Posts Tagged ‘Natalie Gamble’
Monday, April 23rd, 2012
Emma Brockes has written a fabulous major feature for this weekend’s Guardian Weekend magazine on same sex parenting, in which we are proud to be quoted. The piece tells the story of three modern same sex parent families:
Kellen and Patricia, lesbian mums from New York who have a daughter and are now expecting twins, following egg swapping IVF – Patricia is the birth mother but she carried embryos created with Kellen’s eggs.
Will Halm and Marcellin Simard, gay dads to three children age 15, 13 and 10, who pioneered surrogacy as gay dads in California, where they were the first same sex parents to be named on a birth certificate together, and where Will now represents others as a fertility lawyer.
Andrew Solomon and John Habich, gay dads to a truly alternative family structure – a son through surrogacy who they are raising together, and three more children co-parented with two different mothers.
It is a wonderful picture of the realities of modern same sex parenting, with scenarios we are increasingly dealing with for families in the UK too. All the parents involved talk vividly about the challenges and problems they have faced as gay parents – not the playground prejudice and emotional problems many might expect, but losing legal rights when crossing borders, and grappling with obstructive passport authorities. But the biggest problem of all for alternative families remains surrogacy. As Emma says in her article:
There is, in all this, one glaringly unsubtle problem, and that is surrogacy, which as a percentage affects gay men more than any other group. Commercial surrogacy is illegal in the UK, forcing many childless couples to seek help abroad. When they return, the British government is reluctant to endorse an arrangement that undermines public policy. “English law applies its own rules as to who the parents are, irrespective of what happens abroad,” says Natalie Gamble, the country’s leading fertility lawyer. “So even if you’re named as the parent on a US birth certificate, English law will say that the surrogate is the mother and if she’s married, her husband is the father.”
This can lead to some bizarre situations. In 2008, Gamble’s firm acted for a British couple who had used a surrogacy service in Ukraine. “In Ukraine, the law said they were the parents. But under English law, the Ukrainian surrogate and her husband were the parents. The systems were in direct conflict. The result was that the children had no parents and no nationality. They had no right to stay in Ukraine, and they had no passport to cross any borders. That’s the worst nightmare of international surrogacy.” Gamble persuaded the Home Office to issue the children with discretionary entry clearance, then applied to the high court for a parental order, naming the British couple as legal parents.
We have long campaigned for alternative families, both individually in court, and by arguing hard for changes to the law (including supporting the UK’s legal changes allowing gay dads and lesbian mums to be named on birth certificates together). Why do we do this? Because we believe that parents who love and cherish their children raise wonderful families, no matter what the structure.
With that in mind we want to salute, above all, what Will Halm says about his teenage daughter: “That a test tube baby, from two gay men, is a well-adjusted, smart, polished girl at 15, who is comfortable talking about her family – she is what I would like the world to see. Not the parents who are creating the child, but the children themselves.”
You can read the article in full at http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/apr/20/gay-parenting-emma-brockes
Tags: Andrew Solomon, Californian surrogacy, Co-parenting, commercial surrogacy, donor agreement, donor conception, donor conception law, donor insemination, Emma Brockes, fertility law, fertility lawyer, gay men conception, gay parenting, gay surrogacy law, Guardian, international surrogacy, international surrogacy law, Kelen Mori, law, lesbian, lesbian parenting, Natalie Gamble, Patricia Moreno, same sex parenting law, surrogacy agreements, surrogacy lawyer, The Guardian, Will Halm
Posted in Co-parenting, donor conception, family building, fertility law, gay men surrogacy, international surrogacy, lesbian parenting, Natalie Gamble, Natalie Gamble Associates news, same sex parenting | Comments Off
Tuesday, April 17th, 2012
John Healey MP (the former Shadow Secretary of State for Health) spoke clearly and compellingly in the House of Commons this afternoon about the need for proper maternity leave and pay for mothers through surrogacy in the UK (you can watch John Healey’s speech in full here). Introducing a Ten Minute Rule motion, he told Parliament about his constituents, surrogate mother Amy Bellamy and her cousin Jane Kassim. They came to see him at his surgery having been “stunned” to discover that Jane had no legal right to maternity leave or maternity pay to care for the twin daughters Amy had carried for her after Jane was told at 15 that she could never bear children.
