Surrogacy is already illegal in Italy, while IVF is only available for heterosexual couples
The Italian parliament has approved a bill criminalising people who go abroad to have children via surrogacy, a measure described as “a disgrace”.
The bill, passed in the chamber of deputies with 166 votes in support and 109 against, is aimed only at Italians and envisages fines of up to €1m (£856,690) and jail terms of up to two years for those who break it.
Continue reading...Writer of comic medical memoir This is Going to Hurt reveals surrogacy on BBC’s Desert Island Discs
Adam Kay, the author of This is Going to Hurt, the bestselling “secret diary” of a junior doctor, is now the father of two babies, he has revealed.
Kay, who was portrayed by Ben Whishaw in the Bafta-winning BBC1 adaptation of his comic memoir, said life with his husband, TV producer James Farrell, has been “absolutely transformed for the better” by the arrival through surrogacy of their two children.
Continue reading...Authorities’ attack on LGBT community turns on men who use surrogacy who are assumed to be gay
Several gay men have fled Russia after officials said that they would arrest people “of non-traditional sexual orientation” who had had children through surrogacy. The announcement formed the authorities’ latest attack on the LGBT community.
Surrogacy is legal in Russia but has increasingly been attacked by conservative lawmakers and the Orthodox church. Police arrested a number of top fertility doctors this year and have accused them of “child trafficking” in an ongoing case.
Continue reading...Exclusive: closure of borders means biological parents from other countries have not been able to meet their children
As many as 1,000 babies born to surrogate mothers in Russia for foreign families have been left stranded in the country by the coronavirus pandemic and closure of international borders, the Guardian has been told.
The babies, some born as far back as February, are being cared for mainly by hired caregivers in rented apartments in Moscow, St Petersburg, and other Russian cities.
Continue reading...Lockdown exposed the scale of the commercial baby business in Ukraine, and now women hired for their wombs are speaking out
Some are crying in their cots; others are being cradled or bottle-fed by nannies. These newborns are not in the nursery of a maternity hospital, they are lined up side by side in two large reception rooms of the improbably named Hotel Venice on the outskirts of Kyiv, protected by outer walls and barbed wire.
They are the children of foreign couples born to Ukrainian surrogate mothers at the Kyiv-based BioTexCom Centre for Human Reproduction, the largest surrogacy clinic in the world. They’re stranded in the hotel because their biological parents have not been able to travel in or out of Ukraine since borders closed in March because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Continue reading...Cecile Eledge gave birth to her granddaughter, who was conceived with eggs from the sister of her son’s partner
A 61-year-old woman who served as a surrogate mother for her son and his husband has described her role as a “gift for her son”.
Cecile Eledge thought doctors in her home state of Nebraska would not allow her to carry a baby for the couple because of her age.
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