Category: Surrogacy

I Just Wanted a Baby, But Surrogacy Gave Me So Much More

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compassionate surrogacy

When I started telling people I was having a baby with a gestational surrogate, the responses ranged from awkwardly supportive to just awkward.

A woman at a party congratulated me, praised me for being so clever, so ahead of the times. “Ugh, you’re brilliant,” she told me. I’d have someone else do the dirty work of motherhood for me. Genius.compassionate surrogacy

Others wanted me to know I was in good company: Kim Kardashian had just been through the process. So had Gabrielle Union. And Andy Cohen. And now me!

My traditional Indian mother, fiercely private and surprisingly sneaky, had another idea. She thought it might be better if we made up a story that the baby was adopted. “People aren’t going to understand this,” she said.

Misguided, to be sure, but my mother (as usual) had a point: There is still an incredible amount of secrecy around the gestational surrogacy process. And wherever there is silence, stigma isn’t far behind. It’s for rich people, it’s immoral, it’s dystopian, it’s exploitative…

I know that these are just a few of the thoughts swirling in people’s heads when I tell them that this month a woman named Amber in Kansas will deliver my son. For me, and for countless other families who struggle with fertility, surrogacy isn’t a luxury or shortcut: It’s the light at the end of a very long and lonely tunnel.

The first time I got pregnant, I had just started running for Public Advocate in New York City. It was unexpected, but welcome news. My husband, Nihal, and I were so excited. We told family and friends with abandon (12-week rule be damned!). We changed our destination wedding date so I wouldn’t have to travel in the third trimester. That was almost eight years ago, and we were blissfully, naively unaware of what was ahead of us.

I remember fantasizing about being pregnant while running for office. I imagined how I would march my big fat, swollen feet all over the five boroughs knocking on doors. I would be a symbol of feminine power on the campaign trail: a knocked-up Rosie the Riveter. My baby would be a born public servant, just like me.

When we went to the doctor for our first appointment and saw the solemn look on her face, we didn’t understand. We were no strangers to failure. I had publicly bombed a race for Congress two years before. Nihal, an entrepreneur, had learned resilience from running start-ups. But this was supposed to be easy. Isn’t this what we were born to do? We were shocked that something like this could happen, that we could lose our baby.

Two nights later I put on a brave face and got on stage to introduce President Obama at a fundraiser. It should have been the best night of my life, but I was dying inside, literally, the entire time.

Six months later I miscarried again, hours before I was slated to give a huge pitch for my nonprofit to the “who’s who” of New York City. My job was to be dazzling. I felt so much rage knowing it was easier to betray myself and go through the motions than to admit why I couldn’t.

Vogue.com by Resma Saujani, January 24, 2020

Click here to read the entire article.

The post I Just Wanted a Baby, But Surrogacy Gave Me So Much More appeared first on Time For Families.


Source: Time for Families

NYS Lawmakers Reviving Paid Gestational Surrogacy Push

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New York surrogacy reform

Will Cuomo’s help prove key in opening up option, gestational surrogacy, important to gay couples?

The contested effort to legalize compensated gestational surrogacy in New York State is underway again after the legislative push faltered last year in the face of criticism from a wide range of voices, including out lesbian Assemblymember Deborah Glick of Manhattan.Glick betrayal

Governor Andrew Cuomo, who was among the chief backers of the bill last year, has included gestational surrogacy on his State of the State agenda for 2020 — which he will lay out in a January 8 address — signaling his steadfast intentions to prioritize the legislation this year.

The lawmakers who carried the bill last year, out gay State Senator Brad Hoylman of Manhattan and Assemblymember Amy Paulin of Westchester, are also moving ahead with plans to revive the legislation this year.

New York is one of the few remaining states with an outright ban on paid gestational surrogacy, which entails a prospective parent or parents compensating a person to carry a baby who is not biologically related to the carrier. Hoylman, who led the bill to passage in the Senate last year, has two children through gestational surrogacy with his husband, David Sigal.