We, and Surrogacy UK, are proud to have supported today’s important landmark, the first time this issue has been properly raised in Parliament. As we know so well, for parents who have struggled to build their families through surrogacy (often after a long and difficult journey of infertility), the lack of basic rights to care for their newborn baby can feel like the final insult. It makes no sense and has never been a policy decision; just a gap in the law which has not been addressed. But it is important, as the current position leaves children born through surrogacy in the UK without the legal protection afforded to other children born to their mothers or adopted.
As well as talking about maternity rights as the urgent first step needed, John highlighted some of the wider problems with UK surrogacy law which need addressing, including:
the parents not being named on their child’s birth certificate,
problems dealing with the child’s medical treatment,
delays in the court system to reassign parenthood, and
the absolute veto the surrogate and her husband hold, no matter what is in the child’s best interests.
The UK’s surrogacy laws were designed in 1990. After 22 years we live in a much changed world, with more children born through surrogacy and a much more sophisticated understanding of families created in unusual ways. The law on surrogacy was not reviewed properly when Parliament had a chance in 2008 and is overdue for review. John drew attention to other models of surrogacy law, including pre birth orders, which have been much more successful in dealing with surrogacy arrangements in certain US States, and which the UK should look to.
What was said in Parliament?
“Unlike other mothers, Jane is entitled – having her baby through a surrogate mother – to only 13 weeks parental leave unpaid, and then only entitled to it when she and her husband have a parental order in place. That means that for mothers like Jane, they are faced with the choice of going back to work very quickly or indeed giving up their jobs entirely. Today is a day when I hope this House will take the first step in closing this legal loophole.
“As the leading lawyer in this field says: The conditions for a parental order do not place the child’s welfare first, and ultimately children born through surrogacy do not have the same protection as other children to the time to bond with their parents in the early months of life. That is from Natalie Gamble, a leading legal expert in this field and one who has conducted more cases and seen through more parental orders than any other lawyer in the country.
“There are probably around 100 babies born through surrogacy each year, but the number is growing as society is changing and science is advancing. Surely there must be a good case for Britain, like some States in the US, to have a system of pre birth orders. But the first and most important step is to secure basic maternity rights. So that mothers like Jane who have their children born through surrogates have the same rights as any other mothers who give birth themselves or indeed who adopt children.
“It is wrong that thousands of mothers who have their own babies or who adopt have a legal right to 39 weeks maternity pay and up to 52 weeks maternity leave, while others have a right to only 13 weeks parental leave unpaid. It is wrong that such parents cannot put their names on their children’s birth certificate, they cannot make decisions about medical treatment for their children until they have a formal parental order in place. It is wrong that such a legal step can be blocked completely by the surrogate mother or her husband; and wrong that it may take months, if a magistrates court is busy, to get that order in place. Above all it is wrong that mothers like Jane are denied the same basic rights to the time they need together with their newborn babies that other mothers have.
“Amy simply wanted Jane to have the same joy as a mother as she had with her own son Archie. Together they make a very powerful case for legal change. This is their campaign and I hope this House will back them today.”
What next?
The Bill proceeded unopposed and was formally listed for a second reading, although in practice it is rare for Ten Minute Rule Bills to be given sufficient Parliamentary time to become law. However, a cross party group of MPs will now meet with the Minister for Employment to press for government-led change. We will continue to support this however we can and if you want to get involved or can help with case studies, please do contact us.
