamilton explained that every year about 20 couples were referred to the centre in Aberdeen for egg donation and 45 for sperm donation.

He said: "It doesn't sound like a lot of numbers, but if you are the ones who can't have a child it's a pretty ghastly situation."

The shortage of donors was, he said, a national problem and not unique to the Aberdeen clinic. He said: "It was always difficult to tempt people to be egg and sperm donors - and that is for understandable reasons.

"But the rules and regulations around egg and sperm donation have changed in recent years - principally around anonymity issues, and nowadays the legal situation is that donors have to be identified potentially by children conceived in this way.

"That identification will not happen until the offspring reach the age of 18, unless they get married before that time.

"Naturally, that might put some people off and so nationally there has been a trend in recent years of fewer donors coming forward. That has led to a bit of a shortage nationally and in the local situation it has been more of a struggle.

"We are leading a kind of hand-to-mouth existence in terms of getting sufficient donors to meet the need."

Dr Hamilton revealed: "The waiting times now for egg donation are approaching a couple of years. Previously, we didn't have a waiting list for sperm donation and now the waiting time is something like nine months."

The cut-off age for treatment is 45, which could mean that some couples are too old to undergo IVF by the time donor eggs or sperm become available.

'Sophie has made us complete'

MARIE and Gus MacRae, both 32 from Inverness, are among the lucky ones. Their daughter, Sophie, conceived after IVF treatment, will be six months old this week.

Mrs MacRae explained that she was 19 when she discovered she was incapable of producing eggs and that her only chance of becoming a mother would be through a volunteer egg donor.

"We were devastated, but we weren't thinking along the lines of a family at that stage," she said. "We decided to put things on hold until we were a bit more settled and I went to the clinic for the first time when I was 26."

The first two attempts at implanting a fertilised egg failed. But at the third she conceived.

Mrs MacRae, whose husband works as an offshore scaffolder, said: "You can't put into words what we feel about these people [the donors]. They are amazing.

"Gus and I have been together since we were 17, so we were quite happy the two of us, but there was always something missing. Sophie has made us complete.

"We had two failed attempts and the third one worked.

"In between we had treatments and tests and we were then on the waiting list for donors.

"We had to wait a year and a half to two years for our first treatment to start."

She added: "The first two attempts we had were under the old laws and we had waiting lists then. When we heard about the new laws we were concerned because we thought it was going to take longer to get a donor.

"We were told the waiting list was going to be two to three years at worst. We did an anonymous TV interview to help recruit donors so we were lucky - we got moved up the list quite quickly because of the recruitment drive."

NSW Government and Sperm Donor laws

2007-11-13T20:19:00.000-08:00

NSW govt 'stalling on sperm donor laws

November 4, 2007 - 9:24AM

The NSW government has been accused of sitting on its hands over law reforms surrounding sperm donorship.
Opposition health spokeswoman Jillian Skinner said the changes outlined on Sunday in the Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) bill were first proposed by the Iemma government in 2003.
"Proposed new laws to assist donor children to know who their fathers are have been a long time coming," Ms Skinner said.
"The state government introduced draft legislation to Parliament in 2003 but has ignored the pleas to move on it ever since."
The ART bill required sperm donors to add their names to a register enabling their children to make contact once they turn 18.
NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher says the changes will bring NSW into line with other states.
"I have had representations from people in the past who have argued that they should have been able to find out who their donor fathers were and I have always been sympathetic to that view," Ms Meagher said.
"The rights of children will now be enshrined in the legislation so that any child born through ART will, after they turn 18, be able to know the details of their biological parents."
Ms Meagher said the changes would also cover women who donate ova, while the bill would require ART service providers to offer counselling to ensure all donors "understand the implications of the procedure".
Donors would not be obliged to have contact with their offspring, she said.
"In fact, the bill will offer additional protection for donors by providing that donated sperm and ova may only be used in a manner that complies with the donor's wishes.
"For example, a donor from a distinct ethnic community may stipulate that their donation is only to be offered to members of that community."
Ms Meagher said it was not expected to lead to a drop in sperm or ova donations.

New Sperm storage for male cancer patients

2007-11-13T20:17:00.000-08:00

Giving Male Cancer PatientsBetter Odds at Being a Dad
By KEVIN HELLIKERNovember 13, 2007;

Before David Goodack underwent cancer treatment at age 20, nobody suggested he preserve a sample of his sperm. Mr. Goodack himself didn't think of it, even though his physician warned that the necessary surgery could render him infertile -- as it did. "I was just thinking about surviving," says Mr. Goodack, a Kansas City, Mo., press foreman, now 44 and childless.

Since Mr. Goodack's surgery, hundreds of thousands of babies have been conceived with preserved samples of sperm. Yet a September article in the journal Cancer found that during the decade ended in 2005, only 18% of 821 young, male cancer patients had chosen to freeze samples of their sperm before undergoing treatment. Experts say the problem is that amid the terror of a cancer diagnosis, the only immediate concern too often is survival. At a time when survival is more the rule than the exception for young cancer patients, child-bearing options are an unnecessary casualty of treatment.

Now, two advocacy groups are teaming up with a for-profit sperm bank to make sperm-collection kits available across the country. The kits -- which will be distributed to oncology professionals nationwide starting this month -- contain the materials and instructions necessary for patients to produce a usable sperm sample at home or in the hospital. It includes a postage-paid package for fast delivery to Cryogenic Laboratories Inc., a Roseville, Minn., sperm bank, so no ice is needed for transport. Cryogenic Laboratories will charge $625 for processing and freezing the specimen for one year. The storage cost of each subsequent year -- frozen sperm can remain potent for decades -- is $280. In some cases, insurance will help defray that cost.
Of the 35,000 young men diagnosed with cancer each year, about 90% risk losing their fertility to chemotherapy, radiation or surgery. Cancer treatments sterilize men and women alike, but preserving the fertility of women is more complicated and expensive -- and more publicized.
The kit's arrival in oncology offices is designed to raise awareness. Major academic cancer centers are likely to offer fertility options. And men can on their own seek out one the many other storage facilities available -- particularly in big cities -- if they think of it. But about 80% of young men receiving cancer treatments do so in community hospitals, often in cities that lack sperm banks, says Lindsay Beck, founder of nonprofit Fertile Hope and the creator of the new kit. She adds that 20 states lack sperm banks altogether. In 2002, the Journal of Clinical Oncology published two surveys -- one showing that only 51% of 201 young, male cancer patients had been offered sperm banking, the other showing that 48% of 162 oncologists either never broached fertility with eligible male patients or did so less than 25% of the time.
"A lot of oncologists out there will see only a handful of adolescents or young adults a year, so they're not thinking about fertility," says Brandon Hayes-Lattin, an Oregon Health & Science University oncologist specializing in young-adult issues.

The kit, called Live:On, is also designed to eliminate a dilemma facing some men: whether to postpone treatment while pursuing sperm preservation. Gathering information about sperm preservation -- where and how to do it, how to ship off a specimen if no bank is nearby -- can take a few days. That could delay treatment of some fast-growing cancers. Armed with the kit soon to be available in oncologists' offices, however, a patient could preserve his child-bearing options in a matter of hours.

Cryogenic Laboratories will donate an unspecified percentage of its storage fees to its two partners in the effort, the Lance Armstrong Foundation and Fertile Hope, an organization dedicated to increasing fertility options for young cancer patients. Through Fertile Hope, financially strapped patients can apply for discounts.

Success rates for conceiving babies with preserved sperm vary according to technique. The September journal of Cancer article reported that of those young men who tried using their specimens for procreation, 36.4% succeeded with intrauterine insemination and 50% succeeded with two more-expensive techniques -- in-vitro fertilization and intracytoplasmic sperm injection. The Lance Armstrong Foundation says that its namesake, the world-renowned cyclist, owes his three children to sperm samples preserved before he underwent cancer treatment.
• Email: healthjournal@wsj.com

Potential new regulations for surrogacy in India

2007-11-01T14:10:00.000-07:00

New laws to rein in 'womb business'31 Oct 2007, 0057 hrs IST,Mahendra Kumar Singh,TNN

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Govt_mulls_laws_to_regulate_surrogacy/articleshow/2503791.cmNEW

DELHI: Foreigners lining up to rent a womb in India will soon have to face legal regulations being planned by the ministry of women and child development (WCD). Surrogacy, an area unregulated till now, meant that childless couples from abroad as well as in the country could get away with renting a womb at terms often to the disadvantage of a needy women who stood the chance of being exploited. Women and child development minister Renuka Chaudhary said that the ministry was considering a law to regulate the business of surrogate motherhood and sperm banks on the lines of similar laws in other countries. Women's organisations have long been demanding a law on surrogate motherhood and hiring of wombs in India. "The sensitive issue of surrogacy in the absence of laws or regulations has become a free playing field for unscrupulous intermediaries who lure and push uneducated and poor women into surrogate motherhood," a WCD ministry official said, emphasising the need for the law. It is argued that there was every possibility of misuse of children born out of surrogacy for terrorism, prostitution or unethical genetic engineering research as the foreigners who pay for the child would not have any emotional bonding with the kid. India is emerging as a major destination for surrogacy as childless couples from US and Europe are lured by the prospect of a surrogate child for around Rs 100,000 ($2,250) to Rs 225,000 ($5,060) each pregnancy compared with some $40,000 or even more in the US. Many say the country can become a centre of "reproductive tourism". There is no law in India surrounding surrogacy. However, the Indian Council of Medical Reseach (ICMR) has framed national guidelines in 2005 to regulate surrogacy. The clinics that provide ART facilities take recourse to the guidelines that state that the surrogate mother has to sign a contract with the childless couple. But even then, it is not clear whether such a contract has any legal sanctity. "The rights of the surrogate mother over a baby she carries and issues like if mother dies during pregnancy remains unclear," said an official. And, the real problem arises after the birth of the baby. In the absence of any clear laws on the issue, foreigners are unable to get legal assistance when it comes to taking their child back to their home country.

Parents deceived in UK surrogacy

2007-11-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

Judge warns agencies after surrogate mother dupes couples to keep babies· Judge rules that woman hands over boy to father· Compulsive desire to parent led to deception
Clare Dyer, legal editorWednesday October 31, 2007The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/story/0,,2202095,00.html
A high court judge has issued a stern warning to surrogacy agencies to carry out more stringent background checks after it emerged that a surrogate mother had deliberately duped two couples into believing she had miscarried their babies.
The woman, named only as Mrs P, entered into the surrogacy deals and conceived using sperm from the two fathers with the intention of keeping the two children for herself, the judge ruled. One of the children was nearly four years old when her father learned of her existence.

Mrs P already had three children of her own by different fathers but was motivated by "a compulsive desire to bear further children", Mr Justice Coleridge said. It was only when her own eldest daughter, 19, blew the whistle to the surrogacy agency, that the two couples learned the miscarriages had never happened.
The judge said surrogacy arrangements were now a feature of contemporary life. "When all goes according to plan they are a way of remedying the agony of childlessness. However, when the arrangements do not go according to plan the result, in human and legal terms is, putting it simply, a mess," the judge said.
He added: "As this case illustrates, women who put themselves forward for this role are very exceptional and may well have real unmet psychological needs of their own. When the arrangements go wrong the cost in terms of appalling emotional pain for the parties is huge.
"I would urge all agencies to ensure their checks into the background of all parties to these essentially artificial child birth arrangements are as thorough as they can be."
The elder of the two children born by surrogacy, a girl, was about to turn four when Mrs P's daughter told the agency that had set up the deal of her mother's deception.
Her true father , who had paid £850, and his wife decided not to apply to have her live with them but sought a court order for contact with her.
He later reached an agreement with Mrs P that the girl would be told at the appropriate time who her real father was and be allowed to see him.
The father of the second child, a boy, discovered just before his birth in December 2005 that there had been no miscarriage. He and his wife took the case to court, fighting Mrs P and her husband for the right to bring up the boy.
The judge said: "I make no secret of, or apology for, the fact that I have found this a particularly difficult case to decide." He ordered that the boy, by then 18 months old, should be handed over to his real father and his wife.
The ruling was handed down last July but the case was heard behind closed doors and the judgment was made public yesterday.
The judge said that the Ps had been good parents to the boy but had deliberately embarked on surrogacy with the object of having another child for their family and had never intended to hand the baby over. Mr P had had a vasectomy and the couple had investigated adoption and fertility treatment. All their actions were consonant with "a desperate desire to parent more children by fair means, or failing that, foul".
The question was which set of parents would be better for the boy's upbringing in the long term, and after a protracted legal battle, the judge chose the natural father, called J during the proceedings.
"When I confront that question and answer it I am driven to the conclusion, awful though it is from the Ps point of view, that he will thrive best in the Js' care," the judge said.
Mrs P and her husband, who were given the right to regular contact with the boy, launched an immediate appeal. But the appeal court upheld Mr Justice Coleridge's ruling and the Js took the boy to live with them in Leeds.
Mr Justice Coleridge said he had to resolve whether from the start the Ps had deceived the other two couples and never had any intention of honouring the surrogacy arrangements. This was important, he said, "because the children themselves are entitled to know in the future the factual background to their unusual conception".
He came to "the clear conclusion" that they "set out to deceive" both couples.
Surrogacy Child's best interests key in disputes
Surrogacy arrangements are legal in Britain and are regulated by the Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985 and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. A surrogate mother may not be paid for the baby but may only be given "reasonable expenses" of undertaking the pregnancy and birth. The amount is not defined but is left to the surrogate and the commissioning couple to agree.
No surrogacy agreement is binding, so the mother may change her mind and decide she wants to keep the baby. If the commissioning couple disagrees, the case will have to go to court. In most cases the commissioning father and the surrogate mother will both be genetic parents, so they will have an equal claim. The courts will be reluctant to move a child who has bonded with the surrogate mother, but the decision will come down to where the child's best interests lie.

Another surrogacy story in India...

2007-10-23T11:30:00.000-07:00

60-year-old Indian Woman Delivers Daughter’s Twins
She is now both a mother and a grandmother. It is as strange as strange can go in a country like India.

http://www.medindia.net/news/60-year-old-Indian-Woman-Delivers-Daughters-Twins-27298-1.htm

Yes, a 60-year-old woman in Pune in western India, has delivered twins fertilized out of her own daughter’s ovum. The children were born on Sep.21, according to Dr Sunita Tandulwadkar, head of the In Vitro Fertilization department at the clinic where the whole dramatic episode took place. The daughter was suffering from genital cancer and had to go in for surrogacy. But neither she nor her husband would settle for a surrogate mother from outside their family. And the girl’s mother came forward to bear and deliver. Dr Tandulwadkar noted that usually surrogate mothers happened to be young and hence this once was indeed exceptional. The family was told that a number of injections would be administered and besides there were risks involved. And, as it happened, not one, but two embryos were to be implanted in her womb. But the old woman didn’t flinch right through, observed Dr.Tandulwadkar appreciatively, almost overawed by the old woman’s determination. The pregnancy was uneventful in first six months but later the surrogate mother developed high blood pressure. For almost 32 weeks the woman could pull on with her pregnancy, but her old age and physical condition in general made it impossible to continue carrying the foetuses any further. “Considering her age and her status of hypertension, a decision for a Caesarian was taken. Finally two male babies—1.7 kg and 1.4 kg—were delivered,” said Dr.Tandulwadkar. The twins are healthy, reports say. Source-Medindia

Surrogacy in India

2007-10-23T11:08:00.000-07:00

Two women and a baby-
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071017/asp/atleisure/story_8444169.asp

Chaos reigns in the surrogacy market in the absence of a law on surrogacy, Reena Martins discovers

