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Independent’s Pink List 2010 honours Natalie Gamble

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

Gamble and Ghevaert is delighted that founding partner Natalie Gamble has been named in the Independent on Sunday’s Pink List 2010, the paper’s renowned annual review of the 101 most influential gay and lesbian people in Britain.  At number 88, Natalie is recognised as a “pioneer of fertility law” who was “heavily involved in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 and nominated in 2008 as Stonewall’s Hero of the Year”.

The only practising lawyer named, Natalie is ranked alongside British gays and lesbians at the very top of a broad range of professions.  The Pink List 2010 includes politicians Lord Mandelson and Deputy Lib Dem leader Simon Hughes, judges Lord Justice Etherton and Sir Adrian Fulford, former head of the Law Society Dame Janet Paraskeva, business leaders Lord Black (the Telegraph), Sir Michael Bishop (BMI) and Dawn Airey (CEO of Channel 5), theatre directors Sir Nicholas Hytner and Sir Cameron Mackintosh, Director of the British Museum Neil MacGregor, Radio 4 broadcaster Evan Davis, poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Turner Prize winning painter Sir Howard Hodgkin, Rabbi Lionel Blue, authors Sarah Waters and Philip Hensher, fashion designers Christopher Bailey and John Galliano, actors John Barrowman, Fiona Shaw and Simon Russell Beale, and celebrities Stephen Fry, Sue Perkins, Matt Lucas, Gok Wan, Alan Carr, Will Young and Radio 1 DJ Scott Mills.  The number one spot - balanced fairly between the sexes - is rightly shared by leading business guru Mary Portas and courageous rugby player Gareth Thomas.

A new entrant to the list at number 88, Natalie is ranked among these pre-eminent individuals as the 25th most influential lesbian in today’s Britain.  Her inclusion recognises Natalie’s groundbreaking work as a leading fertility lawyer, and her work as a prominent champion and advocate of same sex parents.

Prime Minister David Cameron, writing in the Independent on Sunday 1 August, said “The wall of prejudice is chipped away by high-profile role models, by public celebrations, by a positive approach to diversity. That’s why I congratulate everyone on this list for doing their bit to inspire and change attitudes. This is a country where people can be proud of who they are – and quite right too.”

You can find out more about Natalie Gamble and her work or read the Independent’s Pink List 2010 in full.

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Posted in Gamble and Ghevaert news, Natalie Gamble, Parenting Law, Uncategorized, donor conception, fertility law, gay men surrogacy, lesbian parenting, same sex parenting | Comments Off

Times article on unregulated fertility sites quotes Natalie Gamble

Monday, July 19th, 2010

By Mark Bridge, The Times, Saturday 17 July 2010

Shadowy world of web’s unregulated fertility sites

Unregulated “fertility” websites that put their members in touch with sperm donors for a fee are exploiting vulnerable women and risking users’ health and finances, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has warned.

An investigation by The Times this week also found that such sites, which enable people including single women and lesbian couples to obtain sperm outside of the regulated market, are being used by men searching for nostrings unprotected sex.  The HFEA believes that the sites’ role as facilitator may in fact constitute illegal “procurement” of sperm, and it is taking legal action against one website to close it down. A spokesman said: “If you use a site that does not direct you to a licensed clinic, you put yourself at risk that the sample you receive is neither safe nor screened and that the donor is not who they say they are.” The regulator also warns that donors who donate sperm via these sites rather than at licensed clinics will be the legal fathers of any children born to single women or unmarried couples and may be liable for child support.

Natalie Gamble, of Gamble and Ghevaert, a firm of solicitors that specialises in fertility law, said that the legality of the sites was a grey area. “What is illegal is procurement of gametes [sperm and eggs]. It comes down to the definition of what procurement is. Putting sperm in the post would seem to be clear. Less clear is helping individuals to make contact with one another.”

Membership of the websites, such as Co-ParentMatch.com and Feeling-Broody.com, costs about £10 to £15 a month. Dr Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield, claimed: “They’re in it purely for ‘If a man wants to impregnate the South East… he will be in poor sexual health’ money. It’s blatant profiteering.” He added that the sites profited from the relative expense of licensed clinics which charge about £800 for frozen sperm and one insemination cycle and from a shortage of sperm at clinics now that children born to donor sperm are allowed to contact their natural father when they are 18.