Woman’s Hour today
Natalie was also interviewed on this morning’s BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, following a discussion on the lack of maternity leave rules for surrogacy which Natalie contributed to back in 2009, and updating the programme on what was happening today. You can listen to Natalie on today’s Woman’s Hour here.
More information
Find out more about why we think surrogacy law needs reviewing.
Find out more about our campaigning work.
Find out more about surrogacy law.
Tags: 17 April 2012, adoption leave, adoption pay, Amy Bellamy, Jane Kassim, John Healey MP, leading surrogacy lawyer, maternity leave, maternity pay, Natalie Gamble, surrogacy law, Surrogacy UK, Ten Minute Rule Bill, UK surrogacy, US pre birth orders, Woman's Hour
Posted in fertility law, Natalie Gamble Associates news, UK surrogacy | Comments Off
Friday, April 13th, 2012
John Healey MP will be presenting a Ten Minute Rule Bill in Parliament next Tuesday 17 April calling for improved maternity rights for intended parents through surrogacy. Surrogacy UK and Natalie Gamble Associates have supported John in getting this Bill to this position by providing information on the increasing prevalence of surrogacy and the difficulties suffered by intended parents receiving maternity leave.
Currently parents who have a baby through surrogacy have no legal rights to time off work or to maternity pay, even though they are caring for their own biological child in the first months of his or her life. This is very different from parents who give birth or adopt a child, who are entitled to maternity or adoption pay and around a year off work to bond with their new child.
As those who follow our Blog will know, this is an issue that we have been campaigning on for many years and we are delighted that it is finally being debated in Parliament. Although the chance of a Ten Minute Rule Bill becoming law is statistically small, this is an important step towards putting this problem on the Parliamentary map.
The Bill will be screened live on on Tuesday 17th in the afternoon; you should be able to catch it on the Parliament TV channel or on the web: http://www.parliamentlive.tv/main/home.aspx. We will update the Blog with news as things go forward.
Find out more about surrogacy law and our campaigning on this issue:
Radio 4 Women’s hour, 3 June 2011 – Interview with Natalie Should surrogacy law be changed?
Natalie writing in The Guardian, 29 December 2010 – After the birth of Elton and David’s son, can the UK deliver surrogacy reform?
Evening Standard, 27 October 2009 - Ministers face a legal challenge over rules barring women who use a surrogate from receiving maternity pay
Medical News today, 28 December 2008 – Leading fertility patient organisations call for urgent changes to surrogacy law
Bionews, 28 April 2008 – Why UK surrogacy law needs an urgent review
Tags: 17 April 2012, fertility law, fertility lawyer, John Healey MP, maternity leave, Natalie Gamble, surrogacy agreements, surrogacy law, surrogacy lawyer, Surrogacy UK, Ten Minute Rule Bill, UK surrogacy
Posted in fertility law, gay men surrogacy, international surrogacy, Natalie Gamble Associates news, UK surrogacy | Comments Off
Tuesday, March 20th, 2012
We are delighted that the Sunday Telegraph has reported the case of a woman who is challenging the UK’s discriminatory rules on maternity leave, highlighting this important issue which affects many parents building families through surrogacy. The following article appeared in Sunday’s Telegraph:
A mother who had a baby through a surrogate has launched landmark legal action for the right to paid maternity leave
By Ben Leach, 18 March 2012
Her employer refused to give her maternity leave, so she went to an employment tribunal. The woman, who has been allowed to remain anonymous by judges, was refused the leave by her employer when she became a mother. She is suing her employer, alleging sex and maternity discrimination, and has taken her case to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to decide whether the British laws comply with European Union directives, which could force a change in the rules. The court is expected to make a decision later this year.
An estimated 70 women became mothers through surrogates last year and campaigners say they deserve the same rights as other women.
Natalie Gamble, an expert in fertility law, said that only mothers who were pregnant or those who have adopted are entitled to take maternity leave under the existing rules, which left “a gap” in cases where mothers used surrogates.
