Desperate to have a child of their own, many Irish couples are exploring the option of using a surrogate mother, writes SHEILA WAYMAN
THE IDEA of a woman carrying and giving birth to a baby for somebody else would seem to be fraught with emotional and legal pitfalls. But increasingly it is being accepted as a way of creating a family.
An upsurge of interest in surrogacy among Irish couples experiencing fertility problems is being reported. Desperate to have a child of their own, they are examining all options as the delays and obstacles to foreign adoption mount with the closing off of various source countries, such as Vietnam.
In the absence of any legal recognition of surrogacy in this country, most couples look abroad. If they used a surrogate mother here, they would have to adopt the child, but private adoptions are restricted only to relatives of the mother.
The Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction concluded in 2005 that surrogacy should be permitted, subject to regulation, but nothing has been done about this or, indeed, any of its other recommendations.
Surrogacy is a very clear-cut business in some countries, such as in parts of the United States. It is known that Irish couples have also been successful in using surrogacy services in the Ukraine, although some have encountered difficulties getting the baby out of the country, or obtaining an Irish passport once home, due to questions over the foreign birth certificate.
Helen Browne of the National Infertility Support and Information Group attributes the dozen or so inquiries it has received over the past four months partly to the emergence of India as a more affordable option for surrogacy than the US.
Couples most likely to consider surrogacy are those where a woman has had multiple miscarriages and believes she will never be able to carry a baby to term, but they have “100 per cent of the genetic material”, she suggests.
Solicitor Marion Campbell, who specialises in family law at her own practice in Dublin, has had so many inquiries about surrogacy since October last year that she started to look further into how best to advise clients.
Her research brought her into contact with US lawyer John Weltman, co-founder of the Circle Surrogacy agency, which has already helped nearly a dozen couples from Ireland use surrogate mothers over the past 10 years. So far, they have all been heterosexual couples, he reports, but the agency is about to sign up its first Irish gay couple.
Weltman will be in Dublin to give a talk to parents on May 18th and also to address the first Family Lawyers Association seminar on surrogacy, which has been organised for the following day by Campbell and will be chaired by
Judge Henry Abbott. Both events were rescheduled from this week due to the disruption of air transport.
Weltman believes Irish people are more afraid of pursuing the surrogacy option than they need to be. “My goal is to provide information so people can make their own decisions,” he tells The Irish Times in a phone interview from his office in Boston.
“Our position has been, and the Irish lawyers agree with me, that the babies should leave the country with a US passport and come back to Ireland and get the Irish passport.”
For couples seeking surrogacy in the US, Weltman outlines the process, which will take an average of 12-15 months from signing on to delivery of the baby and cost in the range of $70,000-$120,000 (€52,000-€89,000) or more, depending on various factors, including whether a couple is using its own embryos or donor eggs.
His agency encourages up to four visits by the couple during that time, including being there for selection of the surrogate, the transfer of the embryos, an ultrasound scan at about 20 weeks and the birth.
The first step is a consultation of several hours, either on Skype, in Boston or with a representative in Dublin.
“Before we sign, we want to know what is their situation? What is their history of infertility?” A social worker is involved in the screening of couples and a few would be turned away.
“Do they have embryos in Ireland that we might be able to get over to the United States?” is another question. “Despite all kinds of laws we have been successful 98 per cent of the time in getting frozen embryos. Usually they have to carry them themselves, it is an interesting customs issue,” Weltman comments.
If they don’t have embryos, do they want to get that procedure done in Ireland where it will cost them less? Or do they want to do it all in the US?
Next step is finding the right clinic for them, with regard to convenience and costs. His agency boasts the highest success rate in the US.
“Only two couples have come to our programme and not walked off with a baby, so that is pretty extraordinary over 15 years,” says Weltman. “We are working with the best IVF specialists.”
It takes about one to three months to find a “carrier” in the case of European heterosexual couples. The surrogates are carefully screened and Weltman says it has up to 20 times more women applying than they accept.
For the surrogate mothers, who are paid $20,000-$25,000 depending on previous experience, it is “incredibly rewarding” to help these couples, Weltman says. “It is a calling.”
It can also be the start of a life-long connection. “We don’t have a single couple who are not still in contact with their surrogate – at the least a card at Christmas, at most daily phone calls.”
Apart from looking for similar interests and outlooks in a surrogate mother, a couple must be sure that they all agree on “two critical things” which the agency cannot control.
“They must be on the same page abortion and selective reduction,” says Weltman.
“Those are the only things a contract cannot bind a woman to do because in this country we believe in the right to choose.”
The commissioning couple may want to abort in the case of Down syndrome, for instance, or reduce a triple pregnancy to twins and they must be assured that the surrogate mother would comply.
“That is the key match,” stresses Weltman. “ I can force the baby out of her arms into theirs, but I cannot force her to have an abortion or selective reduction.”
The state where the surrogate mother lives is the final consideration, as the laws of each state are different. In six states, surrogacy is illegal and of the remaining 44, some are easier than others in which to conduct business.
“The one thing I need for Irish couples is that they must be on the original birth certificate,” he says.
So the surrogacy must be done either in a state such as Arkansas, “where once you sign the contract there is a recognition that it is your baby and your name will go on the birth cert” or in Massachusetts and California, where a couple can get a court order before the birth that stipulates their names will go on the birth cert.
The need for the couple’s name to be on the original birth certificate complicates matters because most Irish couples don’t have health insurance to cover the baby in the US.
“So we want the surrogate’s insurance to cover that,” Weltman says. “That doesn’t happen if, at least while she is in the hospital, she is not considered the mother of the children.”
This is a significant issue in the case of multiple births where twins can run up an average bill of $100,000 between them during a short stay in neonatal intensive care.
If there is a higher likelihood of a twin pregnancy, the agency would choose a surrogate mother living in a state where a post-birth order is possible.
“It is still the original birth cert, but it is done after the birth so that the babies are covered by the surrogate’s insurance.”
It is vital in this business, he points out, to know about the interaction of the law of the country from which the couple comes and the law of the state in which the surrogate resides.
Weltman, a successful commercial lawyer for many years, became involved in surrogacy due to personal circumstances. He is father of two sons, aged 14 and 16, who were delivered by a surrogate mother.
When he was having his second child, the agency he was using was sued for malpractice and asked him to represent it. They bartered services, won the case and Weltman started to get calls looking for help with surrogacy-related issues.
He kept turning the requests down, pointing out, “That this is not what I do”, until by chance, within the space of one weekend, he came across a woman offering to be a surrogate and a couple who wanted the services of one.
He did his first match and they had a baby boy who is now going on 14 years of age.
“It was a very powerful experience for me, meeting a child who I had helped to create when all my disputes had been Fortune 500 companies and not helping people have children. So I started the business with a social worker.”
Fifteen years later, Circle Surrogacy has 20 on the staff, works in 43 countries and deals with about 150 cases a year, of which over half are for clients who live overseas.
In the future more of those may be here, judging by the growing interest the agency has seen in its parents seminar in Dublin, which is by invitation only – “but we won’t turn anyone away”, says Weltman, who promises to answer “the hardest of questions”.
For more information, see circle surrogacy.com