Malini Aggarwal (name changed) wanted a baby — and thought that Sarita was the answer to her problem. The 42-year-old upper middle class Mumbai professional couldn’t carry a baby to full term and was ecstatic when Sarita, a 23-year-old slum dweller, agreed to rent her womb.
All was quiet — until the twelfth week, when Sarita threatened to abort Malini’s baby if she did not cough up an additional Rs 1,00,000. The Aggarwals had no choice but to concede. A new contract was signed between the two, spelling out a revised compensation of Rs 3.5 lakh to be paid to Sarita.
In Mumbai, Dr Nikhil Datar, a gynaecologist and medico legal consultant, was confronted with a case where a 40-something upper middle class couple had to pay an additional Rs 1 lakh when the surrogate insisted on keeping one of the couple’s twins she was carrying. Her rationale: “I was paid to carry only one child.”
The last couple of years have been seeing more and more women fulfilling their dreams of motherhood, through both related and unknown women. Dr Indira Hinduja, an infertility specialist in Mumbai, says that among her patients, the number of couples opting for surrogates has doubled in the last five years.
The high financial stakes — most couples agree to pay the surrogate mother several lakhs — and the absence of a law governing the practice of surrogacy have, however, rendered these deals increasingly fragile. Money is often a point of dispute, and there are occasions when surrogate mothers are reluctant to completely break off ties. Dr Hinduja speaks of cases where the surrogate mothers insist on seeing the children they’ve borne every birthday.
Lawyers and couples hiring surrogates try to draw up contracts that they hope will be foolproof. But contracts can always be breached — as Mumbai High Court lawyer Amit Karkhanis, who tried to broker peace between the Aggarwals and Sarita, discovered a few weeks ago.
The law itself can pose a problem. Section 23 of the Indian Contract Act deems an agreement unlawful if it defeats the provisions of other laws; causes injury to a person or property; or if the court regards it as immoral or opposed to public policy. In the present scenario, the final call rests with the courts, which could consider surrogacy “a moral wrong, even if an ethical right,” says Dr Gopinath Shenoy, a Mumbai gynaecologist and former judge of the Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, Mumbai suburban district.
The National Guidelines for Accreditation, Supervision and Regulation of ART (Assisted Reproductive Techniques) Clinics in India, which include dos and don’ts on the issue of surrogacy, are yet to be enshrined in legislation. The guidelines, drafted in 2001, are currently undergoing some last minute revisions by Dr Hinduja, a member of the National Advisory Committee for ART.
But even if the guidelines become law, the odds could favour the surrogate. “After all, a woman who carries the child can be the lawful mother — nobody can refuse her that,” says Dr Hinduja.
As per the guidelines, a surrogate aborting another couple’s child in the first trimester of pregnancy will have to refund the couple the money paid to her while she carried their unborn child. However, according to the guidelines, an abortion between the 12th and 20th weeks of pregnancy, under the “medical advice of two medical practitioners,” made mandatory by the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, would absolve her from returning the money given to her.
The guidelines are, however, mum on the issue of compensation for the surrogate or her family if she gets injured or dies because of complications caused by the pregnancy or childbirth.
“Surrogates do not always envisage the possible risks related to the various minor surgical procedures in IVF (in vitro fertilisation) that they would have to undergo, however minor,” says Dr Datar. One of the commonest of these procedures is the cutting back of embryos, to prevent multiple pregnancies.
While the revised guidelines no longer bear the clause that put the onus of a surrogate’s safety entirely on her, not everybody is relieved. “This could result in a blame game between the parties,” says Dr Nayana Patel, an infertility specialist in Anand, Gujarat, who worries about the “legal position” of her clinic, should anything “go wrong with the health of the surrogate”.
The guidelines go to great lengths to protect the surrogate and the unborn child from HIV — forbidding the surrogate from sharing syringes, undergoing blood transfusion from uncertified blood banks and even abstaining from sex during pregnancy. Neither she nor her husband can have an extramarital relationship during the pregnancy, or for six months before signing up to be a surrogate.
Before putting them through IVF procedures, ART clinics say they test surrogates twice within a span of three to six months for HIV — which is the window period during which the virus could evade detection.
But a surrogate could turn HIV positive during pregnancy. And not all clinics insist on testing during this period. Some experts, like Dr Kamala Selvaraj, an infertility specialist in Chennai, use the weapon of fear to keep surrogates free of possible infection.
“They’re told that they would lose the baby if they have sex during pregnancy,” she says. Risk, clearly, is one constant in the contract between a surrogate and the biological couple. “But the contract ultimately rests on trust,” says Anamika, a 23-year-old Kathak teacher in Calcutta who hopes to be a surrogate for the second time. The ART guidelines do not permit her to lend her womb more than thrice.
Legal sanction or not, surrogates like Anamika are soon finding their way into the list of noble professionals. “I tell women that it is an honourable profession,” says Dr Selvaraj. “It is better and pays more than the Rs 3,000 to Rs 5,000 a month that one gets in an office,” she adds.
And as long as the law is with them.

Freezing Eggs- Getting closer!

2007-10-23T11:07:00.000-07:00

Freezing eggs: A delicate race to turn back the clock
Unlike sperm, human eggs are difficult to preserve, but researchers say they are getting closer to success.

Josephine Marcotty, Star Tribune

Sperm are different than eggs. They are easy to acquire, and they are never in short supply. And they can be frozen, which is a huge advantage when it comes to infertility.
That last distinction, however, may soon change. Researchers say they are only a few years from figuring out how to freeze eggs. And if they do, it could revolutionize women's reproductive lives as much as the birth control pill did 40 years ago. Egg freezing would not only allow women much greater freedom in choosing egg donors, but they could also preserve their own eggs, making the biological clock a thing of the past.
"It will detoxify the whole thing," said Steve Snyder, an attorney who runs a Maple Grove infertility agency called International Assisted Reproduction Center.
Sperm freezing and banking have been possible since the 1950s. Today, there are about a dozen large sperm banks in the United States that pay donors about $75 per time. For years the banks have offered increasingly sophisticated, searchable donor databases that include photos, detailed personal and medical histories, and audio interviews. Customers, either single women or infertile men, need only pick their donor and pay a few hundred dollars, and a few days later receive a vial of frozen sperm in the mail.
Human egg cells, on the other hand, are finicky. They are the largest of all human cells and contain a lot of water. When frozen, the water crystalizes, usually destroying the cell's structure. Experts say that pregnancy rates from frozen eggs are less than 20 percent, though some claim higher success rates.
But researchers say that they are getting closer to new ways to safely freeze mature eggs. Already at least two companies are promoting themselves as "egg banks," where women can either deposit their own frozen eggs or buy those provided by other women.
Researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago recently won a five-year, $26 million federal research grant to study both how to freeze ovarian tissue and how to ripen immature human eggs outside the body. The grant, which will be shared among five research institutions, is dedicated to preserving fertility for young female cancer patients whose ovaries are often destroyed by radiation and chemotherapy.
The potential, however, may be much larger than that.
"When you graduate from college, instead of getting a car, you would have your eggs frozen," said Marla Libraty, vice president of marketing for Extend Fertility, a three-year-old Boston-based egg bank that charges about $15,000 to women who want to freeze eggs for later use. So far it has about 100 customers, she said, but the number is growing. "This will transform the way we look at having babies," she said

Traditional Surrogacy Custody Battle in Florida

2007-08-10T10:10:00.001-07:00

Surrogate Custody Battle Continues For Seminole Co. Couple Monday, August 06, 2007
A judge denied Tom and Gwyn Lamitina’s motion Friday for temporary custody and visitation rights in a custody battle with a surrogate mother in Jacksonville.
The Lamitina's, who reside in Seminole County, said they found Stephanie Eckard on a Web site called Surrogate Mothers Online. The Lamitina’s entered into a traditional surrogacy using Eckard's egg.
The couple alleges Eckard decided to keep the baby, and began demanding child support, health insurance and additional life insurance for the child. Eckard's attorney said she told the Lamitina's she wanted to keep the child before it was born. A final hearing will be held at a later date to determine final custody and how much child support Eckard is entitled to, if any.

challenging decision for couples with leftover embryos

2007-08-10T09:56:00.000-07:00

Couples with leftover embryos face ethical, legal dilemma-By Yonat ShimronMcClatchy NewspapersPublished on: 07/27/07

Yonat Shimron — A storage tank at a University of North Carolina fertility clinic holds five frozen embryos belonging to Tim and Kelly Jo Vancelette.
The Vancelettes had these embryos created in 2003 to start a family when they could not conceive on their own. In 2004, their twins, Abby and Alex, were conceived using in vitro fertilization. In 2006, Kylie was conceived naturally.

A storage sleeve holds small vials that contain embryos that are preserved in liquid nitrogen at the Duke Fertility Center in Durham, North Carolina.

Doug Raburn, an embryologist and lab director at the Duke Fertility Center, looks in on the lineup of vacuum flasks that contain embryos and sperm samples from clients.

Now the Vancelettes are faced with an increasingly common dilemma: what to do with their unused embryos.
Their choices are limited. With a ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, they have few avenues for scientific donations. They could give the fertilized eggs to another couple, they could have the embryos destroyed, or they could freeze them.
For now, they're freezing them. The Vancelettes think they may want one more child, though they probably won't need five embryos for that. The couple frequently talks about their options, especially when they get the $250 storage bill each year. So far, they have not come up with a good solution.
Like thousands of other couples who go through in vitro fertilization each year, the Vancelettes have decided not to decide. They've reluctantly found themselves at the center of an explosive political and moral debate about the status of embryos — one that pits President Bush and two of the nation's largest religious groups against a majority of Americans who favor using human embryos to develop cures for diseases.
"You go into it thinking 'I want a baby,' not 'I will have all these moral and ethical issues,'" said Kelly Jo Vancelette, who added that she would seriously consider donating to science.500,000 embryos may be in limbo
A 2002 study by the RAND Corp. estimated that 400,000 frozen embryos are stored in the nation's fertility clinics. Given that thousands more in vitro procedures have been performed since then, the number is likely to top 500,000 now.
Most of these embryos are a consequence of in vitro fertilization — a process in which a dozen eggs are aspirated from a woman's ovaries and joined with sperm in a petri dish. Doctors harvest more eggs than needed for a single pregnancy because it may take several tries before an embryo implants in the uterus.
Remaining embryos are stored in liquid nitrogen at minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit as couples wrestle with the so-called "disposition decision." Increasingly, many couples choose to bank them.
"People have trouble letting go," said Dr. Stan Beyler, lab director at the University of North Carolina's Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Clinic. "They don't want to have any more kids. They don't want to have the embryos destroyed. They don't want to give them to anyone else. So they're in limbo."
A recent study by researchers from Duke University and Johns Hopkins University found that given a choice, 60 percent of patients who had undergone in vitro fertilization would like to donate unused embryos to stem cell research. Stem cells from embryos can form into any cell of the body, holding promise for combating Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries and stroke.Stem cell labs are few
But few places across the country do stem-cell research. In part, that's because there's no federal funding for it. Bush has twice vetoed legislation that would provide federal money for stem cell research on grounds that it would destroy the embryo, which he views as destroying human life.
While a handful of states went ahead and appropriated money for such research, actual lab studies on embryonic stem cells are scattered and few.
"No one really wants the embryos right now," said Dr. Sameh Toma, medical director at the North Carolina Center for Reproductive Medicine. "There's no one to donate them to."
Consent policies vary from clinic to clinic, but couples who want to donate their unused embryos toward such research often have to find a lab willing to take them and pay shipping costs.
At Toma's clinic, couples are not given the option to donate the embryos for research unless they specifically ask for it. Instead, the research option falls under the broader category of destroying the embryo, which is what scientific research ultimately does.
Arthur L. Caplan, a leading bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, decries the "howlingly obvious ethical inconsistency" surrounding embryonic stem cell research. On the one hand, clinics destroy embryos every day. On the other hand, scientists can't use those embryos destined for destruction for research.
"People who object to embryonic stem cell research have done nothing to shut down clinics that destroy embryos every day," he said.Politics at play
Most scientists look forward to an end to the federal funding embargo, and many think that it could happen after Bush leaves office in January 2009. Leading Democrats and Republicans running for president have expressed support for embryonic stem-cell research.
Even if federal funding becomes available, the demand for embryos may not be immediate. The science is still new, and it will take time before researchers are able to use embryonic stem cells in medical applications, some say.
"There isn't a great need for frozen embryos right now," said Brigid Hogan, chairwoman of Duke's Department of Cell Biology, who studies embryonic stem cells in mice.
Some clinics have been more successful with another kind of embryo donation — to another couple. At the North Carolina Center for Reproductive Medicine, a dozen babies have been born to women who received donated embryos in the 10 years since the center started the program.
Still, most couples are leery of donating their embryos to another couple.
"These will turn into our kids," said Kelly Jo Vancelette. "They may one day ask, 'Why didn't you keep us?'"
Federal legislation approved in 2005 further complicates embryo donation. The Food and Drug Administration views embryos as donated tissue, much like a kidney. As such, donors must undergo blood tests both before and after the egg is fertilized to rule out diseases such as hepatitis and AIDS. Many couples who have already gone through weeks of grueling hormone treatments don't want to undergo more medical screenings.
That leaves most couples with two options: destroy the embryos or keep them indefinitely. Into this mix fall moral considerations about the status of the embryo. The Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention — the nation's two largest religious groups — both view embryos as human life and therefore, oppose their destruction. Infertile Catholic couples are taught to shun assisted reproduction altogether and adopt a child instead.
Regardless of religion, most couples recognize that the embryo holds the promise of human life.
"I sort of consider them my kids, and I sort of don't," Kelly Jo Vancelette said. "They're our babies to be."
Some willing to donate to research
Another parent likened her five frozen embryos to a set of opportunities that would allow her and her husband to expand their family if they choose.
"I worked incredibly hard for those seven embryos," said Elisabeth Morray, 31, mother of newborn twins Julian and Isabelle, who were conceived after fertility treatment. "I feel like they're an investment in our future."
Morray said she did not consider the frozen embryos living entities but rather potentially living entities. As such, she said she would not hesitate to donate them to research.
These deeply personal views of the embryo are a major reason many couples struggle with their disposition decision. And those struggles are affecting more people. In 2005, there were 132,242 U.S. procedures using assisted reproductive technology, according to preliminary figures from the Centers for Disease Control. That's more than double the 59,142 procedures in 1995.
Doctors don't have any easy solutions.
"We know that when couples start down this path they're so focused on having a child," said Dr. David K. Walmer, director of the Duke Fertility Clinic. "You can give them all the counseling you want. They're not focused on it. They just want to make it work."
Kelly Jo Vancelette is proof of that.
"Once I got it into my head I wanted a baby, nothing was going to stop me," she said. "I will take all these moral and ethical dilemmas people throw at me." Having a baby, she added, is "worth it."
THE STUDY
Researchers from Duke and Johns Hopkins universities asked 2,210 in vitro fertilization patients what they would like to do with their unused embryos. Of the 1,244 who responded:
• 49 percent said they preferred to donate them to science.
• 60 percent said they preferred to donate them for stem cell research.
• 63 percent of the women preferred stem cell donation.
• 51 percent of the men chose stem cell donation.
• 22 percent said they were somewhat or very likely to donate them to another couple.
• A similar percentage said they preferred to destroy the embryos.
OTHER COUNTRIES
What happens to unused embryos?
United Kingdom: They are destroyed five years after their creation, although exceptions are made.
Italy: Law passed in 2004 prohibits destruction of embryos. All embryos created during in vitro fertilization (to a legal maximum of three) must be transferred to the woman's womb.
Spain: It is legal to freeze embryos but illegal to destroy them or donate them to research. Because most couples prefer not to donate their embryos to other patients, 50,000 embryos now sit unused in frozen storage.
Germany: No more than three eggs can be collected from a patient for in vitro fertilization. All embryos created must be transferred to the patient.
Denmark: Allows embryos to be stored for 24 months. Recent legislation allows for stem cell research and treatment. Embryo donation to another couple is illegal.
Australia: Embryos may be frozen for up to 2 years, donated to another couple or destroyed.
Belgium: Embryos may be stored for no more than 5 years, donated to a couple or destroyed.
STEM CELL SUPPORTERS
These states either encourage or support embryonic stem cell research:
• California
• Connecticut
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• New Jersey
• Illinois
• Washington
• Wisconsin

Three sisters help conceive a second baby

2007-08-10T09:54:00.000-07:00

Three sisters join forces to conceive a second baby
LUCY LAING - Last updated at 22:41pm on 5th August 2007

Two women who joined forces to produce a baby for their infertile sister hope to make history by performing the same feat again.
Alex Patrick, 34, has a two-year-old son, Charlie, conceived from an egg donated by her twin, Charlotte Pestell, and carried by her elder sister Helen Ritchie, 37.
Now the trio will attempt a surrogacy first by repeating the process.
Mrs Pestell said: "We have some frozen embryos left from last time, so hopefully I won't have to donate any more. But if I need to, I will.
Scroll down for more

Charlie with his three 'mothers': Egg donor Charlotte (left), Alex (centre), and Helen, who carried him
"Helen is happy to carry the second baby, and our husbands are all happy again for us to do it again and help Alex have a little brother or sister for Charlie."
The extraordinary process started when Mrs Patrick, 34 , was diagnosed with cervical cancer in November 1999. Doctors told her that the chemotherapy treatment she needed could leave her infertile.
Mrs Patrick, an environmental consultant, who lives in South East London with husband Shaun, 41, an engineer, said: "Being told that I would never have a baby hit me almost as hard as the diagnosis itself."
Her treatment was a success, but she remained devastated to be unable to have a family.
She said: "Every time I saw a baby, I was just filled with longing to be a mother."
Her twin Charlotte, who has three children aged four, six and nine, offered to donate her eggs to Alex, but because of her cancer treatment she could not carry a baby to full term, and Charlotte had suffered problems with her own pregnancies.
So elder sister Helen stepped in and offered to carry the baby, using Mrs Pestell's donated eggs. Mrs Pestell said: "I would have found it difficult to carry a child that had been conceived from my eggs, and then give it up.
"By Helen carrying the baby, it would mean that it wasn't biologically connected to her in any way, so it would be easier for her to hand over to Alex. Helen was happy to carry the baby - we all called her the "tummy mummy".
The treatment began in 2004. Six of Mrs Pestell's eggs were fertilised with Mr Patrick's sperm, and two days later two embryos were implanted into Mrs Ritchie's womb.
Mrs Patrick said: "We got together two weeks later and when the pregnancy test was positive we all burst into tears, including our husbands."
Mrs Ritchie, who has two sons aged nine and seven, went into labour in June 2005 at her home in Bath, Somerset.
Mrs Pestell said: "Helen didn't even have time to get to hospital. Charlie was delivered in her front room, with Alex holding her hand. She handed the baby over to Alex."
Mrs Ritchie, a nanny, who lives with her husband Phil, 45, a freelance driver, said: "I wanted to see Alex happy.
"We thought it would be easier for me to carry the baby as it wasn't my eggs. It did feel strange at times, but it also felt natural."
Mrs Pestell added: "We had to have counselling to talk through the surrogacy. The counsellor asked me what I would do if Charlie ever turned up on my doorstep after a row with Alex and asking to live with me.
"I would send him straight home to his mum. He may have been created using my eggs, but he's Alex's child."

