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      A review of surrogate motherhood regulation in south American countries: pointing to a need for an international legal framework

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          Abstract

          Background

          Advances in science and technology coupled with globalization are changing access to and utilization of reproductive health services. This includes the transnational phenomenon of families who use surrogate mothers to reproduce, with forms of altruistic and commercial surrogacy becoming more commonplace. Simultaneously, changes in law, regulation, and policy are necessary to protect surrogates, intended parents, and resulting children. These developments have been slow to adapt to challenges inherent to surrogacy arrangements, most specifically in low-and middle-income countries, including in South American countries.

          Methods

          We conducted an interdisciplinary non-systematic literature review and legal analysis of existing and pending policy, laws, and regulations related to commercial surrogacy arrangements in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The review focused on articles that discussed topics of domestic and international law, policy, regulation, and governance related to commercial surrogacy. We queried PubMed, JSTOR, and Google Scholar for Spanish and English-language articles limited to those published between 2000 and 2016.

          Results

          Our literature and legal review found a wide variance in how different countries address the issue, including two (Brazil and Uruguay) that have issued guidance attempting to clarify the legality of commercial surrogacy, others who have introduced surrogacy-specific legislation, and a final group with no specific legal mechanisms in place. Our extracted legal case studies also indicate that courts have a hard time interpreting existing law and its applicability to surrogacy. The influence of Catholicism also played a role in the adoption of surrogacy and other advanced reproductive technology (ART)-related legislation.

          Conclusions

          Changes in global infertility rates, the emergence of new family structures, and advancement of ART are factors that will influence future development of legal frameworks addressing surrogacy in South America. Despite a growing transnational market for commercial surrogacy in many of the countries examined, the current patchwork of policy does little to clarify what forms of surrogacy are legally permissible, nor do they adequately protect surrogates, intended parents, or the children themselves. This points to an urgent need for regional legal and policy harmonization specifically designed to align with public health and human rights principles.

          Electronic supplementary material

          The online version of this article (10.1186/s12884-019-2182-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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          Most cited references15

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          Gay father surrogacy families: relationships with surrogates and egg donors and parental disclosure of children's origins

          Objective To study the nature and quality of relationships between gay father families and their surrogates and egg donors and parental disclosure of children's origins. Design Cross-sectional study. Setting Family homes. Patient(s) Parents in 40 gay father families with 3–9-year-old children born through surrogacy. Intervention(s) Administration of a semistructured interview. Main Outcome Measure(s) Relationships between parents, children, surrogates, and egg donors and parental disclosure of children's origins were examined using a semistructured interview. Result(s) The majority of fathers were content with the level of contact they had with the surrogate, with those who were discontent wanting more contact. Fathers were more likely to maintain relationships with surrogates than egg donors, and almost all families had started the process of talking to their children about their origins, with the level of detail and children's understanding increasing with the age of the child. Conclusion(s) In gay father surrogacy families with young children, relationships between parents, children, surrogates, and egg donors are generally positive.
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            Assisted Reproductive Technology after the Birth of Louise Brown

            Background Public interest in Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) has remained high since the birth of the world’s first in vitro fertilization baby, Louise Brown, in the United Kingdom. ART allows scientists to manipulate the fertilization process in order to bypass some pathological obstacles such as blocked fallopian tubes and non-functioning ovaries in the females, and blocked vas deferens and low sperm count in the males. The purpose was to provide a historical outline and identify the researches that most contributed to ART. Methods A review of published experimental and clinical studies of assisted reproduction carried out at the University of Bristol library website (MetaLib®). A cross-search of seven different medical databases (AMED-Allied and Complementary Medicine Database, BIOSIS Previews on Web of Knowledge, Cochrane Library, Embase, and the Medline on Web of Knowledge, OvidSP and PubMed) was completed by using the key words to explore the major milestones and progress in the development and implementation of ART. Results A speedy advancement in the development of different assisted reproductive techniques makes infertility problem more treatable than it ever had been. Conclusion Although no other field in the medicine has integrated new knowledge into the daily practice more quickly than ART yet, there is a need for social research to counterbalance the dominance of biomedical one, in particular the people’s actual experiences and expectations of ART.
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              Rethinking "Commercial" Surrogacy in Australia.

              This article proposes reconsideration of laws prohibiting paid surrogacy in Australia in light of increasing transnational commercial surrogacy. The social science evidence base concerning domestic surrogacy in developed economies demonstrates that payment alone cannot be used to differentiate "good" surrogacy arrangements from "bad" ones. Compensated domestic surrogacy and the introduction of professional intermediaries and mechanisms such as advertising are proposed as a feasible harm-minimisation approach. I contend that Australia can learn from commercial surrogacy practices elsewhere, without replicating them.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                (951) 491-4161 , tmackey@ucsd.edu
                Journal
                BMC Pregnancy Childbirth
                BMC Pregnancy Childbirth
                BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth
                BioMed Central (London )
                1471-2393
                28 January 2019
                28 January 2019
                2019
                : 19
                : 46
                Affiliations
                [1 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2107 4242, GRID grid.266100.3, Joint Masters Program in Health Policy and Law, University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, ; San Diego, CA USA
                [2 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2107 4242, GRID grid.266100.3, Department of Anesthesiology, , University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, ; San Diego, CA USA
                [3 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2107 4242, GRID grid.266100.3, Department of Medicine, Division of Global Public Health, , University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, ; San Diego, CA USA
                [4 ]Global Health Policy Institute, 8950 Villa La Jolla Drive, A124, La Jolla, CA, San Diego, CA 92130 USA
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2191-7833
                Article
                2182
                10.1186/s12884-019-2182-1
                6350392
                30691390
                ae202c8a-38d2-40b9-b042-2b93957b5c9b
                © The Author(s). 2019

                Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

                History
                : 13 July 2017
                : 7 January 2019
                Categories
                Research Article
                Custom metadata
                © The Author(s) 2019

                Obstetrics & Gynecology
                surrogacy,commercial surrogacy,latin america,infertility,advanced reproductive technology

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