surrogacy « Berman Institute Bioethics Bulletin

Features

News roundups

Announcements

Baby in China Is Born to Surrogate 4 Years After His Parents’ Deaths

April 12, 2018

After a long legal battle in China with no known precedent, a surrogate mother has given birth to a boy four years after his parents died in a car crash, a local newspaper has reported

Quick Read

Baby in China Is Born to Surrogate 4 Years After His Parents’ Deaths

Thursday, April 12th, 2018

Shen Jie and Liu Xi, a couple in the eastern Chinese city of Yixing, tried without success to conceive in the first two years of their marriage. They decided to pursue in vitro fertilization, but on March 20, 2013, five days before the embryos were to be implanted, they were killed in a car crash, Beijing News reported on Tuesday in an article detailing the court battle that followed.

The husband and wife were both only children, and the couple’s parents resolved to use surrogacy to continue the family line. Surrogacy is illegal in China, and the first obstacle for the families was obtaining the embryos.

(Read about how surrogacy has been growing in China because of rising infertility, a relaxation of the one-child policy and a cultural imperative to have children.)

… continue reading “Baby in China Is Born to Surrogate 4 Years After His Parents’ Deaths”

Image: via Flickr Some rights reserved by Image Editor

Be the first to like.

Unlike

NYTimes

Womb Transplants and Child-Centred Surrogacy

November 7, 2017

Womb transplants are again in the news as Richard Paulson, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), said there was no reason to believe that the treatment could not work for transgender women at recent conference in Texas

Quick Read

Womb Transplants and Child-Centred Surrogacy

Tuesday, November 7th, 2017

By Julian Savulescu,

…

The ethical issues of performing a womb transplant for a transgender women are substantially the same as the issues facing ciswomen.

The most important ethical consideration in the UK for a womb transplant is distributive justice. Limited health care resources should not be used for womb transplants because there are more cost effective methods of assisted reproduction available. However if an individual wishes to use their own funds for such a procedure, they should be made aware of the risks (which are very significant), and the alternatives, such as surrogacy.

The best interests of the future child is another critical consideration. The moral status of the fetus is a topic of much debate. However, even if we consider abortion to be acceptable, and deny that the fetus has a moral status that accords it its own interests, in cases where the mother plans to carry the pregnancy to term, the fetus represents the future child who does of course have interests (albeit that they are to be weighed against the mother’s own interests, and that the mother is responsible for making decisions on their behalf).

Image: Von Hic et nunc – Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17212169

Be the first to like.

Unlike

Practical Ethics

Cross-Border Surrogacy

March 29, 2017

Exploiting low income women as biological resources? Our globalised economy responds voraciously to biotech advances, but lax regulation risks turning the poor into biological resources to be used for profit

Quick Read

Cross-Border Surrogacy

Wednesday, March 29th, 2017

“Look at us, here! We are creating the world of tomorrow!” exclaims Mike. His words bounce off the walls of the high-tech fertility clinic we are in. Outside, the sun is slowly sinking into the smog of New Delhi’s skyline as the streets fill with commuters. The brutal socio-economic inequality between the haves and the have-nots of India’s economic miracle is laid bare in rush hour traffic. Shiny luxury cars, taking wealthy businessmen from high-rise offices to palatial homes stop at the traffic lights outside. Beggars approach them, knocking on tinted windows to plead for a fraction of that economic wonder, a share of the spoils of India’s integration into global neoliberal trade systems, so that they can feed their family for the day.

The traffic is a distant background noise in our meeting, where a handful of entrepreneurs from different parts of the world are building a business out of bringing together the inequality outside the clinic with the biotechnology inside it.

They are all in the business of transnational commercial surrogacy, where women are paid to carry and birth babies for foreign “intended parents”. Their clients are people who are, unfortunately, unable to have children themselves. Surrogacy’s underlying technology of IVF, where a baby is conceived in a petri dish, rather than in the womb, is impressive. But surrogate women to carry those pregnancies can be hard to find in many countries. This shortage, combined with high costs and regulatory restriction has given rise to the outsourcing of surrogacy to low-income countries like India.

1 person likes this post.

Unlike

The Guardian

Outsourcing Pregnancy

April 4, 2016

A visit to India’s surrogacy clinics. Julie Bindel, a strident opponent of surrogacy, travelled to India to find out more about a practice worth an estimated £690m a year on the subcontinent

Quick Read

Outsourcing Pregnancy

Monday, April 4th, 2016

In Ahmedabad, Gujarat, my driver is looking for one of the city’s IVF clinics. We turn on to a busy main road and I spot a sign on a crumbling wall reading “test tube babies”.

I climb the filthy stairwell and enter a small, dark reception area. In the adjoining room I spot a hospital stretcher and shelves full of metal petri dishes, forceps and hypodermic needles.

Dr Rana* leads me into a windowless office. Before we even sit down, he is telling me about a change in India’s surrogacy policy.

In October last year, the government told fertility clinics to stop all surrogate embryo transfers to foreigners. The move follows a proposed change in the law that would limit surrogacy to Indian couples, or where at least one of the commissioning parents has an Indian passport and residency.

Image: By Simon Williams / Ekta Parishad – Ekta Parishad, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11408641

Be the first to like.

Unlike

The Guardian

An Explicit Contract Makes Surrogacy Viable For An Oregon Woman

July 9, 2015

surrogacy arrangements are often informal agreements, and they can go wrong. A surrogate may face unexpected medical bills, or the intended parents may change their mind. Yet Mardi Palan is excited about becoming a surrogate, and that’s due in part to a very thorough contract she has signed governing the terms of her surrogacy

Quick Read

An Explicit Contract Makes Surrogacy Viable For An Oregon Woman

Thursday, July 9th, 2015

During the past few years, Oregon has quietly become a prime location for women willing to carry children for those unable to get pregnant. There are several reasons for that: lenient laws, a critical mass of successful fertility clinics and a system for amending a birth certificate pre-birth.

But surrogacy arrangements are often informal agreements, and they can go wrong. A surrogate may face unexpected medical bills, or the intended parents may change their mind.

Yet Mardi Palan is excited about becoming a surrogate, and that’s due in part to a very thorough contract she has signed governing the terms of her surrogacy. It includes Palan’s compensation, standards she must meet and a wide array of protections for her. “The contract needs to be black and white, because there has to be some clarity at one point in the process regarding expectations,” said John Chally, the director of the NorthwestSurrogacy Center in Portland, where Palan signed up.

Be the first to like.

Unlike

Kaiser Health News