Surrogacy behind the headlines

Regulation is important, but we are not discussing the most fundamental issue at hand: the human experiences that make or break surrogacy relationships. What common factors can be identified behind the small number of surrogacy cases that wind up in court?...[Read More]

What happens when surrogacy goes wrong: The recent Indiana surrogacy case in wider context

A northern Indiana couple are the latest in a series of people to become embroiled in a legal battle in the US following the birth of a child conceived through surrogacy. They follow in the footsteps of a recent series of high profile and hard fought US legal parentage battles involving surrogate-born babies. As demand for surrogacy grows worldwide and its practice remains largely unregulated, surrogacy continues to raise difficult legal, ethical and emotional questions which a...[Read More]

US court to decide legal mother of surrogate baby boy

The Court of Appeals in Indiana, US, is to decide who is the legal mother of an 11-month old baby boy conceived by IVF (in vitro fertilisation) and born to a surrogate. The boy's genetic parents, known in court records as T.G. and V.G, are a married couple from northern Indiana. The birth mother is the wife's sister, who agreed to carry the baby for the couple. The boy's father's name is listed on his birth certificate but his mother's name will not be added unti...[Read More]

Freezing eggs leads to 'scrambled generations'?

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Storage Period for Gametes and Embryos) Regulations 2009 came into force on 1 October 2009 under negative Parliamentary procedure. Soon after, however, a prayer was moved for the regulations to be annulled and a debate took place on 21 October 2009 in the House of Lords....[Read More]

Experts attack 'fertility tourism' industry

British couples travelling abroad to take advantage of commercial surrogate arrangements are engaging in a form of 'exploitation', Professor Naomi Pfeffer, an expert in the ethics and regulation of controversial developments in medicine, said at a fertility meeting this week....[Read More]

'Morally straightforward but legally complex': a welcome change to the new embryo storage laws

Any visitors to the Bionews website may have come across a very different version of this commentary last week, published the day before the UK's Department of Health suddenly announced changes to the law last Wednesday. In a surprise last-minute u-turn, the government announced that it was taking urgent Parliamentary action to widen the scope of the new embryo storage laws due to come into force in less than three weeks' time....[Read More]

UK government to review parenthood following surrogacy

The UK's Department of Health last week launched a consultation on the regulation of ‘Parental Orders', which are used to transfer legal parenthood from the surrogate (and her husband or partner if she has one) to the couple who commissioned the surrogacy arrangement. Prior to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008, only married couples were able to apply for a parental order, however, the new rules will extend this right to parents where there is no formal union, including unmarried...[Read More]

The three ages of modern womanhood: don't get pregnant, won't get pregnant... can't get pregnant…

Don't get pregnant: Pregnancy within or without marriage is not perceived to be the norm in a young modern woman's life in the UK or the western world in general...[Read More]