This article examines the new Model Act on Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), which was approved by the American Bar Association in February, 2008.
This proposed Model Act is the work of the American Bar Association Section of Family Law's Committee on Reproductive and Genetic Technology. It has been approved by the Section Council. The sections dealing with parentage are intended, as much as possible, to be consistent with and to track the corresponding provisions of the Uniform Parentage Act of 2000, as amended in 2002.
These explanatory notes relate to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 which received Royal Assent on 13 November 2008. They have been prepared by the Department of Health in order to assist the reader of the Act. They do not form part of the Act and have not been endorsed by Parliament.
Legislative restrictions on the sale of organs, gametes and surrogacy services are often seen as having no basis other than mere prejudice or taboo. This paper argues instead that they can be read as instances of a broader decommodification of healthcare provision established in Britain with the creation of the NHS in 1948. Restrictions on the marketisation of medicine were justified by Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the NHS, and by Richard Titmuss, one of its chief academic defenders, in distinctly utopian terms. On this vision, the NHS would function as a utopian enclave prefiguring an idealised non-capitalist future. This commonsense of post-war medicine was fatally destabilised by fiscal crisis and social critique in the 1970s. Influential comme
This paper is a critical analysis of the regulation of surrogate motherhood in Greece; I will discuss the way that a consensus reached in the legislative committee among liberal and conservative jurists on the matter of compensation of surrogate mothers was undermined by intra-party populism in the Greek parliament which banned it to avoid commodification; inevitably the law fell into disuse leading to a new law which allowed government-defined compensation, not the one agreed by the parties; the regulation of surrogate motherhood in Greece is a typical example of the deleterious effects of the combination of legal formalism and legal moralism in contemporary Greece.
A Parental Order transfers parenthood from the surrogate (and her husband or partner if she has one) to the couple who commission the surrogacy arrangement. Parental Orders are currently available to married couples only. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 enables same sex couples and unmarried couples as well as married couples to apply for a Parental Order. Regulations are necessary to set out the processes for the court to grant Parental Orders. This consultation is on the Draft Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Parental Orders) Regulations. They replace the Parental Orders (Human Fertilisation and Embryology) Regulations 1994 and the Parental Orders (Human Fertilisation and Embryology) (Scotland) Regulations 1994. They will bring the processes for granting Parental Orders more closely into line with updated adoption legislation.
A parental order is made by the family courts and reassigns parenthood after surrogacy, extinguishing the responsibility of the surrogate parents and transferring it to the commissioning couple. The process takes place post-birth: the application must be made within the first six months of the child's life (though the surrogate's consent is ineffective until after the first six weeks) and typically takes many months to be processed by the courts. At present, only married couples can apply, but as from 6 April 2010, unmarried and same sex couples will also be eligible. The Department of Health (DH) is currently consulting on new draft regulations which prescribe the detail of this court process, and which will replace existing regulations that have been in place since 1994. The consultation closes on 23 November.
As of 2008, surrogacy is legal and openly practised in various places; Japan, however, has no regulations or laws regarding surrogacy. This paper reports the situation of surrogacy in Japan and in five other regions (the USA, the UK, Taiwan, Korea and France) to clarify the pros and cons of prohibiting surrogacy, along with the problems and issues relating to surrogacy compensation.
A serving High Court judge has told the BBC that he is approving commercial surrogacy agreements made by British couples abroad. Laws in the UK are designed to try to prevent such arrangements, but Mr Justice Hedley said his paramount concern was the welfare of the child. The most recent case the judge approved was last month, involving a baby born to a surrogate in the Ukraine. The judge said he was "extremely anxious" about the current situation. In Britain, the judge said, the only payment allowed to a surrogate mother was one of "reasonable expenses". However, he has agreed to give retrospective approval for commercial surrogacy on at least four occasions.
With surrogacy costing up to $70,000 in the US compared to only $12,000 in India, many Western women are outsourcing pregnancy abroad. It's a multi-million dollar industry that sees rural Indians receive the equivalent of 10 years' salary. Over the course of nine months, we follow the lives of two women, who in each other seek solutions to the problems of poverty and infertility, and explore whether it's a relationship that is exploitative or mutually beneficial.
The high cost of surrogacy in Europe and the US means many Western women are outsourcing pregnancy abroad. Carolina, from Ireland, travelled to India to pay Sonal to carry her baby. The World Service's Your World followed the two women as they came to terms with the emotional costs of the surrogacy.
Truth is often stranger than fiction, and nowhere is this more evident than when examining the real stories related to international commercial surrogacy that have occurred in the last few years. This Article utilizes these recent cases to analyze this industry using a bioethical lens. Bioethicists use stories effectively to demonstrate how theory and normative ideals apply to real world situations. By detailing examples of some of the unique scenarios that have arisen in far-flung cities of India, the United States, and the Ukraine, this Article highlights some of the bioethical dilemmas such stories raise. This Article examines these stories using the classic theoretical bioethics framework to demonstrate the need for clarification of state or national regulation and international guidelines related to international surrogacy.
AT LEAST 15 children born through surrogacy to Irish couples abroad are caught in a legal limbo which has left them either stateless or unable to get an Irish passport. This is despite the recommendations of the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction – established more than a decade ago – which urged the Government to regulate surrogacy. Meanwhile, many parents say delays in resolving their children’s legal status is a source of ongoing stress and is likely to involve expensive legal action. One Dublin couple in their 30s, who have been stranded abroad in India for several weeks, say they are “tearing their hair out” waiting to have their child’s status regularised. “We are tired and angry with the Irish authorities,” said one of the parents, who declined to be named.
MINISTER FOR Justice Alan Shatter is to publish official guidelines next month to assist parents who plan to have children via surrogate mothers abroad in a move aimed at preventing babies ending up in “legal limbo”. However, he was unable to say when long-promised legislation for the wider area of assisted human reproduction would be published. Mr Shatter told The Irish Times that pressure on the Government in drawing up legal changes linked to the EU-IMF bailout meant there was no guarantee of when legislation would be ready. He said a “consultative process” has begun between officials in the various Government departments and hoped significant progress would be made next year. His comments come at a time of growing concern for the welfare of 15 children born by surrogacy abroad who are now either stateless or unable to get passports.