Irish Court rules in favor of sperm donor

2007-08-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

Irish court sides with sperm donor over lesbian moms

A man who donated his sperm to a lesbian couple won a legal fight Thursday to keep his biological son in Ireland.
The judgment by Ireland's supreme court was a first in the nation, a predominantly Roman Catholic country where the rights of same-sex couples and sperm donors have not been spelled out. Now the couple, wed in a civil union ceremony in England, cannot spend long periods in Australia with their 14-month-old boy as planned but can only vacation there for up to six weeks.
Another courtroom battle between the man and the couple looms over joint custody of the boy.
Two justices, Susan Denham and Joseph Finnegan, ruled that the toddler's best interests required him to stay in Ireland near his biological father. The third judge, Justice Nial Fennelly, disagreed, arguing that no evidence was offered that the boy would be harmed by leaving Ireland.
''The case is utterly unique and unprecedented,'' Fennelly wrote in his dissent, noting that the parental rights of neither sperm donors nor lesbian couples are defined in Irish law.
Neither side has been publicly identified, following Ireland's policy of granting anonymity to family law litigants.
The lesbian couple—an Irish woman and an Australian—exchanged vows in January 2006, just after same-sex civil unions were legalized in the United Kingdom. The Irish woman was pregnant by the Irish sperm donor, who signed a contract giving him visitation rights.
The boy, born in May 2006, has his biological father's name as his middle name, and the lesbian couple initially granted the man regular visits. But tensions quickly grew, both sides' lawyers agreed.
The couple restricted the man's access to the boy, then announced they planned to go to Australia for up to a year. The man filed two lawsuits—one to restrict the trip and another seeking joint custody. The custody case is to be heard this fall.
Thursday's verdict upheld a judgment by high court justice Henry Abbott, who ruled the lesbian couple could take the boy to Australia for six weeks. The supreme court held that until the custody claim is considered, the boy should travel outside Ireland for only a limited period. (Shawn Pogatchnik, AP)

Demand for Egg Donors increases

2007-05-15T06:04:00.000-07:00

As Demand for Donor Eggs Soars, High Prices Stir Ethical Concerns

By RONI CARYN RABIN
Published: May 15, 2007
Samantha Carolan was 23 and fresh out of graduate school when she decided to donate eggs to an infertile couple. Ms. Carolan concedes that she would never have done it if not for the money, $7,000 that she used to pay off some student loans.
She has since had a second egg extraction, for which she was paid $8,000, and she is planning a third before taking a break.
“The first time, it’s frightening,” said Ms. Carolan, now 24, of Winfield Park, N.J. “It is surgery, and I don’t think I would have done it without compensation. But I had very limited pain, and it was a great experience for me. I would have done it the second time for less money or even no compensation.”
Though many egg donors derive great satisfaction from knowing that they helped someone start a family, the price of eggs has soared in recent years as demand has increased, and the sizable payments raise controversy.
A survey published this month in the journal Fertility and Sterility, “What Is Happening to the Price of Eggs?” found that the national average compensation for donors was $4,217. At least one center told the authors of the paper that it paid $15,000. Many centers did not respond.
Though laws prohibit the sale of transplant organs, sperm donors have always received small payments, and prospective parents in the United States are allowed to compensate women for their far greater expenditure of time and energy. (Many countries, including Canada and Britain, do prohibit payments to egg donors.)
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine considers compensation of $5,000 or more to “require justification” and sums exceeding $10,000 “beyond what is appropriate.”
Meanwhile, advertisements recruiting students from elite universities to donate promise tens of thousands of dollars, and donor agencies have sprung up, appealing to would-be parents with online videos and photo galleries of donors. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 5,767 babies were born in 2003 from donor eggs; the number of actual egg donations is probably much higher, however, because the success rate is fairly low.
Ethicists and some women’s health advocates worry that lucrative payments are enticing young women with credit-card debt and steep tuition bills to sell eggs without seriously evaluating the risks.
“The real issue is whether the money can cloud someone’s judgment,” said Josephine Johnston, an associate for law and bioethics at the Hastings Center, a research group in Garrison, N.Y., that specializes in medical ethics. She does not oppose compensation, but she does worry about high prices.
“We hear about egg donors being paid enormous amounts of money, $50,000 or $60,000,” Ms. Johnston said. “How much is that person actually giving informed consent about the medical procedure and really listening and thinking as it’s being described and its risks are explained?”
Adding to the debate was a proposal by lawmakers in Maryland to ban payments for eggs. Proponents of compensation say if payments are lowered or eliminated, the supply of eggs will dwindle or dry up.
“Women aren’t exactly lining up to be donors,” said Dr. Mark Sauer, director of the Center for Women’s Reproductive Care at the Columbia University Medical Center. “There are a lot more recipients than donors.”
Part of the problem is that the risks of donation have not been thoroughly studied. Although the consensus among most reproductive endocrinologists is that extraction is safe, five deaths have been reported in Britain. There are enough unanswered questions that stem cell researchers have promised not to pay for eggs.
“One of the most striking facts about in vitro fertilization is just how little is known with certainty about the long-term health outcomes for the women who undergo the procedure,” a recent report by the Institute of Medicine said.
The 2005 guidelines of the National Academy of Sciences for human embryonic stem cell research discourage paying for eggs for research. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine reimburses women only for out-of-pocket expenses like lost wages or cab fare.
“As a public agency, we felt we shouldn’t be putting money on the table that might induce someone to take a risk,” said Geoffrey Lomax, senior officer for medical and ethical standards at the institute.
So far, women have not come forward to give away eggs for research. “I just completed an outreach initiative to 21 institutions across the state that we’ve funded,” Dr. Lomax said. “No one has had an egg donated specifically for research.”
The reluctance is understandable. The process of egg extraction is time consuming, and it is not comfortable. For some women, it can be painful. A woman first has to take medications to stop her menstrual cycle and then daily hormone injections for several weeks to stimulate her ovaries to produce a crop of mature eggs at once.
The drugs may cause bloating, weight gain, moodiness and irritability, and there is a risk of a rare condition called ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome that can cause life-threatening complications, blood clots and kidney failure.
The egg extraction itself is a surgical procedure in which a thin needle is inserted through the vagina into the ovary to retrieve the eggs and liquid from the follicles. Risks include adverse responses to anesthesia, infection, bleeding or the inadvertent puncture of an organ.
It is the long-term risks, both physical and psychological, that are harder to assess. Questions have been raised about whether extraction may jeopardize the donor’s fertility, and critics worry about the potential psychological harm to a donor of eggs as a young woman who later finds that she is unable to have children.
And since egg donors go through much the same process as women trying to conceive in vitro, there are concerns that they may be prone to the higher rates of certain cancers that some studies have found among infertility patients. Still, said Dr. James A. Grifo, director of the division of reproductive endocrinology at the New York University School of Medicine, “There is no credible evidence of long-lasting effects or health consequences down the line.”
That does not necessarily mean that the procedures are safe.
“There’s no health-outcome data collected by anybody other than some voluntary reporting, and there’s no postmarket testing on how these drugs are being used,” said Susan Berke Fogel, co-founder of the Pro-Choice Alliance for Responsible Research, a project of the Public Health Institute in Oakland, Calif.
In a recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine, a Harvard Business School professor said the controversy over the price of eggs was obscuring questions of women’s health. The author, Debora L. Spar, an economist who wrote “The Baby Business” last year, calls for more studies of the drugs being used, more long-term follow-up of donors and federal regulations to ensure proper informed consent.
When Ms. Carolan went to donate, the short-term risks were described to her in detail, but she said she did not recall any mention of possible long-term risks. Her family opposed her decision because they worried about her health, she said, and her friends did not understand.
“They all think I’m crazy,” she said. “If the topic comes up, and I tell friends I’ve done it, they’re like: ‘Why? Oh my God, aren’t you afraid you have a baby out there?’ They’re so stunned and shocked.”

more on the new embryo bank...

2007-05-10T12:24:00.000-07:00

'Embryo Bank' Stirs Ethics Fears

Firm Lets Clients Pick Among Fertilized Eggs

By Rob SteinWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, January 6, 2007; Page A01
A Texas company has started producing batches of ready-made embryos that single women and infertile couples can order after reviewing detailed information about the race, education, appearance, personality and other characteristics of the egg and sperm donors.
The Abraham Center of Life LLC of San Antonio, the first commercial dealer making embryos in advance for unspecified recipients, was created to help make it easier and more affordable for clients to have babies that match their preferences, according to its founder.

Jennalee Ryan, who is selling the service, points out that selecting an embryo is more affordable than selecting both an egg donor and a sperm donor. (Courtesy Of Jennalee Ryan)
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"We're just trying to help people have babies," said Jennalee Ryan, who arranged for an egg donor to start medical treatments to produce a second batch of embryos this week. "For me, that's what this is all about: helping make babies."
But the embryo brokerage, which calls itself "the world's first human embryo bank," raises alarm among some fertility experts and bioethicists, who say the service marks another disturbing step toward commercialization of human reproduction and "designer babies."
"We're increasingly treating children like commodities," said Mark A. Rothstein, a bioethicist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. "It's like you're ordering a computer from Dell: You give them the specs, and they put it in the mail. I don't think we should consider mail-order computers and other products the same way we consider children."
Prospective parents have long been able to select egg or sperm donors based on ethnicity, education and other traits. Couples can also "adopt" embryos left over at fertility clinics, or have embryos created for them if they need both eggs and sperm. But the new service marks the first time anyone has started turning out embryos as off-the-shelf products.
Before contracting for the embryos, clients can evaluate the egg and sperm donors, and can even see pictures of them as babies, children and sometimes adults. A fertility specialist will then transfer the embryos into a client's womb or into a surrogate, which Ryan can also arrange.
"We're unique," Ryan said. "We're the only one in the world doing this right now."
Some fertility doctors and ethicists are undisturbed by the Abraham Center because the service does not differ markedly from what already happens routinely at fertility clinics.
"I know some people say: 'This is shocking. Embryos made to order,' " said John A. Robertson of the University of Texas at Austin, who advises fertility specialists on ethical issues. "But if you step back a little bit, you realize that people are already choosing sperm and egg donors in separate transactions. Combining them doesn't pose any new major ethical problems."
But others condemned the process as the unsettling culmination of recent objectionable developments, including the payment of egg and sperm donors and the growing tendency to try to select traits such as sex, intelligence and appearance.
"People have long warned we were moving toward a 'Brave New World,' " said Robert P. George of Princeton University, who serves on the President's Council on Bioethics. "This is just more evidence that we haven't been able to restrain this move towards treating human life like a commodity. This buying and selling of eggs and sperm and now embryos based on IQ points and PhDs and other traits really moves us in the direction of eugenics."

New Company offering embryos for sale

2007-05-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

Embryos for sale

A new company in America is offering embryos for sale in a package deal from around £5,000. Our correspondent talks to the Texas woman behind it and reports on the ethical furore
Is selling embryos 'off the shelf' a step too far? Post your comment using the form below-

