Having children in cross-border contexts: late-family formation among homoparental families in Spain.

Considered until recently unfit to rear children, non-heterosexual people have been excluded from forming families in most countries. Many, worldwide, demand access to family formation, claiming the same aptitudes as heterosexual people for raising children. However, when non-heterosexual singles and couples want to become parents in Spain, they must consider transnational contexts, resorting to inter-country adoption or surrogacy abroad, processes that contribute to delay their family formation. They must consider not only Spanish sociocultural conditions, but other countries' legal restrictions regarding parents' gender, social status, and sexual identity. These families experience great difficulty in gaining access to reproductive health services. Based on multi-site ethnographic fieldwork, this text addresses how, despite legislative changes allowing homoparental family formation in Spain, these parents must overcome complex bureaucratic processes when they decide to have children, while facing homophobic attitudes and policies in their quests to become parents.

A Step Too Far? Whittington Hospital NHS Trust v XX [2020] UKSC 14.

This comment piece explores the decision in Whittington Hospital NHS Trust v XX [2020] UKSC 14. It argues that despite notable shifts in public policy in respect of the acceptability of surrogacy as a means of family formation in the past twenty years, the Supreme Court has taken a step too far in deciding that foreign commercial surrogacy is as widely socially accepted. This impacts on the reasonableness of any claim for damages in negligence for the costs of commercial surrogacy. It is posited that the issue of whether damages for foreign commercial surrogacy are reasonable or not will be the key battleground in future negligence cases of this type.

New York State Creates New Governance of Commercial Gestational Surrogacy.

United States law recognizes adult reproductive liberty and many states view surrogacy services through that lens. During the COVID-19 pandemic in March, 2020, New York State enacted the Child-Parent Surrogacy Act (CPSA) into law, after feminists and their allies had caused its defeat in 2019. Just before approval of the CPSA, a group of legislators introduced the Alternative Surrogacy Bill (ASB). This article is a case study that examines how the CPSA and not the ASB became law, examining surrogate rights, the best interests of the child, and the ethical issues related to adult donor-conceived and surrogacy born children's rights to information about their ancestry.

Regulating the international surrogacy market:the ethics of commercial surrogacy in the Netherlands and India.

It is unclear what proper remuneration for surrogacy is, since countries disagree and both commercial and altruistic surrogacy have ethical drawbacks. In the presence of cross-border surrogacy, these ethical drawbacks are exacerbated. In this article, we explore what would be ethical remuneration for surrogacy, and suggest regulations for how to ensure this in the international context. A normative ethical analysis of commercial surrogacy is conducted. Various arguments against commercial surrogacy are explored, such as exploitation and commodification of surrogates, reproductive capacities, and the child. We argue that, although commodification and exploitation can occur, these problems are not specific to surrogacy but should be understood in the broader context of an unequal world. Moreover, at least some of these arguments are based on symbolic rhetoric or they lack knowledge of real-world experiences. In line with this critique we argue that commercial surrogacy can be justified, but how and under what circumstances depends on the context. Surrogates should be paid a sufficient amount and regulations should be in order. In this article, the Netherlands and India (where commercial surrogacy was legal until 2015) are case examples of contexts that differ in many respects. In both contexts, surrogacy can be seen as a legitimate form of work, which requires the same wage and safety standards as other forms of labor. Payments for surrogacy need to be high enough to avoid exploitation by underpayment, which can be established by the mechanisms of either minimum wage (in high income countries such as the Netherlands), or Fair-Trade guidelines (in lower-middle income countries such as India). An international treaty governing commercial surrogacy should be in place, and local professional bodies to protect the interests of surrogates should be required. Commercial surrogacy should be permitted across the globe, which would also reduce the need for intended parents to seek surrogacy services abroad.

Popular repugnance contrasts with legal bans on controversial markets.

We study popular attitudes in Germany, Spain, the Philippines, and the United States toward three controversial markets-prostitution, surrogacy, and global kidney exchange (GKE). Of those markets, only prostitution is banned in the United States and the Philippines, and only prostitution is allowed in Germany and Spain. Unlike prostitution, majorities support legalization of surrogacy and GKE in all four countries. So, there is not a simple relation between public support for markets, or bans, and their legal and regulatory status. Because both markets and bans on markets require social support to work well, this sheds light on the prospects for effective regulation of controversial markets.

Surrogacy and the law: Possible reforms.

A consideration of the concept, law and practice of surrogacy, and the merits and demerits of the concept. A discussion of payments, foreign surrogacies, delay in finality, and the need for control and regulation.

Selecting the optimal gestational carrier: medical, reproductive, and ethical considerations.