Hoylman and other lawmakers have touted the legislation’s bill of rights that they say boasts the strongest protections in the nation for surrogates and requires parents to cover all medical and legal fees for them. The bill would also address the “second parent adoption” process by removing remaining barriers couples could face to the non-biological parent’s rights regarding their child.

Despite clearing the Senate in 2019, the legislation encountered resistance in the Assembly, where Glick blew off her previous commitment to support it and instead was among the critics arguing that women carrying the babies could be exploited and that the expensive surrogacy process is essentially available only to wealthy prospective parents who can fork over tens of thousands of dollars to have children that way.

The legislative effort was ambushed on multiple fronts. Opponents included voices as disparate as longtime feminist leader Gloria Steinem, the Catholic Church, and trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), a group of transphobes who have emerged primarily from the United Kingdom aggressively opposing transgender rights, surrogacy rights, and sex work decriminalization. The transphobes hijacked a City Hall rally opposing sex work decriminalization last year, holding up a sign that read, “NO to the sex trade, surrogacy, and transgende­rism.”

In the final days of the 2019 legislative session late last spring, Paulin told Gay City News she was still trying to whip votes for the bill in a last-ditch effort that proved unsuccessful. On June 20, after the bill had died for the session, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said, “Many members, including a large majority of women in our conference, have raised important concerns that must be properly addressed before we can move forward.” He stressed the importance of prioritizing the “health and welfare” of women and said he looked forward to “continuing this conversation in the coming months.”

How exactly lawmakers plan to address those concerns is not clear this early in the year, but Paulin and Hoylman told Gay City News on January 2 that they are continuing to work with advocates and legislators to bolster the bill. Paulin, noting an example, pointed to the rigorous medication and hormone treatment that the women who are egg donors in the surrogacy process must adhere to. She said she is in touch with experts to navigate the best path forward in addressing those concerns.

GayCityNews.com, by Matt Tracy, January 3, 2020

Click here to read the entire article.

The post NYS Lawmakers Reviving Paid Gestational Surrogacy Push appeared first on Time For Families.


Source: Time for Families

More LGBTQ millennials plan to have kids regardless of income, survey finds

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LGBTQ millenials

 The price of parenthood can be costly for LGBTQ millennials, and all LGBTQ families, especially those dependent on assisted reproductive technology.LGBTQ millenials

Since they married in 2015, LGBTQ millennials, Jonathan Hobgood, 37, and his husband, Kerry Johnson, 36, have wanted to be dads. At first, the couple saw adoption as the best path to parenthood, but South Carolina, where they live, is one of 10 states with religious exemption laws that make it more difficult for same-sex couples to foster and adopt, and they worried that adopting would set them up for a legal nightmare down the road.

“Our concern was that if we did a private adoption and the birth mother decided a couple of years later that she wanted her child back, we would be in for a rather extensive legal battle to try to keep the child,” Hobgood told NBC News. “So we just decided, ‘Well, let’s take ourselves down the surrogacy path from there.’”

In reality, a court-ordered private adoption would have provided the secure, legal parent-child relationship Hobgood and Johnson were looking for, but it is common for prospective parents to have misconceptions about how the law treats parental rights, according to Denise Brogan-Kator, chief policy officer at Family Equality.

The couple did their research. The cost of hiring a female surrogate, they learned, would be steep — $120,000 to $150,000, a price that Hobgood, a project specialist for a medical insurance company, and Kerry, a management analyst with the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, could hardly afford. But it did not deter them.

“I knew I wanted to be a child’s father,” Hobgood said. “I really just wanted to go through and enjoy bringing up this wonderful child who is a part of our family.”

Hobgood and his husband are among an increasing number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people in the U.S. planning to have children, according to data released this year by Family Equality, a national nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ families. And despite the additional financial barriers for many prospective parents in this group, this increased desire to have children was found across income levels, according to a report the group released this month, “Building LGBTQ+ Families: The Price of Parenthood.”