Stuart Walne, a spokesman for Surrogacy UK, a support organisation, said the rules created an added “trauma” for these women, who faced disputes over paid leave.
The woman started working as a midwife sonographer for her employer in July 2001. Her baby was born through a surrogate mother in August last year and the woman began breastfeeding the child soon after the birth, something that can be induced through hormone treatments and drugs. Her employer offered a career break, reduced hours and unpaid leave, but refused to give her maternity leave, so she went to an employment tribunal. It ruled that the issue had to be decided by the ECJ.
A spokesman for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said that there were no plans to change the law regarding people who have a child through surrogacy.
We hope the case will make a significant difference, although it is unlikely to do so for some time. You can find out more from our website about why surrogacy law in the UK needs changing, and about our campaigning work, as well as about our surrogacy law services.
Tags: fertility law, fertility lawyer, fertility treatment, gay surrogacy law, international surrogacy, international surrogacy law, maternity leave, Natalie Gamble, surrogacy law, surrogacy lawyer, Telegraph, UK surrogacy
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Friday, February 24th, 2012
By Natalie Gamble, Published in BioNews 645
The family court has been making law on known donors, with a number of recent disputes between known sperm donors and lesbian mothers.
In one recent case (reported in BioNews 644), the Court of Appeal is considering whether a gay sperm donor should have a right to regular contact with his biological son, conceived with his ex-wife who lives with a female partner. The adults had agreed verbally at the outset that the same sex couple would be the parents and that the man would not be involved in bringing up the child. The boy’s mothers say they feel ‘bitterness and betrayal’ at his change of heart. The case follows another recent decision by High Court judge Mr Justice Hedley awarding gay dads contact with two donor conceived girls, aged 10 and 6, following a long and bitter legal dispute with the children’s lesbian mothers about their role (1).
What is interesting is the legal framework the court is developing for dealing with these kinds of issues, and how very different they are from traditional mother-father disputes.
How does UK law work?
UK law is, in theory, clear and certain about the parentage of children conceived through assisted reproduction:
The woman who gives birth is the only legal mother, and the egg donor’s claim to motherhood is excluded.
Spouses (and since April 2009 civil partners) who conceive with donated sperm are both legal parents, and the donor is not the legal father.
A sperm donor who donates through a licensed clinic as a donor (and not as a co-parent) is not the legal father, whatever the marital status of the recipient.
But known donation situations challenge the simplicity of these black and white rules. Where a donor is known to the family, he or she may be invited to play some kind of role in the child’s upbringing. This happens frequently where solo or lesbian mothers conceive with a known sperm donor. But the nature of the donor’s (or co-parent’s) role can extend across a very broad spectrum from minimal contact to full co-parenting, with a million different shades of grey in between. There is obvious scope for dispute if the adults involved later disagree about the nature of that role.
The court’s approach
The law in these situations is complicated, but any known donor can, as a minimum, ask to apply for rights of contact with the child. The UK family court has incredibly flexible powers and the child’s welfare, rather than the wishes of the adults, is its paramount consideration.
In deciding such cases, the court will typically ask: What was intended at the outset and what is the current reality of the arrangement? What is the purpose of the proposed contact? Will it undermine the main family unit, and particularly the non-biological parent?
The trend of the case law seems to be heading towards drawing a broad distinction between known donation arrangements where the known donor gets limited ‘identity contact’, and co-parenting arrangements where the father has a more significant ‘secondary parenting’ role. However, every case is different and the court is typically concerned not to undermine the integrity of the primary family unit (usually the lesbian mothers). In practice, donors usually get a lot less than they are asking for and they will be disappointed if they expect to be treated simply as traditional separated fathers.
The significance of donor agreements
A key question is the extent to which the court will pay attention to any written donor agreement. Even if not legally binding, will it be given weight by the court? The recent case of the two donor conceived girls gives the strongest indication yet, Mr Justice Hedley noting that ‘the court will be bound to give careful consideration and weight to any such agreement’.
