28 Apr 2020 Beijing COVID-19 Update from IFLG's Peiya Wang
In this fascinating video update, Beijing-based IFLG paralegal Peiya Wang talks about how the city is managing a return to day-to-day life, ongoing travel restrictions and mitigation measures, and her own daily life in a high-risk zone, and offers a video montage of the "new...
20 Apr 2020 U.S. Must Help International Intended Parents, Babies Stranded by Covid-19
As the coronavirus covid-19 crisis wears on, the dilemma of intended parents from other countries planning to have babies through surrogacy in the United States has made for compelling headlines: International intended parents unable to travel to be present at their babies’ births. Babies born...
14 Apr 2020 US Surrogacy for UK Intended Parents: Covid-19 Update
Every year thousands of UK intended parents travel to other countries to create families via surrogacy. As we reported last summer, UK surrogacy laws, written in the 1980s, are outdated and pose significant legal obstacles for infertile couples and same-sex couples who opt to become...
08 Apr 2020 International Intended Parents: COVID-19 Travel Advice for US Surrogacy, Birth
Join assisted reproductive technology attorneys Rich Vaughn and Molly O’Brien of International Fertility Law Group as they share information and advice for international intended parents planning to travel for the births of their babies via surrogacy in the United States during the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. Planning...
08 Apr 2020 International Intended Parents: Getting Home with Your Baby During COVID-19
Join assisted reproductive technology attorneys Rich Vaughn and Molly O’Brien of International Fertility Law Group as they share information and advice for international intended parents planning to travel for the births of their babies via surrogacy in the United States during the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. Getting...
10 Feb 2020 Surrogacy Education Down Under Kicks Off IFLG's 2020 Travel Plans
I was excited and honored to have the opportunity to speak on U.S. surrogacy laws at two Growing Family conferences on February 8 in Sydney and on February 9 in Melbourne, Australia. Both full-day conferences were parent-curated surrogacy education events designed to provide potential intended...
13 Nov 2019 RESOLVE ‘Night of Hope’ Celebrates Advocates for Infertility Treatment
I had the great pleasure Monday night, November 11, to attend the 2019 RESOLVE Night of Hope dinner in New York. The Night of Hope is the official awards gala and fundraiser for RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, which is dedicated to improving the lives...
15 Oct 2019 France Takes Another Step to Legalize IVF for Lesbians
The French lower legislative body, the National Assembly, voted today in favor of a law that would legalize in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other assisted reproductive technologies for single women and lesbians. The bill, which is part of a broader bioethics bill, will go next...
30 Aug 2019 France Legalizes IVF for Lesbians, Single Women
In a partial but powerful advance in the movement for reproductive freedom in France, French President Emmanuel Macron’s government last month drafted a new bioethics law that would legalize in vitro fertilization, or IVF, for single women and lesbians. In a society historically heavily influenced...
12 Jun 2019 Italy Backtracks on Recognition of Twins' Non-Biological Dad
For more than two years, we’ve been following the case of two Italian dads, a gay couple, who became parents of twin boys via egg donation and surrogacy in Canada, a Canadian birth certificate listing both dads as legal fathers in hand. After years of legal...
02 Sep 2018 2nd-Parent Adoption Remains Best Protection for LGBT Parents
Huffington Post recently published an article by guest writer Lora Liegel about her experience as a legally married lesbian mom compelled to undergo “second-parent” adoption of her son, Finn, in order to protect her family and her own parental rights. As I have heard so...
25 Jul 2018 Israeli Government Continues Surrogacy Ban for Gay Dads
Tens of thousands of LGBT Israelis and their allies took to the streets Sunday, protesting a new Israeli surrogacy law that denies gay men the right to become parents via surrogacy, even as it gives the green light to lesbian intended parents and single women. Israeli...
20 Jul 2018 Washington Post Article Cites Concerns Arizona Law Gives Personhood to Embryos
Under a new Arizona law, in divorce cases involving frozen embryos, courts are mandated to award custody of the embryos to the “spouse who intends to allow the in vitro human embryos to develop to birth”—even in the face of an existing disposition agreement. As...
23 Apr 2018 National Infertility Awareness Week Champions Reproductive Rights
This week, April 22 through 28, is National Infertility Awareness Week (https://infertilityawareness.org/). Established by RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association in 1989, the week is a collaborative effort of consumers, legislators, advocacy organizations and fertility services professionals to raise public awareness about infertility and reproductive health....
06 Mar 2018 Washington Legalizes Compensated Surrogacy
Congratulations to Washington State, which just became the first state to enact UPA 2017, the updated Uniform Parentage Act for use by U.S. states as uniform legislation for parentage laws, including the parentage of children born via assisted reproductive technology. The new law, signed by...
02 Feb 2018 Berlin ‘Fertility Days’ Signals Groundswell of Interest in Assisted Reproduction
We at International Fertility Law Group are proud, in partnership with Oregon Reproductive Medicine, to officially represent the United States in the field of fertility law at the second annual Kinderwunsch Tage, or Fertility Days, February 17 and 18, in Berlin. The event is designed for...
06 Nov 2017 What to Do With Abandoned Embryos
The problem began decades ago, in the late 1970s, as soon as the first babies created via the then-new technology of in vitro fertilization began to be born. It drew little notice for many years, growing slowly and steadily as a side-effect of the revolution...
30 Jun 2017 It’s A Book!
It’s finally out, in paper and in e-version! After three years of writing, rewriting, editing, proofreading and more of the same, as I was talking to potential intended parents in Shanghai and Taiwan a week ago, the book I co-wrote with colleague and fellow ART...
20 Jun 2017 Asia Trip Reminds of Continued Relevance of LGBT Pride Month
As an attorney with a busy practice, a husband and a father of two boys, my days usually fly by juggling responsibilities and deadlines, and there isn’t much time for reflection. But every now and then, the stars align and events coincide, and it almost...
17 Feb 2017 Tennessee Lawmakers Propose Barrier for Married Lesbian Parents
The wheels of progress turn slowly, and in some parts of the world, leaders stand on the brakes, bring it to a screeching halt, then do their best to roll it backwards. That appears to be happening right now in the Tennessee state legislature. Under the...