Family Equality polled LGBTQ millennials -500 LGBTQ and 1,004 non-LGBTQ adults, and found that the desire to become parents is nearly identical among both lower- and higher-income lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Forty-five to 53 percent of LGBTQ people between the ages of 18 and 35 are planning to become parents for the first time or add another child to their family (compared to 55 percent for their non-LGBTQ counterparts, a gap that has narrowed significantly compared to older generations).And those making less than $25,000 a year plan to have children at a similar rate to those making over $100,000, according to the report.

Amanda Winn, the organization’s chief program officer, was surprised by the findings.

“I was expecting that folks who were living at the poverty line would report lower rates of wanting to bring children into the home knowing that finances were tight, but that’s not the case,” Winn told NBC News. “That innate, strong desire to have families exists regardless of income levels.”

LGBTQ prospective parents are more likely to face financial hurdles than their heterosexual peers, according to the report. Reasons include their relatively lower annual household incomes and the additional costs associated with having a child using an option other than sexual intercourse, which is considered by only 37 percent of LGBTQ people planning to start their families or have more children.

Assisted reproductive technology: ‘an impossible barrier’ for some

Thanks to advancements in assisted reproductive technology (ART), such as artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization and surrogacy, more LGBTQ people can have children through nontraditional methods, and interest is growing. Forty percent of LGBTQ people are considering such technology to conceive children, according to a Family Equality survey published in February — but many of these prospective parents will pay for it out of their own pockets, and the technology can be expensive.

“Most LGBTQ+ individuals will learn that their health insurance plan does not cover the cost of fertility treatments at all, and, if they do, the individual or family unit must prove that they have been ‘trying’ to conceive for 6-12 months before coverage begins,” the Family Equality report states. “This stipulation in the policy results in high monthly expenses for some and creates an impossible barrier for others.”

nbcnews.com, by Julie Compton December 27, 2019

Click here to read the entire article.

The post More LGBTQ millennials plan to have kids regardless of income, survey finds appeared first on Time For Families.


Source: Time for Families

Taiwan Surrogacy – After gay marriage law passes, Taiwan emerges as new market for LGBT+ surrogacy

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Taiwan surrogacy

Taiwan Surrogacy – After gay marriage law passes, Taiwan emerges as new market for LGBT+ surrogacy

On Geoffrey Li’s 40th birthday last year, he put aside his dream of an early retirement on an idyllic island and instead decided to raise a child in Taiwan with the assistance of surrogacy in Southeast Asia.Taiwan surrogacy

Li and his husband — whose twin boys are now three months old — are among an increasing number of gay couples in Taiwan becoming parents through surrogacy even though the procedure is illegal on the self-ruled island deemed a wayward province by China.

 

Taiwan became the first place in Asia to legalize gay marriage in May and more than 2,000 same sex couples have since wed, prompting a rush of commercial surrogacy agencies to head to Taiwan to help more LGBT+ couples seeking to start families.

“Having a child in the world to care for, who will return our love unconditionally, is an amazing experience we did not expect to have,” Li said.

Globally, the popularity of surrogacy — where a surrogate mother is either implanted with a sperm and egg or becomes pregnant using her own egg — is soaring, particularly among LGBT+ couples who want to become parents.

Global fertility services were estimated in an initial valuation to be worth about $21 billion in 2018 with the industry forecast to grow to $41 billion by 2026, according to India-based market research firm Data Bridge.

Surrogacy laws around the world vary.

For example, Taiwan, France and Germany prohibit all forms of surrogacy, while Britain, Canada and New Zealand allow some forms of altruistic surrogacy but it is illegal to pay a woman for her services.

Taiwan’s Assisted Reproduction Act forbids any form of surrogacy and any attempts to amend laws, as recently as 2017, have failed due to opposition from women and children’s rights groups.

Conservative groups, such as the Coalition for the Happiness of Our Next Generation, have actively campaigned against LGBT+ parenting and marriage equality.