However, what is perhaps most interesting is that not one of the cases yet heard by the court has involved a written donor agreement. This does not surprise me – in my fertility law practice I see how known donor disputes are almost invariably a product of mismatched expectations between those involved, with latent problems present from the very outset. The process of putting something in writing (however that is done) is the best insurance against a dispute, facilitating thorough and honest discussions about the role and status everyone will have.
I have, on one or two occasions, had clients who decided to abandon plans to co-parent after going through this process, deciding on reflection that they were better suited to a different route (usually sperm bank donation for lesbian mums, or surrogacy for gay dads). These are the cases, I am sure, where legal disputes have been narrowly avoided.
Lessons learned
It would be a shame for anyone to think, as a result of these cases, that known donation arrangements are a bad idea or that those entering into them are reckless or foolish. I have over the years seen some wonderfully successful co-parenting arrangements, where children are nurtured with absolute transparency about their genetic heritage and a wealth of love and security from committed parents (usually more than two).
But known donation is not the right path for everyone. Where it goes wrong, it goes horribly wrong. I am sure that these disputed cases will not be the last – we are certainly dealing with more disputes of this kind than we were three or four years ago – and I am pleased that the court is developing a specialist jurisprudence which affords these situations the sensitive approach they deserve. In the meantime, anyone entering into a known donation arrangement would be sensible to pay heed to these cautionary tales, and to take on board the need to plan thoroughly, talk honestly and listen carefully, before they get pregnant.
SOURCES & REFERENCES
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British and Irish Legal Information Institute | 20 December 2011
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Tags: Co-parenting, donor agreement, donor conception, donor conception law, donor insemination, fertility law, fertility lawyer, gay men conception, gay parenting lawyer, Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008, law, lesbian, lesbian parent legal case, lesbian parenting, lesbian parenting lawyer, Natalie Gamble, Parenting Law, preconception agreement, sperm donation law, sperm donor dispute, sperm donor law, sperm donor legal case
Posted in Co-parenting, donor conception, family building, fertility law, lesbian parenting, Natalie Gamble Associates news, Parenting Law, same sex parenting | Comments Off
Monday, February 20th, 2012
We were really pleased to be asked to write an article for 
UK journal Family Law following Natalie and Helen’s participation in the American Bar Association conference in Las Vegas late last year.
Family Law asked us to give an account of the conference and the issues it discussed, for other family lawyers across the UK. Natalie’s article looks at the development of UK policy and how the UK courts have increasingly accepted the modern reality of international surrogacy arrangements, with a string of cases (in which our team has been proud to be involved) which have established the principle that the welfare of children should come first. Quite right too – we believe that all children deserve to have recognition and status within their biological and intended family, however or wherever they were born. However, the situation is less rosy in other countries around the world, as was clear from the other surrogacy law experts we met at the conference.
Problems with cross-border surrogacy arrangements have also led the Hague Conference on private international law to consider regulating international surrogacy, which was something discussed widely at the conference. Natalie’s also article looks at some of the early proposals from the Hague, which include vetting prospective parents as if they were adopting a child rather than conceiving their own biological child. We are concerned to ensure that the unique nature of surrogacy arrangements is properly recognised in any new international regulation.
If you are interested, you are welcome to read Natalie’s article in full here, or see our website on international surrogacy law.
Tags: Californian surrogacy, commercial surrogacy, fertility law, fertility lawyer, gay men conception, gay parenting, gay surrogacy law, Indian surrogacy, international surrogacy, international surrogacy law, international surrogacy lawyer, law, Natalie Gamble, surrogacy agreements, surrogacy law, surrogacy lawyer, UK lawyer specialising in surrogacy, UK surrogacy lawyer, Ukraine surrogacy, US surrogacy
Posted in fertility law, gay men surrogacy, international surrogacy, Natalie Gamble, Natalie Gamble Associates news, same sex parenting | Comments Off
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
Sir Nicholas Wall, the President of the High Court Family Division, has made public his decision to give parenthood to the British parents of twins born through surrogacy in India. The President said the issues were of “considerable public importance” and he wished to endorse the previous judgments of Mr Justice Hedley in other similar cases.