The goals of a gestational surrogacy relationship are to have a healthy baby for the intended parents while maintaining the medical and psychological well-being of the gestational carrier. A successful gestational surrogacy relationship will result also in good psychosocial outcomes for the gestational carrier, intended parents, and child. Finding a gestational carrier who will achieve these goals would be the ideal. This article focuses on key medical, reproductive, and ethical considerations to optimize clinical outcomes in gestational carrier cycles. Recommendations from available clinical guidelines regarding gestational surrogacy are reviewed, along with updates from current literature.

Gestational surrogacy: medical, psychosocial, and legal considerations.

Gestational surrogacy can provide an effective family-building method for women whose uterus is absent or dysfunctional and with contraindications to pregnancy, single men, and same-sex male couples. Over the past 30 years, gestational surrogacy cases have represented a growing percentage of third-party reproduction cases, both in the United States and internationally. The following series of articles provides a summary of current topics in optimizing GS arrangements. They focus on medical and psychological screening; psychosocial adjustment of carriers, children, and their families; legal considerations with precedent-setting cases that every clinician should know; and an international overview of cross-border surrogacy.

Legal principles and essential surrogacy cases every practitioner should know.

Gestational surrogacy, made possible with the introduction of in vitro fertilization, has expanded family building options while introducing novel challenges to established legal principles involving constitutional, contract, and family law as well as duty of care and negligence. Both legislatures and courts have grappled with how to apply these sometimes-competing areas of law to protect participants and professionals, and to create legally secure families. This article explores the following: the Constitutionally protected rights of privacy and reproductive autonomy of gestational surrogates; Contract Law principles that govern surrogacy contracts; the varied ways states have extended Family Law to establish legally recognized parent-child relationships between intended parents and children born to gestational surrogates; and the legal duties of care medical professionals owe to their patients.

Legal and ethical issues in cross-border gestational surrogacy.

This article aims to identify the main legal and ethical issues around international surrogacy. Owing to the legal diversity and ethical background of such a globalized practice, a review of the key existing literature on these two matters has been identified and analyzed. The article also identifies and analyzes the most significant legal solutions provided by supranational jurisdictions when dealing with cases of international surrogacy. The scope of the article includes the efforts to reach a minimum legal framework at the international level, with the aim not to standardize but to provide common legal solutions to those travelling abroad to have a child by means of surrogacy.

No more only one mom? European Court of Human Rights and Italian jurisprudences' ongoing evolution.

The author has delved into the most significant Italian and European court rulings related to heterologous fertilization and surrogate motherhood between 2012 and 2019, with a close focus on same-sex couples seeking to have their donor-conceived children born abroad legally registered in their country of origin. Undeniably, surrogacy has brought about a crisis in the traditional family model, made up of a mother and a father. The paper draws upon European Court of Human Rights established jurisprudence that upholds the children's best interests. Italian Court rulings are expounded upon as well, which have been instrumental in establishing the principles by which parental figures do not necessarily coincide with those who have generated the children (through biological bonds or delivery), but rather with those who wish to be recognized as parents. The cases herein examined involve homosexual couples who decided to travel abroad in order to gain access to surrogacy, from which children were born. In the case regarding two fathers, the child had no genetic tie with either one intended parent. The Italian Supreme Court's joint sessions have ruled that such children cannot be legally registered in Italy, since their foreign-issued birth certificates indicate no genetic connection between the children and their intended parents. The Author believes that the Supreme Court decision is valuable, but further legislative interventions will be necessary on account of scientific advancements; the issue of surrogacy is utterly complex and multi-faceted.

Removing Harmful Options: The Law and Ethics of International Commercial Surrogacy.

Focusing on the UK as a case study, this article argues that having the choice to enter into an international commercial surrogacy arrangement can be harmful, but that neither legalisation nor punitive restriction offers an adequate way to reduce this risk. Whether or not having certain options can harm individuals is central to current debates about the sale of organs. We assess and apply the arguments from that debate to international commercial surrogacy, showing that simply having the option to enter into a commercial surrogacy arrangement can harm potential vendors individually and collectively, particularly given its sexed dimension. We reject the argument that legalizing commercial surrogacy in the UK could reduce international exploitation. We also find that a punitive approach towards intended parents utilizing commercial rather than altruistic services is inappropriate. Drawing on challenges in the regulation of forced marriage and female genital cutting, we propose that international collaboration towards control of commercial surrogacy is a better strategy for preserving the delicate balancing of surrogate mothers' protection and children's welfare in UK law.

Women's Control Over Decision to Participate in Surrogacy : Experiences of Surrogate Mothers in Gujarat.