The website of Fertility 1st, which the HFEA is taking legal action against, states that customers should budget £150 for sperm to be couriered. The other sites leave such arrangements up to the donor and recipient, who might decide that his sperm should be delivered to her home, or that he should visit to “produce”, or have sex with her. Whatever the arrangement, Dr Pacey cautioned that sperm obtained using the sites is not adequately screened, so puts the recipient at risk of blood-borne and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV. It may also carry genetic disorders such as Down’s syndrome. He says that the risk was even greater if, as our investigation suggests, some donors have predatory intent. “If a man wants to impregnate the South East, that ups the risk that he will be in poor sexual health.” He added: “A licensed clinic will run tests before taking samples and again six months after the last sample was taken and frozen. Sperm can only be used after this final check.”

Seyi Joseph, of FeelingBroody.com, said that her site only covered its costs. She added that it has links to documents that explain the rules on legal paternity. She advises that donors be tested for a range of diseases. Nigel Woodforth, of Fertility 1st, said that donors at his site must take regular health tests. He added that donors at the website do not give identifying details to the recipient, and that their records are destroyed after their membership expires. Co-ParentMatch.com did not return our calls.

Time spent undercover on unregulated websites revealed a sad world frequented by men eager to “help” vulnerable women. When I joined one site under the alias of luciex, or Lucy, a 29-year-old nurse, I was contacted by a queue of donors keen to offer “NI”shorthand for natural insemination, as in sex (Mark Bridge writes). As Lucy I signed on at Co-ParentMatch.com, which claims to be the “No 1. Leading website of its kind”a “regulated environment” that uses the slogan: “After all, there’s no time to waste, the biological clock is ticking…” Having uploaded a picture of an attractive brunette and paid £9.95 a month, I was contacted by, among others, men claiming to be a 30-year-old studio manager and a “ready and able!” 58-year-old American “peacebuilder”. Profile photographs showed mainly thirtysomething and middle-aged men, some engaged in manly outdoor pursuits, others dressed for a hot dateone in a crisp white jacket. The tone of conversation was hardly clinical. One man sent “Lucy” a blunt “I am from Manchester and available for NI if you can travel when you are ovulating.” He said that he was a married man and donated to overcome both the national shortage of sperm and narrow-minded attitudes to lesbian parents.

Another tried charm, writing: “Hello Lucie! You reallly [sic] look so gorgeous and I would be happy to donate my sperm so you can become pregnant [...]” Meanwhile, a man whose photo loosely resembled AliG wrote: “Hi how u doin?My names [...] im 30 from London would you like to chat? x”, adding his mobile phone number. When Lucy failed to respond he asked: “Hi Lucie how r u hun? Good i hope… What did u decide to do? Id like to help you become a mother x” Most, when asked, said that they were willing to donate by natural or artificial means, so came across as opportunists rather than full-on predators. Some offered meaningless reassurances about their sexual health. One wrote: “I have also been checked for STDs two weeks ago, in case you wondered.”

Not one asked Lucy why a single woman of only 29 would want to conceive with donor sperm or how she intended to bring up the child, although three professed some interest in a co-parent role. On the other hand, two said that they would be unwilling to take on parental responsibility. One wrote: “I am a donor only and cannot offer financial or parenting support.” It is illegal for donors to charge, and none of the men who made contact requested payment. One did say: “Expenses may be travel costs or hotel costs etc if donation was done on neutral ground.”

Laura Witjens, left, of the National Gamete Donation Trust (NGDT), says that the casual nature of agreements on expenses leaves them open to abuse. “It is common for guys to insist on natural insemination so ‘pay me and sleep with me’, she said, adding: “Some even sent me photos of themselves ‘donating’. It was shocking, and I’m Dutch, so that’s saying something.”

In spite of this dubious donor-base, the sites manage to entice women “and the odd sincere gentleman”, Ms Witjens said, in part by presenting a clinical façade, using stock photographs of babies to play on emotions. I have spoken to several women who have used the sites who were angry at first when I criticised them. They said, ‘Why make it difficult for people to conceive?’ But they were surprised and grateful when I explained the dangers and the legalities.”