The decision, from one of the UK’s most senior family judges, represents a bolstering of the UK court’s position on international surrogacy: that although commercially organised surrogacy is not yet permitted in the UK, British parents can be awarded parenthood if they go abroad and pay a foreign surrogate mother more than her ‘reasonable expenses’. Sir Nicholas Wall made clear that the court’s paramount consideration is the child’s welfare, and that a birth certificate will be given as long as there has been no exploitation and the parents are not circumventing child protection laws in the UK.
In this particular case, two Indian surrogate mothers (carrying embryos created with the intended father’s sperm and eggs from the same anonymous donor) gave birth to a boy and a girl within a few days of each other, following a surrogacy arrangement commissioned by a British couple. A total of some £27,000 was paid to the Indian clinic. The court was ultimately satisfied that the parents were “entirely genuine and straightforward” and that “it is plainly in the interests of these two children that they should brought up by Mr and Mrs A as their parents”.
The case follows similar decisions by Mr Justice Hedley in the cases of Re X and Y (2008) in which British parents paid £23,000 to a Ukrainian surrogate mother, Re S (2009) involving a Californian surrogacy arrangement, Re L (2010) involving a surrogate mother based in Illinois and Re IJ (2011) involving a Ukrainian surrogacy.
For further information you can read the judgment in full or see our international surrogacy law pages.
Tags: Californian surrogacy, commercial surrogacy, fertility law, fertility lawyer, fertility treatment, gay men conception, gay surrogacy law, Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, international surrogacy, international surrogacy law, law, Natalie Gamble, surrogacy agreements, surrogacy law
Posted in family building, fertility law, gay men surrogacy, international surrogacy, Natalie Gamble Associates news, same sex parenting, Uncategorized | Comments Off
Tuesday, November 15th, 2011
Today’s Independent features a piece by Alice Jolly, mother to daughter Hope who was born through a surrogacy arrangement in the US, and who we are proud to be working with. Well done to Alice for her bravery in speaking out to highlight her experience. As she says so compellingly, she and husband Stephen are by no means the only parents who have come to us having decided that the adoption process in the UK is just too long, hard and uncertain. Alice describes their experience of US surrogacy and how it has enabled them to build their family in another way. With aptly named Hope in arms they are, she says, “the luckiest people in the world”.
Here is Alice’s article in full, which you can also read at the Independent online
Surrogacy: Parenting the hard way
Alice Jolly and her husband knew they could offer a loving home to one of the thousands of British children awaiting adoption. So why were they forced to go abroad instead and use a surrogate to get the child they longed for?
Alice Jolly with her husband, Stephen, and their children, Thomas and Hope
JOHN LAWRENCE
The scene: a church hall in Oxford three years ago. My husband, Stephen, and I are attending a seminar for couples who want to adopt. A social worker stands beside a whiteboard and explains the process. I look around at the other couples. Their eyes are blank, puzzled. Some start to yawn while others scratch their heads. The social worker has become a tic tac man at a race course, frantically waving her arms, speaking a language that no-one understands. We all start to stare at our shoes. It’s becoming embarrassing – what are we doing here and who put these people in charge of something so important?
A man in the audience is trying to raise his hand but his wife keeps pulling his arm back down. He refuses to be silenced. “So any 16-year-old girl can go into an alleyway on Saturday night,” he says, “and have a knee-trembler with a bloke whose name she doesn’t know, and no one is ever going to ask about her suitability for motherhood. But I’m going to have to go through all this just to be a father?”
The room is silent. The man’s wife is tearful. A social worker crouching in the corner makes a note in her black book. We all know that this couple have fallen at the first hurdle. And yet he has only said what everyone in the room is thinking.