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article1291842.ece

Carol Midgley
As any devotee of internet shopping knows, there are few things these days that cannot be bought off the shelf. Snap-on teeth, brand-new breasts, even human kidneys can be yours “to go” if you have the cash and the determination to find them.
But until now, embryos were not one of those things. Yes, you could buy yourself an egg and some sperm in separate transactions or find an IVF patient who would donate leftover embryos to you. But buying a ready-made embryo as you might purchase a Marks & Spencer suit — surely that would be taking consumer culture too far?
Apparently not. A company in Texas that calls itself “the world’s first human embryo bank” is offering couples and single women the chance to order from its batches of existing embryos after browsing detailed information sheets about the race, education, personalities, hair and eye colour of the egg and sperm donors.
The Abraham Center of Life is the first commercial enterprise making embryos in advance for unspecified recipients who pay $2,500 (£1,290) for each embryo. The total price tag for each attempt at pregnancy, including the implantation procedure, is estimated at between $8,000 and $10,000. It has provoked a predictable outcry over the creation of “designer babies” and accusations that human reproduction is being turned into a factory production line, treating babies as groceries on offer.
If you are in the business of buying babies though, it certainly seems to be a bargain. Jennalee Ryan, a mother of six, runs the company from her home in San Antonio. She says the total cost of embryo donation without involving a surrogate mother is “approximately half the cost of adoption and much less expensive than the total IVF procedure, with a greater overall success rate”, (she rates IVF at 30 per cent successful, and claims her method is nearer 70 per cent). The cost for IVF in America can range from $12,000 to $20,000. Adoption, depending on the circumstances, can run into tens of thousands of dollars but, thanks to falling birth rates, contraception and availability of abortion, babies are scarce.
Of course Ryan’s service is so far unproven. She says that the first two women to use it are five months pregnant, though we have only her word for that. Having endured a failed IVF attempt herself three years ago and witnessed many surrogate pregnancies go wrong, she claims that she is motivated more by a desire to help others than by money, and insists that those who criticise her do not properly understand what she is doing.
“If you are a pro-life person, you should be happy because I’m creating a life. If you are pro-choice, you should be happy because I’m creating choice,” she says at her home as she is bombarded for requests for interview by media outlets around the world. What about those who are uncomfortable about the notion of being able to buy instant, designer, babies off the shelf? “All babies are designer babies,” says Ryan. “We mate with people we find attractive.”
And why not, actually, you might say. People have been choosing the physical characteristics of donors for years. Arranged marriages go back centuries and constitute a form of gene selection. Is there much difference, ethically, between obtaining the sperm and egg separately and putting them together for your purposes and someone else doing it for you first? Surely it is only a logical next step in accommodating infertile people who long for a baby in the modern world?
Legally, there is nothing to stop an infertile British woman going to America and availing herself of the services of the Abraham Center of Life. If she is implanted with an embryo that she buys in the US and gives birth in Britain, then in the eyes of the law she is that baby’s natural mother (for women who cannot carry a baby, by the way, Ryan can also arrange a surrogate-mother service at extra cost). But the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority warns that a British woman seeking such treatment in America would not have the benefits and guarantees afforded by law in the UK because the fertility business is not regulated as strictly. “You must ask yourself, what will the clinic do with your records. Will it be confidential for ever? What if the clinic closes?” says a spokesman. “As the UK is unique in its standards of fertility treatments, we advise that patients who are considering going abroad check the standards and regulation of clinics in that country.”
There is confusion surrounding the service that Ryan offers, and she is eager to clear up misconceptions. The first is that people can submit a checklist of requirements — such as blue eyes, a rosebud mouth, a fondness for classical music — and she will look for matching donors to “create” a baby to suit them in a manner that evokes the word “eugenics”.
It doesn’t work like that, she says. Ryan already has donors in place to create embryos — typically 20 to 30 from a particular cycle — and she will show applicants the backgrounds of those donors so they can decide whether to accept or reject. “I don’t take orders,” she says. “I say, ‘This is what I have’ and send them the background. If they don’t think it’s right for them, they don’t have to take it.” However, she does use only sperm donors in their twenties and thirties who have at least some tertiary education — some may hold a doctorate or law degree. But, as she says: “Most people who donate at sperm banks have to be college-educated, so why doesn’t anyone shout at sperm banks?” Another misconception is that Ryan runs a clinic. What she actually does is broker between donor embryos and recipients. She hires the services of doctors to perform the medical procedures; the embryos are stored at their various clinics and not, she says laughing, in a refrigerator in her kitchen. One doctor in Houston whom she hired to create her second batch of embryos (the service has been running for only a few months) pulled out after learning what she was doing. She is keen to tell me that she does not have “thousands of embryos sitting on ice”.
Because the service is new it is relatively small: “We are still in the embryonic stages, if you don’t mind the pun.” She has a long waiting list of recipients and, in reality, each batch of embryos is “spoken for” immediately. If the service grows bigger, however, this might not be the case and the idea of “shopping” for a baby may become a fair accusation.
Ryan’s own background is complex. She says she has five children who are biologically hers, and which she raised largely as a single parent, and one adopted son. Ryan recently moved to Texas from California, where she ran an adoption business, Abagail’s Silver Spoon Adoptions, which she says is one of the largest in the nation and provides the bulk of her income. But Ryan’s local newspaper reports that two top San Antonio adoption agencies do not know her. “I’ve been around for 30 years doing adoptions and I’ve never heard of her,” Jan Couve, the executive director of Adoption Affiliates, told the San Antonio Express-News.
According to Ryan, her adoption company in California is less an agency and more a service that facilitates adoptions, while the Texas incarnation is only an adoption advertising service. She says California law allows “adoption facilitators”, who introduce pregnant women to adoptive parents for a fee, but Texas does not.
Josephine Quintavalle, of the UK campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE), is horrified by what she describes as a move towards “supermarket babies” and the “absolute commercialisation of human life”.
“There are plenty of ‘ready-made’ babies around the world that one can adopt,” she says. “This is further devaluing human life.” She worries that with a child bought in such a consumerist way there might be more scope for disappointment. “Expectations are so high now — what about if you don’t get what you want?” she says.
Robert George, of Princeton University, who serves on the President’s Council on Bioethics, says: “This is just more evidence that we haven’t been able to restrain this move towards treating human life like a commodity. This buying and selling of eggs and sperm and now embryos based on IQ points and PhDs and other traits really moves us in the direction of eugenics.” Others, however, do not see it as a particularly alarming development.
John Robertson, of the University of Texas at Austin, who advises fertility specialists on ethical issues, says: “If you step back a little bit, you realise that people are already choosing sperm and egg donors in separate transactions. Combining them doesn’t pose any new major ethical problems.”
The Abraham Center’s name is taken from the first family to use surrogacy services. The introduction to the website quotes from the Bible about how Abraham, at his wife Sarah’s urging, had a son by his wife’s slave-girl Hagar because Sarah was too old to conceive. Some of the language on the website is euphemistic; it talks of egg and sperm “donors” when they are clearly “sellers”.
According to the website, “typically a donor fee will range from $3,500 to $15,000 . . . Additional compensation is offered to those donors who have earned a post-graduate degree; have a unique skill, characteristic or trait; or if she has previously cycled with our programme and her couple achieved a pregnancy.” So far, Ryan says she has produced one batch of 22 embryos using an egg donor in her twenties from Arizona and a sperm donor from a sperm bank operated by the Genetics & IVF Institute in Fairfax, Virginia. He is a lawyer, 6ft tall (1.83m) with blond hair and blue eyes; she is a student, with brown hair and hazel eyes. All donors undergo a health screening and even provide photos of themselves as children as a guide to what the baby might look like.
A single woman in her forties from California and a married woman from Canada in her thirties are said to have each had two of the embryos implanted, and are now five months pregnant. In case they want more children, or should the pregnancies fail, the two clients divided the rest of that batch and had the embryos frozen.
Another young egg donor from Utah (blonde, blue-eyed) who works in the airline industry, is taking hormones to trigger ovulation and create another batch with the same sperm donor. “She is as sweet as can be,” says Ryan. “She is a Mormon, and one of the things that Mormons believe is that we are souls waiting for bodies. So by doing this she is helping to create the vessels for those souls.”
A single woman from California in her forties has signed a contract for two of these embryos, with a 30-day option for more. Any remainders can be shipped frozen to clients on the waiting list.
Ryan argues that her embryos are of good quality because they are from young, fertile donors, and says that there is no emotional attachment on the part of the donors. Joan, 42, from Alabama, is on the waiting list. She and her husband want a sibling for their three-year-old son and contacted Ryan after Joan failed to get pregnant using three egg donors and despaired of the protracted adoption procedure. “You get an idea of what your baby will look like, and it just seems a lot easier and more affordable. I am not going to give up until I have another baby. This seems very attractive,” she says.
Unlike in Britain, American donors can remain anonymous; whether they offer any details about themselves is up to them — and some do. Ryan says she has decided to use only those who would theoretically agree to be traced since she believes it is beneficial to the child to be able to access such details, if desired, at a later date.
Ryan says she would “love” to be able to help women from Britain and elsewhere, and has already had inquiries from Europe. “It was a control thing for me,” she says. “After years of dealing with birth mothers who decided to take [the babies] back . . . watching poor families have to kiss these girls’ butts when they know they are using drugs and alcohol in the pregnancy . . . having to tell a couple who have had their baby at home for two weeks that, actually, they have to give it back . . . If I could have a child for these people, I would do it.
“To me, it’s an answer. If you are desperate for a child, it is an option for you. People can come up with $8,000, but not many can come up with the $30,000 [the potential, accumulated costs of other routes]. I haven’t made money at this; it has cost me money, but I would be happy to break even.”
Despite some of the euphemisms on her website, I remark that she does answer a question with a straight answer. “I don’t apologise,” she says. “I believe in what I do. I am used to having stones thrown at me.”
As her service takes off, that might be just as well.
LEGAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN UK AND US
Legality of creating embryos in advance
No US law prohibits the concept of creating such embryos; in Britain it is illegal to form an “embryo bank”. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority can grant a licence under the Human Fertilisation Act to create embryos only in the course of providing treatment to a person (ie, not in advance). In the US, the embryos created are not used, their future is in the hands of the recipient; here there is a five-year limit on freezing embryos. A British citizen could undergo treatment abroad, then have the baby in Britain entirely legally.
Anonymity
In Britain, a child can contact the egg or sperm donor at the age of 18; the donor cannot trace the child. This would apply had artificial insemination taken place outside Britain. In the US, regulation is on a state-by- state basis, and donors and recipients can waive their right to future contact. Should the child grow up and want to contact his donor parents, the courts are often sympathetic.
Adoption in the US
Britons wishing to adopt internationally must undergo a Home Study assessing their suitability through a registered adoption agency to get approval from the DfES. In the US this can then be taken to adoption agencies for the matching process of finding a child, which varies from state to state. There are varying degrees of difficulty for a potential parent regarding age, marital status (some states preclude unmarried couples), sexual orientation and expense. There may be additional requirements, ie, a psychotherapy report. Many state laws also prefer the foster-care system in the hope of returning children to their natural parents. The adoption is recognised by British law, but the child must obtain entry clearance and Home Office approval to be recognised as a British citizen.

Woman left infertile after donating eggs

2007-05-10T12:16:00.000-07:00

I donated eggs to friends... now I've been left infertileby CHRIS BROOKE - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=453507&in_page_id=1770

A woman who gave her eggs to help two childless friends fears she has been left infertile by her act of kindness.
Donna Stickels, 26, revealed her personal ordeal to warn other women about the potential dangers of egg donation.
Her story began seven years ago when she offered to help a married friend who was desperate to start a family after years of failed fertility treatment.
Donna's generosity resulted in the delighted woman giving birth to twin boys and she later became their godmother.
A second donation of eggs to another friend failed to result in a pregnancy, but the woman later conceived naturally.
Although both childless women realised their dream of becoming mothers, the fertility treatment appears to have had tragic implications for Donna.
The single mother of a young boy, Donna began trying for a baby with her new partner and discovered gynaecological problems which were stopping her from conceiving this time.
She underwent two operations on an ovary and her Fallopian tubes, but was told in February the surgery had failed and she would never be able to conceive naturally.
Although the doctors would not make a definitive link with the treatment she had in donating eggs, one gynaecologist admitted: 'It could be scar tissue from the procedures.'
Donna, a nanny, said: 'When I read recently how long waiting lists are forcing infertile women to turn to friends and family for donor eggs, alarm bells started ringing in my head. Giving another couple the chance to have a baby is a fantastic feeling, but I'd urge any woman to read my story before making such a huge decision.'
Donna was aged 18 and the working mother of one-year-old Maxwell when she struck of a friendship with Victoria, a married woman in her 30s, through a charity they had volunteered to work for.
She recalled: 'One day, she was sitting on a step outside work, looking sad. We started chatting and she began to pour her heart out about her childlessness. Victoria's last remaining chance of getting pregnant was through donor eggs - though her sister had offered, she had pulled out at the last minute. I was moved by her story, so I didn't think twice and said "I'll do it for you."
'Victoria spent the next few weeks asking whether I was sure: I was. I understood the implications of a woman giving birth to a child who was genetically half mine, but it didn’t bother me - I'd been brought up by my stepfather, and, to me, nurture not nature is what makes a family.'
The clinic tried to dissuade her from going ahead because the women knew each other, but Donna insisted. After blood tests, scans and internal examinations, Donna was given fertility-boosting hormone injections to stimulate the ovaries to produce multiple eggs.
Eight eggs were late removed in hospital and Victoria - not her real name - had three embryos implanted.
'Ten nerve-racking days later, she phoned me and I just managed to make out through the delighted screams that the procedure had worked. She was pregnant, with twins.'
The boys were born in October 2001. 'I was full of pride that I’d helped two little lives into the world,' she said.
Several months later another friend Gina, who knew about Donna's egg donation, revealed she had been trying for a baby for six months and had been diagnosed with premature menopause.
She asked Donna if she would donate eggs and she agreed. 'I just didn't have it in me to say no. I didn’t want to be the person responsible for her being childless.'
In order for Gina to jump the waiting list she had to give eggs to an anonymous recipient as well. It meant a higher dose of hormones and 20 eggs were retrieved.
Gina did not get pregnant from the donation, but got pregnant the following month naturally, said Donna.
Then in 2005 Donna was referred to a gynaecologist after suffering intense pain while trying for a baby with new partner Dan.
'The doctor told me that I had burst cysts on my ovary and adhesions on my Fallopian tubes which were stopping me conceiving,' she said. Surgeons removed her right ovary and tried to clear her Fallopian tubes. The day after her second operation Donna was told she could never have more children.
'I burst into tears,' 'It was as if a door had been shut in my face.' Donna said she had split from Dan under the stress of her infertility. Adding:'When I see Victoria and her boys playing in the park, my heart bursts with happiness at what I was able to do for her. But I do wish I’d been more aware of what risks were involved.'

PA court ruling involing lesbian couple and sperm donor

2007-05-10T12:15:00.000-07:00

Carpenter and Kurtz on Pennsylvania Court Ruling

http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/05/carpenter_and_kurtz_on_pennsyl.php

Dale Carpenter describes a recent court ruling involving a lesbian couple and a sperm donor:
The case involves a lesbian couple who enlisted a male friend to act as a sperm donor, resulting in the births of two children to one of the women. Although the children were raised by the two women, the biological father visited and helped support them financially.
When the lesbian couple split, each woman sought primary custody of the children. The trial court found that both were good parents, but that the best interests of the children would be served by living primarily with the biological mother. The other woman was given partial custody and was ordered to pay child support. The biological father was allowed to have his two biological children one weekend per month but was not ordered to pay child support.
The appellate court upheld the decision to award primary custody to the biological mother. It also accepted the argument that the sperm donor should help with child support. It did so on the basis of court-created "equitable estoppel" principles since the state legislature has done nothing by statute to deal with these issues.
Unsurprisingly, this decision has the religious right hyperventilating. The already hysterical Stanley Kurtz declares that this ruling and others like it will "dissolve the family" and destroy marriage as we know it. That's quite silly and Carpenter points out the many reasons why. First of all, the ruling really has nothing to do the mothers being lesbian; had they been a straight couple using a sperm donor, the issues would have been exactly the same:
Obviously, the thorny issues of assisted reproduction are not unique to gay couples. The court cited as precedent a case in which a biological mother sought and obtained child support from a biological father, who impregnated her while she was still married to her husband. (pp. 14-15) Yet Kurtz says this decision is "a dramatic illustration of the potential for same-sex marriage and Vermont-style civil unions to deconstruct the family."
Gay and straight couples were using assisted reproduction long before gay marriage became a national issue. They will continue to do so regardless of what we decide about it. Kurtz fails to understand that neither "gay marriage" nor the "mere cultural and conceptual momentum of the gay marriage movement" is producing these arrangements. Instead, the opposite is true. The idea of gay marriage has arisen largely as an answer to the problems gay families face in this country (gay couples without children, gay couples with children by prior marriage, gay couples with children by assisted reproduction). These families exist whether Kurtz likes it or not and whether we recognize gay marriage or not. The question is whether we will simply their lives and consolidate their legal obligations and rights by letting them marry.
Carpenter also points out that, in fact, this case and similar cases illustrate the need to have clearly established legal rights and responsibilities for gay couples:
The lesbian couple raising these children obviously could not marry in Pennsylvania. Marriage exists in part to help clarify legal lines of responsibility for children, to give everyone some assurance about who is responsible for them. If gay couples could marry, as straight couples under the same circumstances could, sperm donors and surrogate mothers would be more likely to surrender their parental rights to the couple since they would be reassured that the child would live in a family fully protected in the law. That is, gay marriage might have helped avoid this legalized "triple-parenting" arrangement altogether. While gay marriage won't eliminate these scenarios, just as it hasn't for straight couples, it might make them less likely. The absence of gay marriage is opening the door wider to the very arrangements Kurtz decries.
Indeed so. Most importantly, as Carpenter notes, this case had nothing to do with the couple in question being lesbian:
Nor did the women's civil union have anything to do with the decision, despite what Kurtz claims. The court mentioned it exactly once in its description of the factual background (p. 2). Their civil union was irrelevant to the equitable reasons why the biological father should pay child support (e.g., he had already voluntarily paid support, had given them clothing and toys, etc., pp. 13-14). And the non-custodial woman was a de facto parent with her own obligations to the children under state law regardless of their civil union (which Pennsylvania doesn't recognize) by virtue of her important role in raising and supporting them from birth. Nobody even disputed this.
Nor did either of the women seek to "marry" the sperm donor, much less to form a multiple-partner union with him. It's true that couples who involve a third person in their quest to have a child may want to involve that person in the child's life, but that too is not unique to gay couples. Despite decades of this practice, there's no serious movement for polygamy in this country.
All of this is just intended to fire up the base - "oh my god, that doesn't look just like my family; make it stop!"

IUIs at Home!

2007-05-03T06:11:00.000-07:00

Study Says Do It At Home!