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Judge rules that lesbian mum is not a ‘parent’

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

The High Court has decided that a lesbian (non birth) mother does not have to financially support the ten year old child she conceived together with her partner.  In a landmark decision, the  court has ruled that even though the mother was awarded ’parental responsibility’ for her child and the right to full involvement in her child’s care, she cannot be held financially responsible because, at law, she is not a ‘parent’. 

The decision highlights the complexity of concepts of parenthood as they apply to same sex parenting, and the problems that arise when relationships break down. 

It is not the first time that there have been difficulties over maintenance and financial responsibility.  Sperm donor Andy Bathie (represented by G&G partner Natalie Gamble) was pursued for maintenance by the CSA after the lesbian couple he donated to split up, because (as a biological father who had donated outside a licensed clinic) the law treated him, rather than the lesbian non-birth mother, as the children’s other ‘parent’.

The case also highlights why it is so important for lesbian couples who have children together to ensure that they secure their legal position fully as parents.  Lesbian non birth mothers are now automatically treated as the second  ’parent’ of any child they conceive with their partner, if the couple are civil partners at conception and/or the couple conceives at a UK licensed fertility clinic.  The new rules apply to children conceived after 6 April 2009 but are not retrospective.  For couples who have children together who were conceived before 2009, they will need to go through an adoption process to ensure that both partners (and no one else) are share responsibility fully, both legally and financially.

For more information about how the law applies to disputes between lesbian parents, see the parenting and children section on our website, and our pages for lesbian couples who conceive a family together.

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Birth certificates: a new era?

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

By Louisa Ghevaert, published in BioNews 556, May 2010

Birth certificates have been a hot topic in the UK in recent weeks. There has been much controversy, confusion and misunderstanding, aptly shown by Caroline Gammell’s article in The Daily Telegraph newspaper and Colin Fernandez’s article in the Daily Mail on 19 April incorrectly hailing the advent of the first lesbian couple to both be named as parents on their baby daughter’s birth certificate, born 31 March this year.

Lesbian couples have not in fact had to wait until the beginning of April this year to take advantage of new laws allowing them both to be named as the parents on their child’s birth certificate. Legally, they could both be named as the parents on the birth certificate of any child they conceived on or after 6 April 2009, when the new female parenthood provisions of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (HFE) Act 2008 were implemented. In practice, as from September 2009 lesbian couples could be named on their child’s birth certificate following a viable delivery, albeit at that stage heavily premature. Natalie Woods and Betty Knowles were not therefore the first in the UK to take advantage of this change in the law (just the first to speak to the press) and we have many clients who have preceded them.

This misunderstanding is undoubtedly the result of increasingly complex laws on parentage and the recent press coverage of the final staged implementation of the HFE Act 2008 on April 6 this year, allowing same sex couples (most notably two men) for the first time to be named as the parents on their surrogate-born child’s birth certificate following the grant of a Parental Order which then triggers the re-issue of their child’s birth certificate.

The Daily Telegraph article went on to quote Baroness Deech, The Chairman of the Bar Standards Board, saying: ‘This is not a moral issue; it is about disguising true facts, and it is about confusing biological parenthood, legal and social parenthood.’ The article further quoted Josephine Quintavalle, from Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE), saying that ‘birth certificates should reflect how a baby is generated’ and ‘in a culture that is obsessed with genetics, it is strange that when it comes to birth certificates we are prepared to forget all that?’ and ‘as much as you try to play around with the terminology, the biology reflects what has happened and one day the child will ask about their father.’

Birth certificates are in fact a legal document recording the legal parentage of a child at birth. Birth registration procedures are governed by law, not biology, and birth certificates have never been in practice a definite record of a child’s biological parents. In non-assisted reproduction cases, a married mother’s husband is presumed to be the father and recorded as such on the child’s birth certificate unless this is rebutted by DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) evidence of another’s paternity. If the child’s mother is unmarried, she can choose whether to name the father or to leave the father’s details blank.

Since the introduction of the HFE Act 1990, the UK’s first legislation to regulate parentage following assisted reproduction treatment and the precursor of the HFE Act 2008, men and women have also been routinely named as parents on the birth certificates of their children conceived with donor eggs or sperm. Birth certificates of surrogate-born children also continue to record the surrogate mother as the legal mother at birth and her husband as the child’s legal father, even when the intended parents are the biological parents and which then requires them to obtain a post-birth Parental Order to re-assign legal parentage (which can only be done with the surrogate’s consent) and trigger the re-issue of the birth certificate.