The rise of surrogacy in India over the last decade has helped individuals across the world to realize their parenting aspirations. In the macro-context of poverty in India and the hierarchical and patriarchal family set-up, concerns are expressed about coercion of women to participate in surrogacy. While the ethical issues engulfing surrogacy are widely discussed, not much is known about the role women play in the decision-making to participate in surrogacy. The paper aims to addresses this gap and is based on a part of a larger ethnographic study conducted at a surrogacy clinic in Anand, Gujarat, India. We explored experiences of forty-one surrogate mothers using in-depth interviews and analysed the narratives to identify women's own perceived role in the decision-making to participate in surrogacy. Narratives describing the decision-making process were identified and treated as a preliminary unit of analysis. We examined the use of singular and plural pronouns like "I," "me," and "mine" versus "we," "us," and "our," along with the use of active and passive voice to determine whether women assumed responsibility for the decision to participate in surrogacy or they attributed the decision to others. Findings unravelled the complexities of the decision-making process and indicated that eighty-five percent of the women played an active role in the decision-making to participate in surrogacy, albeit with new avenues of exploitation in the commercial market space and raised serious bioethical concerns.

[New reproductive technologies in the United States: law(s) and practice(s)]. / Les nouvelles technologies de reproduction - État des lieux aux États-Unis.

This article presents a panorama of laws and guidelines governing the practice of NRT in the US in general, and surrogacy in particuliar. Special attention is given to what the author deems to be four « models ¼ governing frameworks for surrogacy where all parties are protected, beginnning with the surrogate herself.

A review of surrogate motherhood regulation in south American countries: pointing to a need for an international legal framework.

BACKGROUND: Advances in science and technology coupled with globalization are changing access to and utilization of reproductive health services. This includes the transnational phenomenon of families who use surrogate mothers to reproduce, with forms of altruistic and commercial surrogacy becoming more commonplace. Simultaneously, changes in law, regulation, and policy are necessary to protect surrogates, intended parents, and resulting children. These developments have been slow to adapt to challenges inherent to surrogacy arrangements, most specifically in low-and middle-income countries, including in South American countries. METHODS: We conducted an interdisciplinary non-systematic literature review and legal analysis of existing and pending policy, laws, and regulations related to commercial surrogacy arrangements in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The review focused on articles that discussed topics of domestic and international law, policy, regulation, and governance related to commercial surrogacy. We queried PubMed, JSTOR, and Google Scholar for Spanish and English-language articles limited to those published between 2000 and 2016. RESULTS: Our literature and legal review found a wide variance in how different countries address the issue, including two (Brazil and Uruguay) that have issued guidance attempting to clarify the legality of commercial surrogacy, others who have introduced surrogacy-specific legislation, and a final group with no specific legal mechanisms in place. Our extracted legal case studies also indicate that courts have a hard time interpreting existing law and its applicability to surrogacy. The influence of Catholicism also played a role in the adoption of surrogacy and other advanced reproductive technology (ART)-related legislation. CONCLUSIONS: Changes in global infertility rates, the emergence of new family structures, and advancement of ART are factors that will influence future development of legal frameworks addressing surrogacy in South America. Despite a growing transnational market for commercial surrogacy in many of the countries examined, the current patchwork of policy does little to clarify what forms of surrogacy are legally permissible, nor do they adequately protect surrogates, intended parents, or the children themselves. This points to an urgent need for regional legal and policy harmonization specifically designed to align with public health and human rights principles.

Legal principles and seminal legal cases in oocyte donation.

Oocyte donation has played an increasingly important role in assisted reproductive technologies since the early 1980s. Over the past 30 years, unique legal standards have evolved to address issues in the oocyte donation procedure itself as well as the disputes over issues, such as parentage, that inevitably arise with new technologies, particularly for individuals seeking to build nontraditional families. This essay will explore oocyte donation's legal aspects as well as seminal law concerning the procedure, including statutory law (uniform and model provisions and enacted state laws) and selected judicial opinions concerning surrogacy and parentage, testing of oocyte donors, mix-ups of donated oocytes, and donor compensation.

Ending commercial surrogacy in India: significance of the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016.

The introduction of the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016 into Parliament, in August 2016, was a much-awaited response to citizen voices and human rights groups calling for action in the unregulated area of commercial surrogacy arrangements. Both houses of Parliament have reviewed the Bill, and its fate was to be decided in the Winter Session of Parliament, 2017. It is still unclear whether the Bill will come up for decision in the Budget Session that will reconvene on March 5, 2018. The market for infertility treatments has attracted to India global clients seeking access to surrogates and procedures at lower costs. The Bill seeks to protect the rights of women and children at risk of exploitation and commodification as third parties in infertility treatments that use assisted reproductive technologies. Can commercial surrogacy be allowed in a country where injustice, inequalities, and poorly implemented laws place vulnerable women and children at risk? The proposed Bill could shut the door on commercial surrogacy arrangements in India and bring regulation into this sector of medical services.