As we have a six-year-old son, Stephen and I decide that it might be best for us to adopt a child under two. No children under two are available for adoption in the UK – or at least none are under two by the time they emerge from our adoption system. And so we go to a seminar in North London about overseas adoption. There we are made to play a bizarre board game. Adoption Monopoly? Or is it Snakes and Ladders – but without any ladders? Each couple has a marker to move around the board. Cards are drawn from a pack. They say, “your paper work has been lost, go back three months.” Or, “the country you have chosen is now closed for adoption, go back to square one.”
Finally, it comes to our turn. “So, Stephen and Alice, where are you up to now?”
“Well, I’ve just retired,” Stephen says, pretending to read the card.
No one dares laugh or it’ll be back to the beginning for them. We break for a coffee and chat to other people. One couple can’t currently be considered for adoption because, although they are home owners and employed, they have £5,000 of credit card debt. Another couple used to live in Bedfordshire, and they got two years into the adoption process, but then they moved to Berkshire so they had to begin again.
After coffee, the discussion focuses on the difficulties experienced by adopted children. Two men interrupt – one is black, the other of Asian origin. Both of them were themselves adopted. The lady running the seminar is clearly uncomfortable with real-life multi-cultural adoption stories. But she presses them to express the anger they must surely feel towards their adoptive parents.
“Anger? I was in an orphanage in Thailand and my Mum and Dad adopted me, brought me back here, gave me everything. From an early age I wanted to be a musician and they made that possible. How could I possibly be angry?”
Then the black guy says: “I was adopted from Ghana and for me it was certainly traumatic. Because every year my adoptive family in Hampstead wanted to celebrate Ghanaian National Day. So all my flabby, white relatives dressed up in African costumes and played drums. Man, I’ve been on the pyschiatrist’s couch for years…” Doubtless the names of these two have gone into the black book as well.
A one-to-one meeting with a social worker follows. It’s a scene from The Trial, by Kafka. We have to convince her we want a child, but we must not appear to want one too much. We tell our story: a stillbirth, four miscarriages, failed IVF. The social worker thinks we have too much baggage – but surely the truth is that most people who adopt do so because other plans have failed?
I mention that we’ve been told that adopting from Russia will probably take two years. No, she says. It will take four and most of the Russian babies have foetal alcohol syndrome. I have talked to a number of families who have adopted from Russia and they tell a different story – but I can’t say so. And so it goes on. No and no and no. We are guilty until proven innocent. Everything is a problem – the fact that we’ve lived abroad, that we have an existing child, that we both went to boarding school, that once every two months Stephen might smoke a cigarette in a bar.
But strangely, the biggest problem is that we are about to have building work done in our house. Until that work has finished, we can’t even start the process.
As we drive home, Stephen is fuming and I am in tears. I know the social worker is playing games, trying to find out if we are serious. But could she not have offered some support or encouragement? I know that adoption isn’t easy – and that it shouldn’t be easy. But does it have to be negative, intrusive, judgemental and so painfully inefficient? Would they rather leave 100 children in care than relax their impossible demands for perfection?
Six months later we meet a lawyer who specialises in gestational surrogacy in the US. Nearly everyone who crosses her threshold has tried to adopt and given up. And US surrogacy? Well, it’s expensive and legally complex – but it can be done. We get in touch with agencies in the States. Yes, they say. Yes and yes and yes.
But I am unconvinced. To me, surrogacy seems bizarre and extreme. It’s from the world of lawsuits and reality TV shows. But then I talk to people with real experience of surrogacy and uncover a world that couldn’t be more different from those sensational media stories. A world in which women are genuinely trying to help other women overcome the pain of infertility.
Two weeks ago we came back from America with our baby daughter. She is called Hope. We are the luckiest people in the world. Throughout the whole process, I continued to doubt whether surrogacy can really work well for everyone involved – now I know that it can. But still I am left with questions about why we couldn’t have given a home to an existing child instead of creating a new one. And some part of me will always be haunted by that baby who we might have adopted – and who is probably still waiting for a family and a home.