There are few aspects of fertility diagnosis and treatment that strike more panic into the hearts of even the manliest men than the semen analysis or providing a sample for intrauterine insemination (IUI). Let's be frank -- specifically, guys get the willies about the collection of the semen to be analyzed.
Nothing like a closet-sized bathroom and a bunch of printed pornography in a public place to get your engines revved...
So, many people opt to "collect" the sample at home. But because of worries about the quality of the resulting sample -- think driving through morning rush hour traffic with a specially provided container tucked into your shirt for continuing warmth -- home collection isn't always allowed for patients who live too far from the lab.
Enter the thoughtful researchers from University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. They wanted to know just how much difference, if any, it makes to the final outcome of fertility treatment whether or not the guy, ahem, obtains his sample in the privacy of his own home or down the hall from the appropriately disinterested lab personnel. They thought there would be a difference in favor of clinic collection.
Lucky for lots of guys out there (and the women who often have to talk them into this task), they were wrong.
Following strict World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, they allowed patients to bring a sample from home if they expected their travel time to be less than 45 minutes. Controlling for variables like cause of infertility and treatment drugs used, the study compares pregnancy rates between home-collectors and lab-collectors. No significant difference was found.
Next time you and yours are asked to provide a semen sample, here's a link to the study that you want to print out and present to the fertility treatment team... Location of semen collection and time interval from collection to use for intrauterine insemination, published online in Fertility & Sterility, Gyun Jee Song, Ph.D., Rita Herko, B.S., Vivian Lewis, M.D

Late Motherhood

2007-05-01T16:06:00.000-07:00

Fertility & IVF Experts: Don't Bet All On Late MotherhoodMain Category:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=64391
In the wake of yet another new record for becoming the world's oldest mother, fertility experts are encouraged by recent research showing that older moms are as capable of good parenting as younger women -- but are increasingly concerned about women naively postponing pregnancy till later in life."Thanks to technology and today's 40- and 50-year-olds often being healthier than in the past, it is more possible than ever to facilitate their desires for pregnancy," said Dr. Nancy Teaff of Reproductive Endocrinology Associates of Charlotte, a specialist in in-vitro fertilization (IVF). "But no one should take that as reason enough to put off giving birth past the normal reproductive years."Women's focus on career development -- combined with rapid advances in fertility medicine -- has produced higher-than-ever increases in the birth rates for older mothers. The birth rate for American women aged 40-44 years has more than doubled in the last 25 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control, a greater increase than in any other age group.But there is a down side, Teaff said: "The media spotlight on women giving birth in their 50s and 60s, especially among celebrities, can be grossly misleading. It can create the fallacy that there is no ticking clock and ultimately create heartache for women who wait too long to try to conceive."In December, a 67-year-old woman from Barcelona, Spain became the world's oldest mother, after having undergone IVF in the United States. Meanwhile, results of a study announced in October by University of Southern California researchers showed that women in their 50s and 60s are just as capable of being good parents as women in their 30s and 40s.The research was based on the mental and physical health of 150 women, a third of whom had become parents in their 50's after receiving in-vitro fertilization (IVF) with donor eggs. "Virtually all of the women 42 and older who we treat with IVF use donor eggs," Teaff noted.In accordance with current guidelines established by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the age limit for women who seek fertility treatment at REACH is currently 51. From a purely medical perspective, the ideal time to have a baby is between the ages of 21 and 25.The study also reinforces the use of assisted reproductive technology such as egg freezing for those who wish to begin parenting later in life. Cryopreservation allows women in their 20's and 30's to preserve their fertility by freezing their eggs, which can be implanted in later years with successful pregnancy rates. In just the last few months, scientists at REACH have begun exploring such "egg banking" on a limited basis.About Reproductive Endocrinology Associates of Charlotte (REACH)REACH is led by a nationally recognized team of five physicians who offer comprehensive, state-of-the-art assistance for infertile couples and women with reproductive endocrine problems. REACH physicians, all long-time practitioners in Charlotte, are widely respected for their superior pregnancy success rates -- one of the highest in the region -- and for the finest patient care. REACH is a member of IntegraMed, an exclusive network of fertility practices nationwide.

Embryo Implantation Study

2007-05-01T16:04:00.000-07:00

Researcher Calls for End to Common Empirical Treatment-
http://www.fertilityproregistry.com/blog/2007/03/researcher_calls_for_end_to_co.html
From a meta-analysis of 13 studies, researchers are concluding that a commonly prescribed therapy should not continue to be used in the current manner. The treatment, prescribing glucocorticoids such as prednisone in hopes of assuring embryo implantation, is empirical as opposed to evidence-based.
Therein lies both the reason and the quandary.
After reviewing all of the studies, which involved a total of 1,759 couples in randomized controlled trials that compared success rates of IVF and IVF with ICSI, the review authors concluded that there simply is not enough evidence of benefit to using prednisone. Plus, there are possible ill effects for developing embryos that could be unwittingly exposed to the steroid hormones.
However, much of fertility treatment has evolved from the empirical use of different therapies. There's nearly always a cost-benefit ratio analysis involved.
"Empirical treatment" refers to therapies that are attempted before a diagnosis is confirmed. Doctors are often in a position to prescribe empirically when there are acceptable reasons -- such as the ethics-based inability to experiment on a population, like embryos, or in cases where the patient will be harmed strictly because of any delay in administering treatment.
On the other hand, evidence-based medicine uses a scientifically-proven framework within which to determine appropriate treatment. The reviewers of the glucocorticoid studies are simply saying that the common prescribing of this class of steroid hormones, like prednisone, has not been well-proven to be beneficial enough, even though the potential adverse effects also have not been well documented.
Patients and their doctors are still in charge of their treatment plan of choice. For many women who either miscarry frequently in the first trimester or who have unexplained failed IVF cycles, the use of prednisone will likely continue until more solid evidence of contraindication is made available.

One Gestational Surrogate's personal story...

2007-05-01T07:54:00.000-07:00

Informative website of one surrogate's personal surrogacy journey.

http://www.hillsboro.net/users/Jenn/surrogacy.htm

Australia's surrogacy debate continues...

2007-04-30T11:12:00.000-07:00

SURROGACY DEBATE MAY SPARK FEDERAL REFORMS by Harley Dennett
PHILIP RUDDOCK WILL HOLD BACK FEDERAL REFORMS UNTIL STATES SEE UNANIMITY ON SURROGACY.
http://www.ssonet.com.au/display.asp?ArticleID=6443

The surrogacy debate among the states’ top law officers may lead to federal reforms that recognise same-sex parents, with attorney-general Philip Ruddock waiting on agreement between the states.
The meeting of federal and state attorneys-general in Canberra last week began on shaky ground, with Ruddock initially accusing Victoria and the ACT of “holding childless couples hostage” over gay rights.
Later a spokesperson for Ruddock told Sydney Star Observer the attorney-general would look into amending commonwealth laws once the states agreed on a uniform model for surrogacy laws.
“He’s happy to do that once the states have agreed on a model. He’ll be happy to move forward and assess all these other issues,” the spokesperson said.
“He wants to see agreement among the states and not say ‘we’ll wait till they get their house in order’.”
The states have accused Ruddock of “lacking understanding” of the issue’s complexity and agreed to wait for a comprehensive Victorian Law Reform Commission report into parenting laws, including same-sex issues, due to be tabled by 20 June.
A spokesperson for John Hatzistergos said the NSW attorney-general will “carefully examine” the Commission’s report but any reforms required the federal government to examine its own laws too.
“Surrogacy is linked to other complex interrelated ethical and legal issues, including same-sex couples, access to IVF and access to payments and entitlements – issues that must be addressed by the federal government,” the spokesperson said.
Rob Hulls, Victorian attorney-general, said in a statement to the Star that Ruddock’s comments about gay rights were “just huff and nonsense”.
“He finally got it through his head that there are a range of complicated issues around surrogacy including the requirement that commonwealth will have to amend about a dozen pieces of legislation,” he said.
A spokesperson for Hulls elaborated that they would include superannuation, inheritance and family law for children of same-sex couples not provided for under commonwealth legislation.
“Ruddock was claiming that it was fairly easy to make federal changes to allow a national approach to surrogacy,” the spokesperson said.
“But it was pointed out to him on the matter of same-sex couples that the government had committed to removing discrimination but hadn’t done it – so obviously it wasn’t that easy.”
Any reforms dependent on state unanimity are unlikely to happen soon as the states agreed to discuss the Commission report with their respective health and child welfare ministers and defer the debate to a later meeting.
The committee will meet again in July and November, but the spokesperson for Hulls said it would be “highly unlikely” to be decided at either meeting due to the issue’s complexity and the upcoming federal election.

Adoption Curtailed for Lesbian Couple

2007-04-30T11:09:00.000-07:00

Adoption curtailed for lesbian couple
http://www.nj.com/news/times/index.ssf?/base/news-2/117756031126130.xml&coll=5
Judge instead amends birth certificate
Thursday, April 26, 2007
BY LINDA STEIN

Jo Brown's heart sank yesterday when she heard a judge say, "There's going to be no adoption today," just after she entered a courtroom.
For nearly a year Brown had been trying to adopt the twin girls she is raising with her partner, Robin Brown. Due to fertility problems, Jo Brown's eggs were implanted into Robin Brown through in vitro fertilization and their daughters, now 23 months old, were born. But only Robin's name was allowed on the birth certificate.
Although Superior Court Judge Gerald Council did not permit the adoption to go through, saying it was unnecessary since Jo Brown is the biological mother, he did issue an order to amend the little girls' birth certificates to add Jo Brown's name.
"He found that (Jo) is in fact the biological parent so she need not adopt," said Kimberly Gandy Jinks, the couple's lawyer. "He will simply give her an order recognizing her as the mother in fact."
"The order will say that my client has all the rights and responsibilities of a parent," said Jinks.
As the laws are written now there was no statute for Jinks to cite other than the adoption statute, she said.
"I'm a little bit upset," said Jo Brown. "They could have told us this months ago. Why did he have to wait for the article to be in the paper for a court date?"
The Times wrote about the Browns' plight earlier this month. Brown is a fictitious name. The Hamilton couple has requested anonymity to protect themselves and their children.
Jinks was also concerned that Council called Robin the "gestational surrogate" because "surrogacy has the connotation you're not keeping the child."
However, her name will not be removed from the birth certificate

Designer babies, what do you think?

2007-04-26T05:39:00.000-07:00

First designer babies to beat breast cancer
Mark Henderson, Science Editor

Two couples whose families have been ravaged by breast cancer are to become the first to screen embryos to prevent them having children at risk of the disease, The Times has learnt.
Tests will allow the couples to take the unprecedented step of selecting embryos free from a gene that carries a heightened risk of the cancer but does not always cause it. The move will reignite controversy over the ethics of embryo screening.
An application to test for the BRCA1 gene was submitted yesterday by Paul Serhal, of University College Hospital, London. It is expected to be approved within months as the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has already agreed in principle.
Opponents say that the test is unethical because it involves destroying some embryos that would never contract these conditions if allowed to develop into children. Even those that did become ill could expect many years of healthy life first.

Some critics fear that the tests move society farther down a slope that will lead ultimately to the creation of “designer babies” chosen for looks or intelligence.
However, the first patients say that the technology will allow them to spare their children a devastating genetic inheritance. One couple in their twenties, who would only be named as Matthew and Helen, have lost three generations to breast cancer.
Last May, the watchdog ruled it acceptable for doctors to screen embryos for genes such as BRCA1, which raise the risk of cancer in adulthood by between 60 and 80 per cent. Embryo screening was previously restricted to genes that carry a 90 to 100 per cent chance of causing disease.
The application is the first to be made under the new regime after a year of research to identify the precise mutations that affect Mr Serhal’s patients. Approval is likely in three to four months, once the HFEA has confirmed that the tests are reliable.
Women with a defective BRCA1 gene also have a 40 per cent risk of ovarian cancer. It is linked to prostate and breast cancer in men, who can also inherit it benignly and pass it on to their daughters.
Mr Serhal said that objections to screening ignored the harrowing family histories of the patients he is seeking to help, who have a chance to ensure their children avoid similar experiences. “We are talking about a killer that wipes out generation after generation of women,” Mr Serhal said. “You can have a preventive mastectomy, but this is traumatic and mutilating surgery that does not eliminate the risk.
“What we are trying to do here is to prevent this inherited disease from being a possibility in the first place. At least with these people’s children, we can annihilate the gene from the family tree.” Genes have also been identified that raise
the risk of conditions such as obesity, heart disease and mental illness. However, more than one gene is usually involved and the HFEA will not currently approve screening for these.
Supporters of screening point out that patients must use IVF even if fertile, and that many couples carrying defective genes will not choose this option. The HFEA code of practice also makes it clear that screening is allowed only for serious conditions.
When the licence is awarded, the couples will have IVF. This will allow a single cell to be removed from the embryo at the eight-cell stage, and tested for the defective BRCA1 gene. Only unaffected embryos will then be transferred to the womb.
Though the HFEA decided last May to accept applications to do this, after a public consultation was supportive, it has taken Mr Serhal’s team a year to develop a robust test for the specific mutations in the gene that each family carries.
The HFEA will not reconsider the ethics of screening, but will ask independent experts to review the reliability of the tests before awarding a licence. “We are very confident because the HFEA has already said in principle that this is OK,” Mr Serhal said.The HFEA said: “Each application for conditions such as this must be considered on a case-by-case basis because of the difference in the way that families are affected by these conditions.”
Josephine Quintavalle, of the embryo rights group, Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: “There has to be a better way of curing disease than this. It is very likely that in the not-too-distant future there will be a way of treating breast cancer that doesn’t rely on eliminating the carrier instead of curing the disease.”
Last year, The Timesrevealed the conception of Britain’s first “designer baby”, screened as an embryo for inherited cancer. The baby has since been born healthy, free from the gene carried by her mother that would have given her a 90 per cent chance of developing retinoblastoma, an eye tumour.

My Space for Adoption

2007-04-25T14:26:00.000-07:00

This couple turned to My Space to search for a baby to adopt!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18311316/

TAYLOR, Mich. - A suburban couple who spent five years trying to conceive has turned to MySpace.com in search of birth parents so they can adopt a child.
Sherry and Karl Dittmar already have a biological son and two adopted sons, but they also want a little girl.
“Dear birthmother,” their MySpace posting begins. “We cannot imagine how difficult making an adoption plan for your child must be. ... Thank you for including our profile in your search for the right family to raise your baby.”
Story continues below ↓

The MySpace page had not drawn any offers of a baby by Wednesday morning, although the couple got a lead on a pregnant teen who was considering adoption, Sherry Dittmar told The Associated Press. She said she had received more than 1,700 messages since Monday alone.
“It’s crazy,” said the 31-year-old homemaker.
It wasn’t clear if others had used the social site, popular primarily with young people, to find pregnant women considering adoption. Other Web sites specifically about adoption also post hopeful adoptive parents’ profiles.

One woman's personal surrogacy journey

2007-04-24T17:26:00.000-07:00

This website was created by a woman named Heather who shares her three surrogacy journeys. I thought her website was really informative and helpful to both intended parents and surrogates.

http://coteclan.com/home.htm

Surrogacy Documentary

2007-04-22T20:41:00.000-07:00

Documentary Explores Controversial Side of Reproduction By Gena Hymowech

Philanthorpist Gwendolyn Baba and director Nicole Conn (Claire of the Moon) thought they were doing the right thing when they hired a surrogate to give birth to their second child: Nicole could not medically carry the baby, while Gwen was getting too old to have one. Nicole was a little wary of the surrogate process, however, because she didn’t trust people to be honest. Ironically, the surrogate they chose did not present herself accurately, even though they had investigated her thoroughly. She had a medical background that made her a very bad candidate to be pregnant. While the surrogate is pregnant, it is clear the baby is not developing normally, and everyone, including Gwen, is advising Nicole not to go through with this process—that it will just be too heartbreaking.
But Nicole is in love with her baby already, and adamant about giving him the best chance possible. Because she is, the pregnancy continues, since both parents have to be against the surrogate’s pregnancy for it to be terminated. While the surrogate is pregnant with the baby, she develops a blood pressure so high that Nicholas must be delivered, even though he will be premature (100 days early, to be exact). If he is not delivered, the surrogate may die. And so begins Nicholas' own valiant fight for survival. He is extremely tiny and doctors are not optimistic he will survive. But Nicole has a strong faith that he will, and an equally strong desire to see him make it, despite the obstacles. Yet she also doesn’t want him to suffer. Nicholas cannot breathe for himself and is put on a respirator after birth. He also cannot eat and must have a tube in his stomach delivering him nutrients. Nicole cannot touch him for too long a period of time because his nerves cannot handle it. He is surviving, but just barely. In the meantime, Nicole and Gwen are becoming emotionally estranged from one another, while Nicole worries she is neglecting her first child, Gabrielle, because she's spending so much time with Nicholas. Nicholas survives and is taken off the respirator, then discharged from the hospital. But his troubles are not over. He still needs special equipment and gives Gwen and Nicole a major medical scare. And then there is the question of the future. His central nervous system is shattered, and he is already proving to be developmentally behind other children his age. What kind of life will Nicholas have and for how long? Little Man was the winner of 12 film festival awards and it’s easy to see why. This is a very emotional, moving, and fascinating story. And it's not just about a family’s love. Practically the whole hospital is in love with this amazing little boy. The DVD release is enhanced by a number of extras, including deleted scenes and a preview of Conn’s next film, about the amazing nurses Nicholas had. As a director, Conn never flinches from sharing her innermost, and sometimes contradictory feelings about her son, even when it’s painful for her to do so. Everyone else involved in Nicholas’ journey also speaks freely about their emotions, and that, coupled with the amazing video footage, makes us feel like we are on this journey with them. What also makes Little Man a good film is that it tackles a very complicated and controversial question: When is it worth it to save a baby’s life, and when will saving it simply torture the child? It’s a question previous generations didn’t even have to ponder. But we do, because we live in a technologically advanced age where very premature babies can be kept alive much longer than once was thought possible. It’s not an easy question to answer, but once we see Nicholas in his house, giggling and crawling around, it's clear Nicole made the right decision.

