Gestational Surrogacy and the Health Care Provider (original) (raw)

Gestational Surrogacy and the Health Care Provider: Put Part of the "IVF Genie" Back Into the Bottle

The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 1990

The Jobnson v. Calvert Case IVF for women who would otherwise not be able to benefit from such technology. But, Anna, for whatever reason, changed her mind and the deal began to fall apart. Seeking to invalidate the contract, she claimed among other things, that she had bonded with the fetus and sought the court's protection of her future parental rights.

Legal principles and essential surrogacy cases every practitioner should know

Fertility and Sterility, 2020

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 parentÀchild 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 INHERENT IN SURROGACY: AN ANALYSIS

, http://www.euroasiapub.org (An open access scholarly, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary, monthly, and fully refereed journal.) Surrogacy is a practice that provides the childless with the hope of fulfilling their right to procreate with the aid of a third party referred to as the surrogate mother who is able to have a source of income in lieu of giving birth to a child. However this practice at the outset may seem very amicable as it solves the purpose of both the parties, but there are many ethical issues that the parties often overlook while entering into such arrangements and oblivious of the repercussions of the failure of these agreements they are unaware of the legal implications as well. The Warnock committee report was aimed at basically a more prohibitive approach to surrogacy though it was not aimed at the complete prohibition and it essentially discouraged this practice 1. Thirteen years later the government commissioned the Margret Brazier committee which was less hostile towards the approach to surrogacy as compared to the Warnock committee report, nevertheless it provided that the regulation should not appear to either endorse or encourage the practice of surrogacy. In Briody vs. St Helen's and Knowsley AHA 2 , Justice Hale concluded that surrogacy as such is not contrary to public policy but the issue is a difficult one, upon which the opinions are divided, so that it would be wise to tread with caution. She expressed the view that if there is a trend towards the acceptance and regulation as a last resort rather than towards prohibition. The Warnock committee report outlined the major moral obligations to the practice of surrogate motherhood 3. 1) It is inconsistent with human dignity that a woman should use her uterus for financial profit. 2) To deliberately become pregnant with the intention of giving up the child distorts the relationship of giving up the child distorts the relationship between the mother and the child. 3) It is often argued that surrogacy and especially commercial surrogacy involves baby selling in the sense that the surrogate mother agrees to lease the womb and produce a child as a product with the raw materials provided by the genetic parents. (4) The counterargument though to this issue is that a child is a unique individual and the sole desire of the commissioning parents, the money paid to the surrogate mother is only for the pains she incurs and the expenses that she may have to incur while bearing the pregnancy and by this agreement in no way the dignity of the child is being demaned.

Baby M, the Surrogacy Contract, and the Health Care Professional: Unanswered Questions

Law, Medicine and Health Care, 1988

The Baby M case has forced us to take sides in the public debate over surrogate motherhood. Last year, advocates of this form of noncoital reproduction praised the New Jersey trial court for supporting the freedom to contract for such womb renting services, while critics warned that enforcement of such surrogacy contracts would condone the sale of babies and the exploitation of women as baby factories. In its unanimous opinion, the New Jersey Supreme Court sided with the critics. Based on New Jersey's adoption law and public policy, the court refused to enforce the contract that provided money to a surrogate mother in return for her agreeing to be artificially inseminated with the Semen of another woman's husband, to conceive a child, to carry it to term, and to relinquish her parental rights and surrender her child to the natural father and his wife, regardless of the child's best interests.

Surrogacy in modern obstetric practice

Seminars in fetal & neonatal medicine, 2014

Surrogacy is rising in profile and prevalence, which means that perinatal care providers face an increasing likelihood of encountering a case in their clinical practice. Rapidly expanding scientific knowledge (for example, fetal programming) and technological advances (for example, prenatal screening and diagnosis) pose challenges in the management of the surrogate mother; in particular, they could exacerbate conflict between the interests of the baby, the surrogate mother, and the intending parent(s). Navigating these often-tranquil-but-sometimes-stormy waters is facilitated if perinatal care providers are aware of the relevant ethical, legal, and service delivery issues. This paper describes the ethical and legal context of surrogacy, and outlines key clinical practice issues in management of the surrogate mother.

Ethics, Law, and Commercial Surrogacy: A Call for Uniformity

The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 2007

In July of 2005, Indianapolis witnessed streaming headlines in the local newspaper attempting to distill the confusion surrounding the adoption of two premature infants by an adoptive parent. Thirteen articles and opinion pieces introduced the public to a murky legal and ethical transaction. Stating his overwhelming desire to have children, a New Jersey schoolteacher hired the services of a local attorney. The attorney procured a South Carolina woman for a compensated gestational surrogacy contract. Under the contract, the surrogate and the attorney would meet in Indiana to complete the execution of the contract and transfer parental rights via adoption after the birth of the twins.

Genetic and Gestational Surrogacy: an Overview

Walailak Journal of Science and Technology, 2012

Surrogacy is a method in which a woman bears a child for another woman. The indications for treatment include absent uterus, recurrent miscarriage, and repeated failure of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and certain medical conditions. It also defines the process in which a woman gestates a fetus, gives birth to a child, and then relinquishes her parental rights to another couple. This third party relationship to the intimate process of producing children is not a contemporary concept and has been recorded in our history in several forms. In colonial America, children were sent to other childless families to learn trades or provide extra help to the family. More recent forms of surrogacy in the U.S. are adoption, fostering, and step-parenting. In this review, various techniques, law issues, and drawbacks of surrogacy are synchronically described and postulated.