Proceeds from this article have been donated to SANDS (Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society) uk-sands.org
There is more information about international surrogacy law on our website
Tags: fertility law, fertility lawyer, fertility treatment, international surrogacy, international surrogacy law, Natalie Gamble, surrogacy agreements, surrogacy law
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Monday, October 31st, 2011
Natalie and Helen were delighted to attend the American Bar Association’s Family and Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) conference in Las Vegas (26-29 October 2011). The conference brought together the world’s leading experts in assisted reproduction and surrogacy law, with lawyers from many US states (where laws vary enormously), Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia, the Ukraine, India, Brazil and Greece. Natalie was invited to speak about English law at a packed session, and was proud to represent the UK alongside leading fertility law experts from Germany, Italy, Australia and Canada.
The ABA conference comes at a key time, with the Hague Conference putting surrogacy on its agenda for international regulation, as well as increasing numbers of clients crossing borders for surrogacy and ART. We were thrilled to meet so many professionals who, like us, understand and care passionately about helping people build families successfully. It was abundantly clear that surrogacy lawyers across the globe need to play a key role, both in helping parents get the best legal protection and recognition possible (while national laws are so disastrously mismatched), and in advocating more widely at an international level as a voice for those conceiving in alternative ways.
Thank you to the American Bar Association for hosting such an inspiring international conference, which we know will be just the first step in building a strong international community of advocates for alternative families.
More information about international surrogacy law is available on our website and in particular check out our area for non-UK advisors and US attorneys.
Tags: Californian surrogacy, commercial surrogacy, donor conception law, embryo law, fertility law, fertility lawyer, fertility treatment, gay men conception, gay parenting, gay surrogacy law, international surrogacy, international surrogacy law, IVF, law, Natalie Gamble, sperm donation law, surrogacy law
Posted in donor conception, family building, fertility law, gay men surrogacy, international surrogacy, Natalie Gamble, Natalie Gamble Associates news, same sex parenting, Uncategorized | Comments Off
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
The HFEA announced yesterday that, after an extensive public consultation and review, the system for paying egg and sperm donors in the UK is changing. Instead of donors being paid out of pocket expenses plus an allowance for loss of earnings of up to £250, egg donors will now be paid a blanket £750 per cycle, and sperm donors £35 per visit.
There was much discussion yesterday about the new payment to egg donors of £750 and whether this would encourage women to donate eggs for the money who wouldn’t otherwise have done so.
However, if we understand the HFEA’s press release correctly, this seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding. The new figure of £750 does not seem to be an increase on the existing £250 cap, but rather a change of how the system works. Women used to be able to claim their actual (unlimited) out of pocket expenses plus an allowance of £250 to represent (nominally) loss of earnings. They can now claim £750 to cover everything, no matter what their actual expenses are. In practice we know that expenses during an egg donation process can mount up very quickly, covering things like travel, drugs, the cost of scans and blood tests at a local hospital, childcare and time off work for consultations, counselling, scans and egg collection. It’s not an easy or an inexpensive process. The HFEA’s new rule therefore may not mean more money for donors, just a simpler way of dealing with expenses. We think the change is less significant than it sounds, and will make little difference to donors or recipients in practice.
However, if nothing else, we hope that all this discussion about donation in the media will encourage donors to come forward. Working with both donors and recipients, we know how much the donation process involves and we know what a life changing difference donation makes to people’s lives. We salute all the donors in the UK who go through this to help others become families and we hope they know how very much they are appreciated.
There is more information about donation in the UK on our website.
Tags: donor conception, donor conception law, donor insemination, fertility law, fertility lawyer, fertility treatment, HFEA donation review, IVF, law, Natalie Gamble, sperm donation law, sperm donor law
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