Jeff's top 10 list for home inseminations

2007-04-22T20:31:00.000-07:00

Jeff's Top 10 List for Home Inseminations

1. Begin taking zinc & selenium supplements ASAP. Not sure how old you are, but we did this when we were 39 and 42. When we initially had our swimmers tested prior to beginning the process, we were told we were "average" which is something NO man EVER wants to hear. We started taking these supplements - and our follow-up swimmer test showed major improvement, into the ABOVE AVERAGE range!!!! We took them almost every day (there were days we'd forget) about 1 month before we started insems and then kept on them throughout.

2. Boxers are better than briefs - make the switch at least a month before you begin insems.

3. 72 hours before the first insem, you want to "clean the pipes" --BUT, then no activity until your insem. This way, your first batch is full of maximum quantity and quality (no old spermies). You want to wait 24 hours before your next insem to let them build up again.

4. No alcohol 72 hours before insems. Marijuana should be avoided as well -- and there's evidence that it slows sperm's movement for up to 3 months - because it actually affects the sperm that are still developing in the testicles. So, if you partake of the doobage, you might want to stop now!

5. No hot tubs 72 hours before (or during the days of insems). Even when taking a shower, don't have the water too hot, and don't let it hit the boys too long.

6. Have an espresso or Mountain Dew about 30-45 minutes before you produce -- there's evidence to show the caffeine makes the little guys swim faster.

7. NO LUBRICANT during masturbation in producing the samples. There's evidence that lubricants (even K-Y, other non-oil-based ones, and saliva) can slow down sperm. There's a product called Pre-Seed that you can get online that is all right to use if you need/want lubrication for masturbation.

8. PRACTICE getting your ejaculate into a cup. You may laugh - but how many times have we actually had to do that??? I wish we would have practiced!

9. When you get it into the cup - some will stick to the side and be sort of difficult to draw up into the syringe. Get some preservative- free saline (in the contact lens solution section of a drug store), and you can squirt a little bit of that on the side of the cup and swirl it around to get all the sperm into the bottom of the cup where it's easier to draw up into the syringe.

10. As soon as you are done - MAKE A JOKE! Have your surro make a joke about it when she's done too. It's absolutely essential, in my opinion, to laugh about this!!!!

Our Book Club-this month - Waiting for Daisy

2007-04-22T13:05:00.000-07:00

WAITING FOR DAISY

A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, an Oscar, an Atomic Bomb, a Romantic Night, and One Woman's Quest to Become a Mother

Transcript
Peggy Orenstein discusses her book, "Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Fertility Doctors, An Oscar, An Atomic Bomb, A Romantic Night, and One Woman's Quest to Become a Mother." The memoir chronicles her six-year struggle to have a child.
By Peggy Orenstein
Bloomsbury. 228 pp. $23.95
The book business loves a niche, especially a profitable one. So it's easy to understand the burgeoning category of what might be called Repro Lit, fueled perhaps by delayed parenthood or by the increased incidence -- or is it heightened awareness? -- of infertility. Some of the books in this category treat adoption, others miscarriage; some address gay parenthood, others single motherhood. And while some are serious investigative studies, many more are personal narratives. The real challenge, especially for the literary memoir writer, comes when she (or sometimes he) wants to transcend the obvious rubric and appeal to a wider audience.
This, I suspect, is Peggy Orenstein's ambition for Waiting for Daisy, and she succeeds in places. In spite of her book's histrionic subtitle -- you can almost hear the agent or editor whispering in her ear, "More! Worse! Farther! Bigger!" -- she treats her efforts to become a mother with intelligent skepticism and a brazen sense of humor (a quality not often found in Repro Lit). It takes chutzpah to begin a chapter: "I married a man who is far better looking than I. It's not that I'm a candidate for a dogfight, exactly, but no one's ever going to confuse me with Adriana Lima."
Unlike many women who have written about the experience of trying and failing to have a baby, Orenstein doesn't leave her feminism at the door. She writes frankly about her initial reluctance to become a mother and traces the complicated evolution of her feelings from "no! never!" to single-minded passion. Once launched on the all-consuming path, she makes stops that will be familiar to many of her readers: joyless "fertility sex"; miscarriage after miscarriage; fertility test after fertility test; expensive, uncaring reproductive-medicine specialists; adoption near-misses; attempts at the brave new universe of surrogacy. But her voice makes all the difference in the world. Far from the anguished, often reverential, super-serious tone of Internet discussion groups is this passage on her introduction to the world of fertility medicine:
"Clomid was my gateway drug; the one you take because, Why not -- everyone's doing it. Just five tiny pills. They'll give you a boost, maybe get you where you need to go. It's true, some women can stop there. For others, Clomid becomes infertility's version of Reefer Madness. First you smoke a little grass, then you're selling your body on a street corner for crack. First you pop a little Clomid, suddenly you're taking out a second mortgage for another round of in vitro fertilization (IVF). You've become hope's bitch, willing to destroy your career, your marriage, your self-respect for another taste of its seductive high."
In addition to her slightly skewed stance, Orenstein engages in some interesting cultural peregrinations. Traveling to Tokyo on a research grant while pregnant, she visits a doctor who tells her that her fetus may have a chromosomal abnormality and then quickly adds that there is an 80 percent chance all will be well. But Orenstein doesn't buy the optimistic outlook: "Japanese doctors lie to protect their patients' feelings. It's considered legitimate, for instance, to withhold a cancer diagnosis from a woman even after a mastectomy so that she won't fall into a suicidal funk. So I didn't believe Dr. Makabe."
And she was right not to. While still in Japan, she experiences both a miscarriage and a D&C (dilation and curettage). For solace, she turns to the practice of Jizo, in which women who have had miscarriages, stillbirths or abortions leave offerings at the feet of statues. She realizes that there is no American term for a fetus that doesn't become a child, whereas the Japanese have a word -- "mizuko," water child. She explains that, historically, Japanese Buddhists thought that "existence flowed into a being slowly, like liquid." Children aren't considered completely in the human realm until they're 7, and a mizuko exists in "that liminal space between life and death but belonging to neither." Beautifully said.
Although much has been written on many facets of the fertility quest -- the medicines, the miscarriages, the adoption process -- surrogacy is less discussed, still more veiled and verboten than other aspects of the experience. Orenstein does a great job with her chapter on "Fish," the young girl who began a correspondence with her after reading her book Schoolgirls and who eventually became her surrogate. She wonderfully describes surrogacy as another stop on the slide down fertility's slippery slope -- one of "perpetually raised stakes and overly inflated expectations." As she and Fish go through the surrogacy process together, Orenstein gives both of them a humanity that enables the reader to see why each would enter this not terribly well-charted territory.
One of the best things about this book is that when she succeeds in her quest (the baby's name is Daisy), Orenstein refuses to take refuge in the smug pieties so prevalent in fertility discussions. When a friend tells her that everything happens for a reason, Orenstein bristles (bless her!):
"That's not something I believe, not when women I love die leaving babies behind, not when children are starving, when adults are tortured. Nor do I like its corollary: 'God only gives you what you can handle.' If so, God is a sadist. I refuse to view life through such a simplistic, superstitious lens, whether it's held up by religion or by New Age. . . . My infertility was not a result of my ambivalence about motherhood."
As Daisy moves on through life, and her mother and father move with her through the parenting maze, it would be interesting to hear Orenstein's intelligent, skeptical voice ruminate on the next stages. For if any writer has the verve and tenacity to supersede the typecasting of Mommy Lit, it's Orenstein. ?

American Society for Reproductive Medicine Gathering

2007-04-22T12:58:00.000-07:00

Everything Conceivable’

By LIZA MUNDY
Published: April 22, 2007

Every industrial convention has its own eccentric flavor, and the 2005 gathering of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine was no exception. That year the annual meeting of American fertility doctors was held in conjunction with the annual meeting of Canadian fertility doctors; the massive conference, which took place in Montreal over five days in October, was attended by emissaries from North America as well as from England, France, Europe, Japan, China, Africa, India, Asia, Israel: anywhere that humans live and wish, as humans usually do, to be fruitful and multiply. So numerous were the babymakers that airport immigration was bogged down and the city's downtown was transformed; the hospitality rooms of the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth were booked for events like "Cocktails with the Middle East Fertility Society." Converging on the downtown convention center, reproductive endocrinologists, embryologists, andrologists, urologists, therapists, and psychologists attended courses in packed seminar rooms. But the real action was in the cavernous exhibition hall, where an array of twenty-first century conception technology was on display, rivaling anything unveiled by the military-industrial complex.

At the entrance to the hall, unavoidable to all who entered, was a booth maintained by Scandinavian Cryobank, a subsidiary of Cryos, one of the world's largest sperm banks. As one might expect, Scandinavian Cryobank specializes in Scandinavian sperm donors: specifically Danish donors enrolled in graduate programs at "major Scandinavian universities," men so mentally and physically superior that they passed "some of the most exacting genetic testing in the industry." Deliberately recalling another era when northern European men inflicted their genes on women of other nations, sales staff were distributing wry little buttons announcing "Congratulations! It's a Viking!" underneath which was a photo of a very blond, very sturdy-looking baby. A banner advertisement noted that the company caters to gay and straight, black and white, male and female. Under the happy we-are-the-world tableau of patients, it added that it serves patients "as energetically as our ancestors once grabbed countries."
Not far away, one of the other principal players in the realm of international genetic redistribution, Los Angeles-based California Cryobank, was advertising its sperm bank by means of an indoor hockey game. It was not clear what hockey was supposed to symbolize. Maybe it was an homage to Canada. Maybe it was supposed to underscore the importance, in this crowd, of being deft and competent enough to shoot a small, frenetically moving object into a stationary target. No matter: setting down the espressos and Belgian chocolates that were being freely dispensed, the medical men and women lined up to whack away at the puck, cheering whenever a colleague, you know, scored.
Nearby, Cryogenic Laboratories was hoping to edge out this competition by offering a service called Lifetime Photos. For a price, clients can obtain photos of a sperm donor, from infancy to adulthood, and thereby see how their child's own appearance might unfold if they select that donor's genetic product to conceive their baby.
The conference was dominated and underwritten by the pharmaceutical industry. Standing everywhere were cheerful representatives from Ferring Pharmaceuticals, Organon USA, Serono Inc., Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and others, who together do an estimated $3 billion a year business selling the drugs and medical devices that are an integral part of childbearing through assisted reproduction technology (ART). By now, ART comprises a spectrum of procedures of varying levels of sophistication. They include the fertility drugs that control and stimulate ovaries to produce more eggs; artificial insemination, or the injection of washed and treated sperm directly into a woman's cervix or uterus; in vitro fertilization, the more high-tech laboratory procedure in which sperm and egg are removed from the body and brought together in a culture dish; and a host of speedily developing related technologies such as genetic testing of embryos.
There were booths operated by the companies that make products to facilitate these procedures-sometimes all of them at once-there were booths operated by the companies that make media (Life Global: The ART Media Company!) for culturing embryos; flexible catheters for removing eggs and transferring embryos into uteruses; and long, terrifying surgical scissors for-one didn't want to think what. There were companies that make specialized petri dishes (test-tube babies are never made in test tubes); incubators for keeping developing embryos warm; freezers for keeping frozen embryos cold. There were software programs with names like BabySentry, for keeping track of the contents of all those dishes and incubators and avoiding that most dreaded of laboratory mishaps: the wrong embryo going into, oops, the wrong uterus.
There were microscopes with joysticks controlling hollow needles that enable lab technicians to suck a single cell out of a three-day-old, eight-cell human embryo. That cell can then be fixed onto a slide and sent off to a lab so that its chromosomes might be tested for any one of almost a thousand genetic diseases. After the testing is done, embryos that carry a genetic disease can be discarded and only unaffected embryos used, with the hope that these will grow into healthy children. "Cystic Fibrosis Testing: There is a difference!" said the advertisement for one of the labs that weeds out defective embryos. "RMA Genetics: Technology for New Beginnings, Offering Power through Knowledge!" said another.
Nearby was a booth run by the Genetics and IVF Institute, a Fairfax, Virginia-based fertility clinic that was distributing pink or blue M&Ms, scooped into urine specimen cups, as a way of advertising a patented sperm-sorting technique called Microsort(r), which offers parents a way to select the sex of their baby.
The hall was an enormous rectangle. The biggest and most profitable entities were located prominently at the front, where they lured passersby with everything from sperm-shaped pens to ice cream pellets (a favorite way to advertise any technology involving cryopreservation). But equally interesting were the smaller outfits located toward the back of the hall, jostling to attract browsers to their bunting-covered folding tables, and often not prosperous enough to be offering freebies. There were support groups for women with endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome. There were general advocacy groups for the infertile. There were cutting-edge groups dedicated to helping women find ways to delay childbearing and still bear children. One of these is Fertile Hope, run by a cancer survivor named Lindsay Nohr Beck, whose mission is to help cancer patients preserve their fertility during treatment. One of Beck's mentors is a businesswoman named Christy Jones, a former dot-commer who now runs a for-profit company called Extend Fertility, which offers career women the chance to freeze their eggs with the hope of becoming pregnant later, when relationships and/or work schedules permit.
Since egg freezing is in its infancy, however, what the modern woman often needs to conceive-if things have been left too long-are the eggs of a younger woman. Snuggled against the back wall were egg-donation agencies, none of them as large or gleaming as the front-of-the-room sperm banks, since it is not-yet-possible to stockpile human eggs in the mass-market, quasi-industrial way in which human sperm can be stored and shipped. Egg-donation agencies are a sort of cross between a real estate brokerage and a dating service: for a fee, they connect infertile patients with live, real-time egg donors, and manage what is, legally, a property transfer. Egg donation is an invasive, time-consuming medical procedure, requiring physical risk on the donor's part. Which is not to say you can't build up a decent inventory: all of the banks were offering databases of winsome yet wholesome, sexy yet motherly young women, with profiles that detailed their height, weight, SAT scores, and lifetime goals. You could see how hard the agencies had to work to recruit them. One booth belonged to Global ART, an international outfit with a branch in Richmond, Virginia, that procures egg donors from Romania. Circumventing those aspects of reproductive technology (like egg freezing) that do not work reliably yet, and taking advantage of those (like sperm freezing) that do, Global ART rather ingeniously conducts transactions by shipping a prospective father's frozen sperm to the lab in Bucharest, where it is thawed and used to fertilize the eggs of a Romanian donor. The resulting human embryos-half-American, half-Romanian-are then frozen and shipped back to the United States, where they are thawed and transferred into the prospective American mother, all for much, much cheaper than can be done with a U.S. donor, in part because Romanian egg donors are paid so much less than U.S. donors are. And you don't even need a passport for the embryos!
Also there was an L.A.-based agency, Fertility Futures International, which does a brisk trade in providing egg donors to gay men, another rapidly growing customer base. Surrogacy agencies were also there, catering to straight and gay alike.
There were also, of course, lawyers. Not so long ago, running a "family-building" legal practice meant handling adoptions, foreign and domestic. Increasingly, attorneys are called upon to negotiate scenarios that involve a transfer of sperm or egg-part of the babymaking process-rather than the entire baby. "Half adoptions" you could call them: adoption of half the child's genetic makeup.
And then were the companies that have evolved to deal with the problematic presence of the frozen embryo. Though it's still pretty hard to freeze and successfully thaw human eggs, it is strangely easy to freeze and thaw human embryos. Embryos don't get freezer burn. Unlike, say, hamburgers, human embryos can be frozen, and thawed, and frozen, and thawed again, and used. There are about a half-million frozen embryos in storage in the United States alone. These embryos present terrible moral difficulties for patients, and for doctors, who for fear of lawsuits are reluctant to destroy or thaw frozen embryos, even when patients divorce or move or disappear or otherwise fail to pay "storage fees." Enter ReproTech: standing by one display was a man named Russell Bierbaum, who operates a company that for a fee will take over a practice's frozen embryos, and also is willing, collection-agency style, to track down delinquent patients and persuade them to make what has come to be known as the "disposition decision."
"There are ways of getting people to respond," said the affable Bierbaum, who declined, for proprietary reasons, to reveal how he locates patients and encourages them to decide what to do with their frozen embryos. He did not seem to recognize the menacing significance of any phrase beginning "There are ways." Keeping things upbeat, Bierbaum would say only that "the Internet is a wonderful tool for finding people." Also nearby was the National Embryo Donation Center, one of a number of brokerages that help one couple "donate" surplus human embryos to another. Really good quality embryo batches are sometimes passed among three or four families before they get all used up, or born, or both.
Standing in yet another cubicle was-could it be true?-Professor Robert Edwards, the Bob Edwards, the British scientist who with his partner, the gynecological surgeon Patrick Steptoe, enabled the birth of the first IVF child in Oldham, England, in 1978. The very man who set this elaborate reproductive machinery into motion. Edwards was wearing a tan suit jacket, pale gray slacks that did not match the coat, and beige slip-on shoes. He was grayer but otherwise little changed from the photos that show him and Steptoe celebrating the birth of the infant Louise Joy Brown almost three decades ago. There was the same voluminous, side-parted haircut, the same big rectangular glasses, the same stout and genial look, more like a satisfied fly fisherman, or a Rotarian, than the scientific visionary he is.
Robert Edwards, who is probably the most knowledgeable embryologist in the world, now edits a Web publication called Reproductive BioMedicine Online, a British-based journal that publishes scientific papers and essays on the many ethical issues raised by the field he helped create. He was standing in the RBM Online cubicle for the purpose of saying hello to a long line of visitors, and, when possible, to sign them up as subscribers. Edwards was also, it emerged, brooding. I stood in line with the vague hope of asking whether back in 1978 he had had any idea of the array of services and situations that would arise from his work. I knew the answer in part: Edwards has a reputation for having been remarkably prescient. He had an early fascination with genetics and is widely credited with having foreseen that science someday would be able not only to produce embryos but to diagnose their genetic makeup before placing them in the womb.
Still, it would be interesting to hear what the man himself had to say.
it turned out, the man had a lot to say and not much time to say it: Edwards, who was raised in the north of England, speaks in a wonderfully non-establishment, workingman's burr. He had been standing in the RBM Online cubicle for two days and needed to leave to catch a plane. An assistant was meaningfully clasping a rolling suitcase. Nevertheless, almost before I had finished my question Edwards began by commenting on a speech given by a prominent stem-cell scientist. "Did you hear the talk this morning?" he wanted to know, smoldering over an assertion that embryonic stem-cell research-one of the most promising, and controversial, realms of modern medicine-was an unforeseen consequence of IVF. Edwards wanted to correct the record here. Well before Louise Brown was perking along in her dish, he had indeed envisioned that the cells of the human embryo might be coaxed into making a medical therapy. And so many other things! Babies, period! Millions of babies! "Four percent of the babies in Finland are from IVF!" pointed out Edwards with a kind of defensive glee. It seemed that he, Bob Edwards, had seen coming much of what surrounded us, and found it, for the most part, good. Not just babies but delighted parents, of all stripes and varieties and ages. "Eye hoop they all have babies!" Edwards called out as he was being pulled away by his assistant, leaving behind a line of disappointed pilgrims who had hoped to shake his hand. "What coood be better than a baby?"
"Cancer Patients Aren't as Motivated as Infertility Patients"
What indeed? Through the displays wandered doctors, male and female, young and old, many of whom find it hard to believe that Steptoe and Edwards never received a Nobel Prize for what they did. What they did, after all, was conceive human life-human life-outside the womb. What they did was create a situation in which millions of human beings would be born who otherwise never would have existed. What they did was find the first effective treatment for infertility, an ancient affliction as old as humankind itself, and for most of history one of the most dreaded and untreatable; if you don't believe that, why are fertility totems found among the earliest human artifacts? According to more than one doctor, what Steptoe and Edwards accomplished in 1978 was one of the medical breakthroughs of the twentieth century, ranking with the discovery of penicillin and Christiaan Barnard's first human heart transplant. . . .