With the growth of alternative family structures and recent changes in the law, increasing demand for assisted reproduction treatment using donor gametes and more people building their families through surrogacy, birth certificates will increasingly reflect legal parentage rather than biology. Whilst birth certificates were in the past perceived as representing a child’s biological parenthood, this has not necessarily been the case. What has changed over the last year is the stark realisation amongst some campaigning groups that birth certificates can now in law name a wider range of people as parents on the face of a child’s birth certificate, most notably same sex parents, challenging traditional values and perceptions of family life.

More information on the Gamble and Ghevaert website about birth certificates and surrogacy, birth certificates and donor conception and the new rights for same sex parents

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Have your say - major HFEA review of donation policies

Monday, April 26th, 2010

 

A message from the HFEA:

 

Over the summer and autumn of 2010 the HFEA will be reviewing a number of its policies relating to sperm, egg and embryo donation. The aim of the review is to ensure HFEA policies facilitate safe and effective donation while protecting the interests of people affected by donation - donor conceived people, donors, parents and recipients. A public consultation will take place between October and December this year with final decisions being made in March 2011.  The policies to be reviewed include:

·        the number of families donors can donate to

·        expenses and compensation donors can receive for donation

·        donation between family members

·        the restrictions which donors can place on the use of their gametes or embryos

 

These policies will have an impact on future donors, recipients and donor conceived people. It is therefore crucial that these groups have the opportunity to feed into the review. If you’re a donor-conceived person, parent of a donor-concieved person, a donor, or have considered donation, the HFEA would like to hear your views.

 

If you would like to participate in this review, by providing your views on donation policies, please email donationreview@hfea.gov.uk with your name, contact details, and an indication of how you are affected by, or interested in, donation (e.g. donor, have considered donation, general public)

This information will us to send you information relevant to your interest in the donation review.  We will be seeking views through a variety of methods, including a written consultation document, consultation events, focus groups and one to one interviews. Confidentiality will be maintained throughout the consultation and you will be given the opportunity to contribute your views anonymously.

 

You can find out more about donor conception law from the Gamble and Ghevaert website.

 

 

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Gamble and Ghevaert welcomes the completion of the UK’s new fertility laws today

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

By Partners Natalie Gamble and Louisa Ghevaert

The last piece of the government’s flagship Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 came into force today, completing the first major overhaul of the UK’s fertility laws in twenty years.  The HFE Bill is a major piece of government legislation which has updated the UK’s 1990 laws to bring them into line with 21st century scienific and social advances.  It has introduced important changes including:

* new rights for lesbian partners to be recognised as parents after sperm donation,

* the abolition of clinics’ obligation to consider a child’s need for a father before offering fertility treatment,

* the broadening of the extended storage rules for gametes and embryos, allowing more people to store precious embryos for longer,

* new rights for donor conceived people to make contact with genetic siblings,

* a clearer legal framework for preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and

* the widening of surrogacy laws to allow same sex and unmarried couples to apply for legal parenthood.

The Act has been brought into force in stages, with the new parenthood rules on donor conception in force first for conceptions after 6 April 2009 and the bulk of the Act in force on 1 October 2009.  The final pieces of the jigsaw, which came into force today, are the changes to surrogacy law, allowing same sex and unmarried couples to apply to court to become the parents of a surrogate born child and updating the court rules and procedures.  This completes the implementation of this major piece of government legislation, rather fittingly today, the day on which it has been announced that this Parliament will be dissolved.

The partners at Gamble and Ghevaert have been proud to have played a role at the forefront of these important legal changes, championing the position of fertility patients and same sex parents.  Our contributions to the public and Parliamentary debate and to the legal changes include:

* Helping to secure the important new rights for same sex parents (work for which Natalie was nominated by gay rights organisation Stonewall as their Hero of the Year 2008, named by Diva magazine as one of the UK’s most influential gay women, and invited to 10 Downing Street to meet the Prime Minister last month);

* Winning a last minute government U-turn on embryo storage which allowed surrogacy patients to save embryos from destruction and store them for an extended period (for which Louisa was named as Times Lawyer of the Week in October 2009);

* Lobbying for changes to surrogacy law, which were debated in Parliament (but sadly not adopted) - we are continuing to campaign on this;

* Winning improvements to nationality law for British parents of children born through surrogacy abroad following our contribution to the Department of Health’s consultation on the new parental order regulations.

