A curated selection of articles and research representing different perspectives on international surrogacy.
Ethics of Surrogacy During COVID-19 Pandemic
Cathy Sakimura and Emily Galpern | Men Having Babies Blog | April 29, 2021
Men Having Babies posted this ethical approach to surrogacy during COVID, by Surrogacy360’s own Emily Galpern and National Center for Lesbian Rights’ Cathy Sakimura. This approach strives to minimize the effects of gender, economic, global, and racial inequities that impact the bargaining power of people acting as surrogate or egg donors; to ensure that surrogates’ basic rights and ability to achieve a just contract are respected; and recognizes the rights of people born through surrogacy to legal security and knowledge about their origins. Intended parents must also not be discriminated against due to sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status.
Poor Legal Regulation Threatens Health of Ukraine’s Egg Donors
Kate Baklitskaya and Magdalena Chodownik | New Eastern Europe | March 15, 2021
This article highlights the need for stricter regulation of surrogacy and egg donation in Ukraine and Poland, underscored by additional risks presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Early travel bans left many newborns stranded in Ukraine, and the current economic decline may be motivating more women to sell their eggs for extra income. However, Ukraine and Poland have not developed legislation to protect egg donors’ safety and privacy.
Surrogacy in Mexico: The Consequences of Poor Regulation
Surrogacy in Mexico: The Consequences of Poor Regulation, a report from GIRE – Information Group on Reproductive Choice, provides a picture of surrogacy regulation in Mexico, including analysis of state and federal laws, description of litigated cases, and recommendations to guarantee human rights protections for all parties involved.
The accompanying video features the stories of two surrogates in Tabasco and two sets of parents: a gay male couple from the U.S. and a Mexican and Argentinian heterosexual couple in Mexico. Both couples would have been prevented from engaging in surrogacy after a new law passed in Tabasco in 2016.
International Principles for Donor Conception and Surrogacy
This set of international principles, intended to safeguard the human rights and best interests of people born from donor conception or surrogacy, call for strict regulation in countries that permit these practices. Examples include the right to identifying information about biological parents, siblings, and surrogate mothers, and prohibitions on transnational surrogacy and donor conception.
Watch the presentation by donor-conceived and surrogate-born people at the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Nov. 19, 2019), which led to the development of these principles.
Legal Basics for LGBTQ Parents
The New York Times Parenting section offers advice from four experts at key LGBTQ legal and policy organizations on navigating parenting options (donor conception, surrogacy, fostering, adoption) in the U.S.
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Research Highlights
Making and Breaking Families – Reading Queer Reproductions, Stratified Reproduction and Reproductive Justice Together
By Marcin Smietana et al. Reproductive Biomedicine and Society Online, 2018, Volume 7 pgs. 112–130.
Surrogacy Relationships: A Critical Interpretative Review
By Jenny Gunnarsson Payne, Elzbieta Korolczuk, and Signe Mezinska. Upsala Journal of Medical Sciences, Published online: Feb. 19, 2020.
Baby Markets and Global Inequalities: Conundrums of Commodification, Care and Social Reproduction in International Commercial Surrogacy
By Kristen Cheney. This article was originally published in Development and Change, 2018, Volume 49 Issue 4 pgs. 1127-1139 and is republished here with permission.