For those following Madonna's adoption

2007-04-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

Madonna Leaves Malawi After Charity Visit -
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/arts/entertainment-malawi-madonna.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

By REUTERS
Published: April 22, 2007
Filed at 2:46 p.m. ET

LILONGWE (Reuters) - Madonna jetted out of Malawi on Sunday after a six-day visit focused on her charity work in the impoverished southern African country.
Madonna, wearing dark glasses and carrying the one-year-old Malawian boy she is adopting, boarded a private jet at Lilongwe airport at the end of her visit, a Reuters witness said.
Officials said she spent Saturday meeting people involved in the charities she set up in Malawi.
Raising Malawi, a charity co-founded by Madonna, provides food, education and health services to 32,000 orphans in the country through seven community-based organizations.
This is Madonna's second visit to Malawi six months after she and her film director husband Guy Ritchie signed interim adoption papers for custody of local toddler David Banda.
David will stay with the couple for 18 months at their home in London before a decision by the Malawian government on whether to finalize the adoption.
Rights groups have accused Madonna of using her fame and wealth to circumvent the country's adoption rules, but the singer has insisted she is following the law.
Madonna's spokeswoman has denied media reports the American star plans to adopt a second child and said she is focusing on her charity work in Malawi during this visit.
On Thursday Madonna visited the Home of Hope orphanage where David once lived, and where witnesses said he met his biological father.
HIV/AIDS has killed millions in Malawi, leaving more than a million orphans.
Reuters

Japanse Couple Pleads for Surrogacy Laws

2007-04-19T15:32:00.000-07:00

Japanse Couple Pleads for Surrogacy Laws-
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070411/wl_asia_afp/lifestylejapanhealth_070411165518
TOKYO (AFP) - A Japanese couple who had twins through an American surrogate appealed Wednesday for the nation to recognise the practice after a court decision led them to decide to raise their children as US citizens.
Japanese laws do not specifically stipulate the legal status of children born through surrogacy, which is not a crime but is banned by the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
"I read the ruling over and over again, and to be honest, I was disappointed and felt angry," television personality Aki Mukai, 42, said at her first news conference after the ruling.
Mukai, whose womb was removed due to cancer, has ignited a public debate in Japan on surrogacy.
She and her husband, professional wrestler Nobuhiko Takada, have launched a high-profile campaign to have her twin sons recognised as her and her husband's blood-related offspring.
But last month the Supreme Court ruled against the couple's demand, although it called on the legislative branch to keep up with the new realities of fertility treatment.
Mukai said she had decided to leave her twin boys with the US citizenship they now hold after losing the court battle.
"We went to the court because there are no clear laws, but the court's conclusion was only to say laws should be created soon."
The twin boys were born in 2003 through a Nevada woman, who offered to become impregnated with eggs fertilised by the Japanese couple.
Many Japanese couples are reported to have children through surrogacy overseas, but simply report the child as their blood-related offspring when coming back without disclosing how the baby was born.
"I want to see an answer as soon as possible for such cases in which babies are born legally through surrogacy overseas," Mukai said.
Japan has one of the world's oldest populations as it struggles with a low birth rate, while many women wait longer to get married and start having children.

An adoption poem: An Openly Adopted Child's Legacy

2007-04-19T09:22:00.000-07:00

An Openly Adopted Child's Legacy- http://poetry.adoption.com/poems/legacy-of-an-adopted-child-in-an-open-adoption.html

Once there were two expectant mothers. One carried and cared for you beneath her beating heart She became your Birthmother. The other carried the hope of you within her.She became your Mom.As the days passed, and you grew bigger and stronger, Your Birthmother knew that she could not give you all you needed after your birth. Meanwhile, your Mom was ready and waiting for you.
One day your Birthmom and your Mom found each other.
They looked into each other’s eyes and saw a friend. Your Birthmom saw the life your Mom could give you. Your Mom saw how much your Birthmom loved and cared for you.
They decided that what you needed was both kinds of love in your life.
So now you have two families, One by birth, the other by adoption.
And you have a home where you can get: your questions answered, your boo boos bandaged, your heartaches soothed, And much needed hugs.
And a place where you can find: answers to your questions, your image in the mirror, a part of yourself, And much needed hugs.
Two different kinds of families Two different kinds of loveBoth a part of you.
© Brenda Romanchik

Bringing a Child Home from Cameroon, Africa

2007-04-17T20:33:00.001-07:00

Bringing a child home
By Jackie Burke, American News Writer
www.adoption.com

Local teenagers reached out to help a couple bring their adopted child from Cameroon, Africa, to Sioux Falls.
Seven teenagers at Zion Lutheran Church in Aberdeen spent nine months fundraising for a youth group trip to San Antonio, Texas.
"They prayed to God for this money," said the Rev. Marcia Sylvester, a pastor at Zion Lutheran Church. "They promised if they raised more than they needed, they would give it back to God."
It turns out the group had about $1,700 left after raising more than $8,000 for the Texas trip, Sylvester said. That's when Esther, the baby from Cameroon, and Roy and Yvette Christion came to mind.
"We had a couple choices of who to give the money to," said Trene Henderson, one of the teenagers who donated the money. "It was a unanimous decision."
The kids learned of the Christions and their situation from Sylvester, who had met the family while they were working as missionaries in Cameroon.
About three years ago, Roy and Yvette Christion were expecting a child. When the child was stillborn, the Christions made a deal with God.
Roy said they prayed to God, saying that if adoption was what he had in mind for them, they would be willing. He said they weren't interested in going through the application process, but if the child came to them, they would be ready.
Five months later, a baby named Esther was left at the doorstep of a Cameroon hospital.
"We thought of the prayer we made five months ago," Roy said.
The same day the Christions decided to adopt Esther, Yvette found out she was pregnant.
Now, three years later, the Christions have a 2-year-old son, Stephen, and are still filling out the paperwork for Esther's adoption.
Difficulties: The adoption process has been anything but easy, Roy said.
"It's a longer process because of the two different systems," he said.
In Cameroon, the Christions went through the adoption process only to find out the United States wouldn't honor the adoption.
"They said it was legal guardianship," Roy said.
Now, the Christions have to go through the same process in the U.S. In other words, Esther had to be adopted twice, Roy said, once in Cameroon and once in the United States.
The Christions returned to the United States in December 2005. Because the adoption process wasn't finished, Esther wasn't allowed to leave Cameroon - she had to live with Yvette's parents until the Cameroon government would let Esther join her family in the United States.
They had to pay a fee to bring Esther to the United States, Sylvester said. She said the $1,700 helped cover that cost.
In January, 13 months after her parents returned to the United States, Esther joined her family in Sioux Falls.
"It's really fulfilling to have been able to help," Henderson said. "It's really nice."
Help came as surprise: Yvette said the family had no knowledge of the money from the youth group until it was donated to them. She said they found out about the gesture from a friend who had met Sylvester through Lutheran Social Services.
"We had no idea," Yvette said.
Esther and the Christions were in Aberdeen on Sunday to visit the youth group. It was the first time the kids met Esther.
Roy said he was looking forward to meeting the kids who helped bring Esther to the United States.

Boulder's Fourth Adoption from Ethiopia

2007-04-16T10:02:00.000-07:00

Family circle - http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/family/article/0,2792,DRMN_107_5486345,00.html

Boulder couple's fourth adoption from Ethiopia will reunite sisters
By Lisa Marshall, Special to the Rocky

April 16, 2007
The goodbye was so painful to witness that Rick Romeo still tears up when he thinks about it.
Standing in an orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 2005, he watched as Tadu, the teenage girl he'd adopted and was bringing home, offered a baby doll and a parting embrace to a dark-eyed, round-faced little girl. Just days earlier Romeo had learned that Tadu had a little sister named Yenu.
As he left the impoverished, disease-ravaged nation to deliver Tadu to a new life in Boulder, his joy was overshadowed by guilt. "It was a heart-wrenching situation," says Romeo, a Boulder lawyer, recalling the last words Yenu uttered before her older sister walked out the door: "When are you coming back to take me to America?" Soon, she'll get her answer.
Last fall, Rick and his wife, Karen, began the long, complex process of bringing 10-year-old Yenu to Boulder, where she will complete a family of eight, including their two biological children in their 20s and three other school-age children adopted from Ethiopia.
In the seven years since the Romeos welcomed their first Ethiopian child, Asha, into an elegant home in the shadow of the Flatirons, adoption from Africa has gone from being virtually unheard of to being the stuff of talk shows and blogs, thanks to celebrities such as Madonna and Angelina Jolie.
High-profile adoptions from the world's poorest continent also have shed light on the plight of the estimated 18 million African children who have been orphaned by AIDS, and appear to have influenced more adoptive parents-to-be to look to what has long been considered "the forgotten continent."
According to the U.S. State Department, 732 Ethiopian orphans were issued immigrant visas to come to the United States in 2006, up from just 82 a decade ago, making it the fifth-most popular country from which to adopt. Local agencies predict the number will continue to rise.
"Ethiopian adoption is probably one of the most popular adoptions at the moment," says Linda Donovan, international program director for Adoption Alliance of Denver, which has nine families waiting to bring children home from Ethiopia. "Suddenly, it has just taken off."
Rick Romeo, 55, and his wife Karen, 51, already had two teenagers and were beginning to build a nest egg for retirement when, in 1998, they decided to adopt.
"We are absurdly fortunate," says Karen, an accomplished violinist and former director of the Boulder Arts Academy. "If we can give back, we have to give back."
In June 2000, 18-month-old Asha joined the family, followed in October 2003 by 3-year-old Dante, who arrived with a jagged scar on his leg and teeth so decayed they would have to be extracted. In August 2005 came Tadu, a painfully shy teenager whose shaved head and downcast eyes hinted at a life with too much hardship for her 14 years.
This spring, the Romeos completed their paperwork for adopting Yenu, who, like roughly 2 million other children in sub-Saharan Africa, is infected with the HIV virus. They're awaiting approval from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which must clear the international adoption of an HIV-positive child. They estimate that the adoption will cost them $20,000, and Yenu's medication will run about $5,000 annually.
"We don't know how much her immune system has been compromised, but we do know that her prospects here are much better than any she may face over there," says Karen.
On a recent afternoon at the Romeo house, the three youngest children carried on like typical siblings, bickering and joking as they made cookies in the kitchen and ran around in a backyard littered with bikes and toys.
But for Tadu, a quiet, serious girl who listens only to Ethiopian music and keeps a picture of her little sister by her bed, the longing for something missing is palpable.
When her parents recently informed her that they were going to take her to Ethiopia to get her sister, she quietly wept in disbelief.
"My hope is that Tadu will now feel like the loop has been closed," says Rick. "This has been a huge hole in her heart."

Foreign Adoptions on the Rise

2007-04-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

On the rise

According to the U.S. State Department, 20,679 visas were issued for foreign adoption in 2006, up from 10,641 in 1996. Here's a look at the top 10 countries of origin:
1. China: 6,439
2. Guatemala 4,135
3. Russia 3,706
4. South Korea 1,376
5. Ethiopia 732
6. Kazakhstan 587
7. Ukraine 460
8. Liberia 353
9. Colombia 344
10. India 320

Baby Born from Frozen Sperm/Frozen Egg

2007-04-13T17:08:00.001-07:00

Baby Born From Frozen Sperm, Frozen Egg--- http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8OFRAKG2&show_article=1

Apr 13 12:51 PM US/Eastern

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MISSION VIEJO, Calif. (AP) - A woman gave birth Wednesday to the first baby conceived in the U.S. by means of frozen sperm and a frozen egg, according to the fertility firm that sponsored the study in which she took part.
Adrienne Domasin, 36, decided to participate in the study by Extend Fertility after being told two years ago her fallopian tubes were blocked.
Domasin, who is single, was unable to afford in vitro fertilization but was determined to have a baby.
"When they told me my tubes were blocked, I was naturally devastated," she said. "Here I was, ready to finally have the baby of my dreams and I couldn't."
Egg freezing traditionally has been reserved for women who suffered from illnesses that might leave them infertile and has a low success rate. But there has been recent demand for the procedure by women in their 30s who want to have children in the future but are afraid they will be too old to conceive the traditional way, said Dr. Jane Frederick, who oversaw Domasin's fertility treatment.
The low viability of frozen eggs is due, in part, to ice crystals that can damage the egg's structure, though freezing sperm has been done for decades, said Richard Paulson, a professor of reproductive medicine at USC.
There have been about 200 documented births from frozen eggs worldwide, Paulson said. But he had not heard of other cases of frozen egg/frozen sperm conceptions. The Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics reported one case last year in Australia.
During the study, Domasin received shots and pills to stimulate egg production. Fertility personnel harvested the eggs, froze them, and after four months, injected them with thawed donor sperm. A fertilized egg was then placed insider her.
Domasin's son, Noah Peter Domasin, was born at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills weighing 8 pounds, 4 ounces.
"I kept waking up in the middle of the night and I would glance over at him," Domasin said. "I just kept saying to myself 'he's my son.'"