Find out more about the legal changes on our website, relating to donor conception, surrogacy and fertility treatment.

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Going solo: fertility treatment options and the law for women starting a family on their own

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

By Natalie Gamble, Partner with Gamble and Ghevaert LLP

Published in BioNews 551, 29 March 2010

It’s tough to get life sorted as a modern woman. Education, work and finances now commonly take women well into their thirties before they decide to start a family, and not everyone manages to find the right partner by the time they get there. It is perhaps not surprising that increasing numbers of women are making the decision to start a family independently. ‘Solo’ mothers (as distinct from single mothers) are those who make a positive decision to go it alone and to conceive without a partner - but as well as the social and financial implications of this choice, there are a number of legal implications which all solo mothers in the UK ought to give careful consideration to.

One option for solo mothers is to conceive through sperm donation at a licensed clinic. The sperm is screened, tested and quarantined, ensuring the safety of mother and child and the quality of the sperm. A range of treatments are available, including intra-uterine insemination (IUI) and IVF (in vitro fertilisation) and potentially even treatment with donor eggs, depending on the woman’s age and medical history, and assessed with medical guidance from the clinic involved.

One of the biggest longer term advantages for many solo mothers is the parental autonomy and legal clarity this option brings: the status and responsibilities of the donor are excluded by law, and in practice there is no other parent to manage. Of course, this has its downside too, and it is important for a solo mum to ensure she will have all the practical support she will need as chief carer and breadwinner, and to make careful provision in her will to ensure her child is fully protected if anything happens to her.

Children conceived through sperm donation at licensed clinics in the UK now have the right to find out the donor’s identity (and possibly to make contact with genetic half siblings) once they reach the age of 18, which means that their genetic heritage is available to them if they wish to find out more. For many solo mother families, this offers a good balance: parental autonomy for mum during childhood, but the option for the child to contact the donor and siblings in later life.

In years gone by, it was difficult for single women to obtain treatment with donor sperm at a licensed clinic. Until 2009, the law provided that fertility clinics had to consider the welfare of a child before offering treatment, ‘including the need of the child for a father’ - for many years many clinics interpreted this as a bar on treating single women. Clinical practice evolved over time to a more flexible approach, and in 2009 the law was updated so that clinics now have to consider the child’s need for ’supportive parenting’. This was explicitly worded to be more inclusive of single women (and lesbian couples) and means that single women should now not have any difficulty accessing licensed treatment, albeit that donor sperm may be in short supply in some places and that treatment may need to be privately funded.

Another option is known donation or co-parenting. Some solo mothers ‘team up’ with a man who is willing to act as a known donor or co-parent, often gay or single. Every situation is different, and the range of involvement from the biological father after conception can stretch from none to full shared parenting. Different treatment options are also available, including natural conception, artificial insemination at home and IUI or IVF at a licensed clinic.

It is important in such situations to think through and manage the longer term and legal issues from the outset. Unless conception occurs at a licensed clinic, the donor will be the child’s legal father and will be both legally and financially responsible for the child. If conception occurs at a licensed clinic, it may be possible to register the donor with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) and thereby exclude his parental status, but care needs to be taken (and it may be necessary to put in place additional legal documentation) if he intends to have ongoing parental involvement after the birth. It is a common misconception that known donors to single women always have their legal status excluded if they donate through a licensed clinic.

Where there is a clear intent that the donor will be known and treated as the child’s father, both sides should be clear about the legal issues before going ahead. The decision as to whether the father is named on the birth certificate is significant as this will dictate how much decision-making power the father has in his child’s upbringing. It is also important to think through the issue of financial responsibility and how this will be managed, as well as the intention for sharing care in practice both in the early months and in the longer term. In many cases, it is appropriate to put in place a donor or co-parenting agreement to cover these sorts of issues, to provide clarity and to help flush out any potential problems before they arise. An agreement does not bind the family court - since the parents cannot stop the court doing what it thinks is in a child’s best interests - but it will be taken into account if a dispute does arise.