But although two-thirds of Taiwanese voters — about 7 million people — opposed changing the country’s civil code to recognize same-sex marriage in a 2018 referendum, parliament in May passed a law legalizing gay marriage.

New frontier

Under current laws, same-sex couples can only adopt children who is biologically related to at least one of them, with activists marking this as one of the next frontiers in the fight for LGBT+ equality on the island of 23 million people.

The Taiwan LGBT Family Rights Advocacy (TLFRA) group said they are in contact with at least 300 “rainbow families” and expect the number of same-sex parents to rise as the new gay marriage law spurred visibility and acceptance.

“Part of the (LGBT+) community is celebrating, while part of the community has a lot of fighting to do,” said Chu Chiajong, administrative secretary of the TLFRA.

This has been encouraged by the arrival of commercial surrogacy agencies, mainly from the United States, in Taiwan where hundreds of gay couples are willing to pay up to $140,000 to start a family — almost 10 times the average annual salary.

There is no legislation concerning surrogacy at the federal level in the United States and some states allow commercial surrogacy arrangements.

Men Having Babies, a New York-based non-profit that helps gay men become fathers through surrogacy, hosted its first conference for prospective Asian gay parents in Taipei in March.

About 320 people attended, forcing the organizers to request a space twice the size of the room originally booked.

“People were revelling in it. They were proud of the fact this was happening,” said group founder Ron Poole-Dayan, who was part of one of the first same-sex couples in the United States to father children through gestational surrogacy.

American Fertility Services, San Diego Fertility Center and International Surrogacy Center were among the sponsors of the event, which included a panel on budgeting, testimonies from parents and surrogates and on-site consultations with clinics.

The post Taiwan Surrogacy – After gay marriage law passes, Taiwan emerges as new market for LGBT+ surrogacy appeared first on Time For Families.


Source: Time for Families

Anthony M. Brown Featured on the Podcast, The Mentor Esq.

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The Mentor Esq

The Mentor Esq., a new legal podcast, recently featured Anthony M. Brown, founder of Time For Families Law, PLLC.

The Mentor EsqThe Mentor Esq. was founded by Andrew J. Smiley, the famed personal injury attorney in New York City, to help younger attorneys, and seasoned attorneys, to learn more about specific areas of the law and about the profession of law itself.  Episodes of The Mentor Esq. cover such topics as civil rights work to women in the law, as well as the ABCs of trial work, from opening statements to cross examination.

This is the first season of The Mentor Esq. and Andrew is currently planning for season 2.  While there are numerous areas of the law, and attorneys, that he could focus on, I am grateful that Andrew allowed me to tell my story and share my concerns for the future of LGBTQ law in New York, as well as in the Country.

Anthony’s Start in The Law

Andrew reached out to Anthony to join The Mentor, Esq. podcast to discuss two separate issues.  On episode four of the podcast, Anthony discusses how he came to the law after a career as an actor and a medical massage therapist.  Andrew asked Anthony about how he started his practice and who guided him along the way.  Click here to listen to Anthony talking about his pathway to the law.   Younger attorneys will find this episode particularly interesting because Anthony discusses new ways to look at your career, especially at its inception, by thinking outside of the box and planning ahead for what you want your legal practice to focus on and how it intersects with your personal life.

LGBTQ Family Law

Andrew asked Anthony back to the podcast to discuss more specific topics such as LGBTQ family formation and the current state of surrogacy in New York.  With current legislation in New York up for a vote very soon, Anthony discusses the specifics off The Child Parent Security Act – the pending law which would legalize compensated surrogacy and provide for parentage orders, which would allow for lesbian couples with known sperm donors to avoid the second parent adoption process altogether.  The Child Parent Security Act would bring New York’s family law into the 21st century.

If these issues mean something to you, it is definitely worth your time to check out The Mentor Esq.  A full episode list can be found here.

Anthony M. Brown, November 26, 2019

 

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