The Prospect of All Female Conception

2007-04-13T07:51:00.000-07:00

The prospect of all-female conception -
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article2444462.ece

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 13 April 2007
Women might soon be able to produce sperm in a development that could allow lesbian couples to have their own biological daughters, according to a pioneering study published today.
Scientists are seeking ethical permission to produce synthetic sperm cells from a woman's bone marrow tissue after showing that it possible to produce rudimentary sperm cells from male bone-marrow tissue.
The researchers said they had already produced early sperm cells from bone-marrow tissue taken from men. They believe the findings show that it may be possible to restore fertility to men who cannot naturally produce their own sperm.
But the results also raise the prospect of being able to take bone-marrow tissue from women and coaxing the stem cells within the female tissue to develop into sperm cells, said Professor Karim Nayernia of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne .
Creating sperm from women would mean they would only be able to produce daughters because the Y chromosome of male sperm would still be needed to produce sons. The latest research brings the prospect of female-only conception a step closer.
"Theoretically is it possible," Professor Nayernia said. "The problem is whether the sperm cells are functional or not. I don't think there is an ethical barrier, so long as it's safe. We are in the process of applying for ethical approval. We are preparing now to apply to use the existing bone marrow stem cell bank here in Newcastle . We need permission from the patient who supplied the bone marrow, the ethics committee and the hospital itself."
If sperm cells can be developed from female bone-marrow tissue they will be matured in the laboratory and tested for their ability to penetrate the outer "shell" of a hamster's egg - a standard fertility test for sperm.
"We want to test the functionality of any male and female sperm that is made by this way," Professor Nayernia said. But he said there was no intention at this stage to produce female sperm that would be used to fertilise a human egg, a move that would require the approval of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.
The immediate aim is to see if female bone marrow can be lured into developing into the stem cells that can make sperm cells. The ultimate aim is to discover if these secondary stem cells can then be made into other useful tissues of the body, he said.
The latest findings, published in the journal Reproduction: Gamete Biology, show that male bone marrow can be used to make the early "spermatagonial" stem cells that normally mature into fully developed sperm cells.
"Our next goal is to see if we can get the spermatagonial stem cells to progress to mature sperm in the laboratory and this should take around three to five years of experiments," Professor Nayernia said.
Last year, Professor Nayernia led scientists at the University of Gottingen in Germany who became the first to produce viable artificial sperm from mouse embryonic stem cells, which were used to produce seven live offspring.
His latest work on stem cells derived from human bone marrow suggests that it could be possible to develop the techniques to help men who cannot produce their own sperm naturally.
"We're very excited about this discovery, particularly as our earlier work in mice suggests that we could develop this work even further," Professor Nayernia said.
Whether the scientists will ever be able to develop the techniques to help real patients - male or female - will depend on future legislation that the Government is preparing as a replacement to the existing Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act.
A White Paper on genetics suggested that artificial gametes produced from the ordinary "somatic" tissue of the body may be banned from being used to fertilise human eggs by in vitro fertilisation.
Making babies without men - a literary view
LYSISTRATA
Aristophanes (c. 411BC)
After 21 years of war, the women of Athens , led by Lysistrata, take matters into their own hands. Lysistrata suggests every wife and mistress should refuse all sexual favours until peacetime. Before long it proves effective, peace is concluded and the play ends with festivities.
HERLAND
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1914)
On the eve of the First World War, an isolated society entirely comprising Aryan women is discovered by three male explorers. The women reproduce asexually and live in an ideal society without war and domination. This feminist utopia is a 20th-century vehicle for Gilman's then-unconventional views of male and female behaviour, motherhood, individuality, and sexuality. It is said to be based on Gilman's version of utopia through Aryan separatism.
DISAPPEARANCE
Philip Wylie (1978)
At four minutes and 52 seconds past four one afternoon, the world shatters into two parallel universes as men vanish from women and women from men. With families and loved ones separated from one another, life continues very differently as an explosion of violence sweeps one world while stability and peace break down in the other.
THE CLEFT
Doris Lessing (2007)
In her novel, which has made this year's International Man Booker shortlist, Lessing portrays a group of near-amphibious women who have no need of men, known as Squirts, as they are impregnated by the wind, wave or moon. But this is no feminist utopia: the women behave brutally, mutilating male babies before placing them on a rock for eagles to devour. The eagles turn out to be the men's allies, transporting the babies to the forest where they are suckled by does. Lessing reveals she was inspired by a scientific claim that "the primal human stock was probably female, and that males came along later, as a kind of cosmic afterthought".

U.K gays go stateside for in-vitro babies

2007-04-12T12:43:00.000-07:00

U.K. gays go stateside for in vitro babies - http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid43404.asp

In the United Kingdom it's illegal to pay a surrogate mother or an egg donor. But for about $65,000, gay British couples can create a baby—and designate its sex—in an American in vitro fertilization program for two-father families.
Nearly 20 male couples from the United Kingdom have signed up for the Fertility Institute's program, in which they purchase a university student's eggs, which are then implanted in a paid surrogate, who bears the child.
With offices in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and another planned in New York City, the Fertility Institute is one of the world's largest providers of fertility services to gay people.
Of the $65,000 the clinic charges the couple, about $25,000 to $35,000 goes to the surrogate mother.
The program is thought to be the first surrogacy venture aimed at gay men. Couples can choose the sex of the baby, with 65% so far opting for male babies. Sex selection of babies, though illegal in most countries, is permitted in the United States as well as the United Kingdom.
Said Josephine Quintavalle, founder of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, a British anti-IVF group: "This program shows we have reached the ultimate in the manufacture of the bio-baby. There always seems to be a new way of reconstructing the traditional family. On the one hand, in the United Kingdom we are saying that a child doesn't need a father [referring to last year's proposed U.K. legislation that would exempt single women and lesbians seeking IVF treatment from legal requirements to provide a father figure], but in America we are saying that two fathers is a good idea.
"It's time to ask children what they'd like rather than what selfish adults think is a good idea. I would put my money on children preferring a stable family with a mother and father."
The Fertility Institute's Jeffrey Steinberg said, "There are a lot of centers that dibble and dabble in this. But we are the only program for gay men that has psychological, legal, medical, surrogates, donors, and patients all taken care of in one place. The demand is incredible. The United States has always been busy, but we are seeing more and more demand from abroad."
Steinberg also notes the advantage of allowing parents to choose an egg donor and a surrogate. "If we separate them, we get the best egg donors and the best women to carry the babies, which is the perfect combination."
Steinberg added, "In the past two years we have probably treated 20 British gay couples, and in the past four days, since launching the dedicated program for gay couples, we have had about 25 e-mails from gay British couples. There is a pent-up demand for this."
Catholic agencies in the United Kingdom had sought exemption from new regulations compelling them to consider same-sex couples as prospective parents, but Prime Minister Tony Blair in January refused their request. (Stewart Who?, Gay.com U.K.)

When Birthparents Speak a different Language

2007-04-11T18:42:00.000-07:00

What to do When Birthparents Speak a Different Language--

http://www.familyhopes.com/adoption/

Many people who are planning to build there families through adoption are open to children of races and cultural backgrounds than that are different from their own. In order to do this, you must first do some soul searching as well as taking a good look at your family, friends and community to make sure that there is cultural diversity in your life in order to meet the needs of your child. I plan to discuss the subject of transracial or transcultural adoptions in a future article, but I wanted to start this article this way to lead into the possibility of a situation that many families will face: being connected with Birthparents who speak a different language.
In the area where I live there is a huge Hispanic population. I am fortunate enough to be able to speak Spanish fluently. When I started working at the pregnancy counseling and adoption agency where I am employed nine years ago, I immediately began offering our services to the Hispanic community. Throughout the years I have learned things and refined things as I have gone along, but there are a few important things that I wanted to pass on to you if you ever find yourself in the position of being chosen by Birthparents who speak another language. These concepts include both legal and emotional aspects. I will start with the legal side of things.
When a Birthparent does not speak the native language of the country, in my case English, it is important that all the legal documents and counseling documents be translated into their language for their review and understanding. Even though I can speak Spanish fluently and have a small translating business on the side, I found a Hispanic volunteer to translate all of our documents and to be involved in the adoption process if I am working with a Hispanic client who has decided to make an adoption plan. It is important to have a third party involved for many reasons.
First of all, I can be sure that the clients I work with are getting the appropriate information and that they understand every legal aspect. When I go to court with a Birthparent to sign a consent to adoption I always take an interpreter with me. This way the judge knows a non-biased third party is translating information correctly and the Birthparent is being told about their rights and the adoption process. I have never had it happen, but I wouldn’t want a client to come back years from now and state that I did no inform them of all their legal rights regarding adoption and that they signed the consent with having false information. Typically the consent that they actually sign in front of the judge is in English because that is what is filed with the courts, so I need to be sure that there is no way that a Birthparent has misunderstood or not understood a particular aspect of the consent before signing it.
Second of all, I have help in giving emotional support to a Birthparent by someone who knows their native tongue. In many cultures, such as the Hispanic community, adoption is still considered taboo. I have many Hispanic clients who don’t have any support other than me. Through the use of a trained volunteer that speaks their language I am able to offer them emotional support from someone else.
In addition to making sure that all legal aspects are covered when working with a client that speaks a language other than your own, there are some important emotional aspects and issues surrounding future contact and exchange of information that need to be covered. Let’s start from the beginning: putting together your adoption profile. Obviously if you are open to children of different cultural backgrounds, you could not have your profile translated into every language. However, if you live in a community with a high population of a particular ethnic group such as Hispanic or Laotian, you could have your profile translated into that particular language. You can have this done for a reasonable price through a local community college or high school where students or even teachers are always looking for projects. If you have a friend or acquaintance that speaks that particular language you could ask them for help in translating your profile. When I am working with a client that speaks Spanish they are typically more likely to choose a family whose profile was translated than to choose a family whose profile I have to read and translate for them.
If you are selected by Birthparents that speak another language, I also encourage you to try to learn that language either through classes or tapes. Even if you can’t say more than “Hola” and they can’t say more than “Hi” you are both at least attempting to communicate. It will be important for your child to learn that language as well and about the customs and traditions of their Birthparents’ native country. Make sure that you take the opportunity to learn about these things so you can pass that information on to your child. If you are planning to maintain contact with the Birthparents, always have a translator present at least for the first few meetings and make the extra effort to have letters or photo captions translated so that Birthparents will know what you are trying to say. It is also important for you to remember that some gestures are universal. A hug, smile, handshake and kiss on the cheek all mean pretty much the same thing from country to country.
The thing that you need to keep in mind when working with Birthparents who speak another language is that you want to ensure that their legal and emotional needs are being met and you want to be sure that you understand each other and how each other feels. Although it does take some extra effort, having documents translated and an interpreter present is beneficial to everyone involved. The more informed and involved everyone is in the process the smoother it tends to go, which is what everyone wants in the end.

Uniform Surrogacy Laws in Australia

2007-04-11T18:40:00.001-07:00

States back call for national surrogacy http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200704/s1891769.htm

The New South Wales, Tasmanian and South Australian governments are supporting calls for uniform surrogacy laws across the country.
Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock says he is worried surrogacy is illegal in some states - but not in others.
He will raise the issue of uniform laws at a meeting with his state and territory counterparts next week.
South Australia's Health Minister John Hill says he supports a national approach.
"I think it's a sensible issue that needs to be looked at a national level, because there are complications when one jurisdiction has a set of rules which impacts on legal issues about parenting in another jurisdiction," he said.
Tasmania's Attorney-General Steve Kons also says there is a need for national consistency and he is keen to discuss it with representatives from other jurisdictions next week.
Tasmanian law currently prohibits commercial surrogacy arrangements and makes surrogacy contracts void, as do Victoria and South Australia.

Mukai ruling on surrogacy

2007-04-11T07:14:00.001-07:00

Mukai ruling stirs debate / Highlights gaps between law, reality over surrogate births Atsuko Kobayashi / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

The Supreme Court's ruling Friday on twin sons born through surrogate birth did not address whether the medical practice should be allowed, but did strongly call for legislative action for reproductive assistance medicine.
The ruling said Aki Mukai's request to register the boys as her children by birth could not be accepted under the current law. The 3-year-old boys were born through an American surrogate mother using Mukai's eggs and her husband's sperm.
Yuki Sumi, head of the Japan Office of the Nevada Center for Reproductive Medicine in Tokyo, said, "Almost all babies born through surrogate birth overseas have been registered in Japan as the commissioning couples' children by birth."
The organization has brokered surrogate pregnancies in the United States for more than 15 years, helping 55 couples have 75 children.
Japanese law says that the woman who actually gives birth to a child is the mother, meaning registration of a child by a biological mother is not allowed if the baby was born through surrogate birth.
But in Nevada and some other U.S. states where surrogate births are allowed, couples that have used surrogate parents can obtain birth certificates for their babies stating they are their children by birth.
As the U.S. certificates do not mention the children as being born by surrogate birth, the couples can register their babies as children by birth in Japan, and such family registrations are often accepted unchecked.
Japan has no law to prohibit surrogate mothers. Yahiro Netsu, a doctor in Shimosuwamachi, Nagano Prefecture, has made public five cases in which he has overseen surrogate births using a women's kin, such as sister or mother, as a surrogate birth mother.
Netsu said the babies were once registered as children of the women who delivered them and then adopted as children of the couples.
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Risks involved
The Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology announced in April 2003 its guideline to ban surrogate births, and notified member doctors of the decision that the medical society does not allow any form of surrogate birth, regardless of whether it is done without charge.
The medical society cited four reasons:
-- Child welfare may be affected.
-- Surrogate mothers may be exposed to physical risk and psychological burden.
-- Family relationships may be come too complicated.
-- Surrogate births are not socially accepted.
A report compiled the same month by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry's panel on reproductive assistance medicine also proposed that surrogate births should be prohibited and punishable.
The report said, "The practice of surrogate birth treats humans like tools for reproduction and imposes serious danger on third persons."
Moves to ban surrogate births are based, in addition to ethical problems, on the view that pregnancy and delivery carry too many risks.
Even though medical technology has progressed, about six women out of every 100,000 births in the country die during delivery. There was a report of an overseas case in which a surrogate mother died after having a miscarriage.
Netsu's work with surrogate births, especially one case in which a woman in her 50s became a surrogate mother for her daughter, have been questioned for the dangers involved.
In the United States, it is common to pay about 3 million yen to a surrogate mother and another 3 million yen fee to a broker. If travel and other expenses are included, a commercial surrogate birth can cost tens of millions of yen before the baby is even born.
There is a deep-rooted perception that wealthy people exploit economically disadvantaged women as tools for having babies.
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Changing opinions
The Supreme Court ruling pointed out that "surrogate birth is something that had previously been inconceivable under the Civil Code, and we strongly hope that legislative steps will be taken immediately to cope with the situation."
Today, an estimated 300,000 people in Japan are receiving some form of fertility treatment, and public perception of reproductive assistance medicine is changing.
Surrogate births are divided into two kinds. One is the host mother method, in which a fertilized egg produced from the couple's sperm and egg is implanted in another woman, who later gives birth to the child. The other method uses the husband's sperm and an egg cell of a woman other than the wife, with a third person used as the surrogate mother.
The Osaka High Court in May 2005 turned down a family's registration of a child born through the second method as theirs, saying the practice offended public order and morals.
The Supreme Court upheld the decision without deciding on whether the medical practice should be allowed.
Mukai's case used the first method. Because the boys are genetically no different than if they were born through a natural pregnancy, there is less public resistance to this method.
In a survey by the health ministry in 2003 of about 4,000 people, 44 percent said they could accept the first method, under certain conditions. Twenty-four percent said it should not be allowed.
After the Tokyo High Court's decision in September that allowed Mukai and her husband to register the children as their own by birth, the government decided in November to start preparations to regulate reproductive assistance medicine.
The government has asked the Science Council of Japan to discuss if surrogate births should be allowed, how to compile basic rules if they are implemented and how to define family relationships under the practice.
The council is expected to submit a report next year. Moves to create a new framework of surrogate birth have finally started.