It is important to take care if the solo mum conceives while she is still legally married or in a civil partnership. Problems can arise for women who make the decision to start a family on their way out of a marriage or civil partnership, and are keen to get going as soon as possible before their divorce/dissolution is finalised. The law provides that any child artificially conceived by a married woman or one in a civil partnership (and this includes home insemination) will be treated as the legal child of her husband or civil partner. In most cases this is the opposite of what is intended, making it critical to take legal advice before conception.

Women are increasingly making reproductive choices independently, typically in their thirties and forties and often simply to avoid missing out on motherhood before it is too late. The decision is often one which has been made over a considerable period of time, with care, thought and courage. Such women have more complex issues to grapple with than many other fertility patients, both in their conception choices and their longer term parenting issues, and it is important for them to consider the options and the law carefully from the very start.

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Fertility law, assisted reproduction and the importance of specialist legal advice

Friday, February 19th, 2010

By Louisa Ghevaert, partner at Gamble and Ghevaert LLP

If you are thinking about or undergoing fertility treatment or assisted reproduction you will no doubt spend time and energy thinking about a range of factors including success rates, clinics, cost, treatment options, egg and sperm donation, timescales and process.  However, will you stop and think about the importance of specialist fertility law advice?  You wouldn’t buy a house, get divorced or make a Will without first obtaining legal advice.  So why take any unnecessary risks when you are building your much wanted family?

Fertility treatment and assisted reproduction is often time consuming, stressful, expensive and emotionally draining.  Why potentially make matters worse by failing to get to grips with the legal issues? Fertility law often overrides biology and this can create the wrong legal outcome for the unwitting, particularly as many people have complicated personal lives and family arrangements.

If you need third party assistance to conceive are you confident that the law will recognise you as a legal parent?  Are you sure you can be named as parent on your child’s birth certificate?  Will you be able to exercise parental responsibility and for example consent to medical treatment and vaccinations for your baby? Are you sure about the legal status your partner, spouse, surrogate or donor will have for your child?

If you adopt a laissez-faire approach or lull yourself into a false sense of security that the legal side of things will be alright you could be doing yourself and your family a huge disservice.  Once you have conceived it’s often too late to avoid some of the legal pitfalls and you may then need complicated legal solutions further down the line.

If you take early specialist fertility law advice before you conceive and you tackle the legal issues as they apply to your particular circumstances you may save yourself a lot of heartache.  A well drafted donor agreement if you’re involving a known donor or a clear understanding of surrogacy law if you plan to conceive through surrogacy or a specialist Will could save you time, money and worry.

Don’t leave the legal side of things to chance.  Fertility law isn’t always well designed for modern twenty first century living.  Invest in specialist fertility law advice at the start and take control of your family’s future.

For more information about family building see our family building service.

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The art of baby making

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Deciding that the time is right to build a family is a defining moment in your life.  However, unfortunately this is all too often just the start of a long and difficult journey to parenthood, fraught with many potential problems and pitfalls along the way. Whether you are a single gay man or woman or in a relationship, there is a definite art to building a family and making babies.

The problems

For prospective same-sex parents the obvious biological difficulties create major hurdles to overcome in the baby making process. Decisions inevitably have to be made about sourcing anonymous or known donor sperm, donor eggs, surrogacy or the merits of co-parenting.  The wrong decision at the outset can lead to all manner of problems further down the line.

Many people are often short of time, lack peace of mind about their choice or feel overwhelmed by the different options for creating a family. Issues of, timing, cost, treatment and general logistics can lead to knee jerk decisions, wasted time and money, legal complications and a lot of heartache.

Take for example John, a successful marketing consultant, who’s always wanted a family of his own and feels the time is right to get started. What are his options as a single gay man?  He could adopt, co-parent with a female friend, consider surrogacy in the UK or abroad or get himself a partner with children.  However, there is so much to get to grips with in terms of understanding the fertility sector as a whole, knowing the fertility treatment options and tackling the often complex underlying legal issues.  John simply doesn’t know where to start and he doesn’t want to mess things up.  His concerns often keep him awake at night and are stopping him from taking the plunge.

Solutions

John should be encouraged to know that he isn’t alone in his wish to build a family and there is good quality of advice and information out there if he knows where to look.  Once he appreciates the bigger picture and takes more control, family building and baby making becomes easier. So, what are some of the basics John should think about?

Navigating the fertility and parenting sector

John would benefit enormously from a greater understanding of how the law works.  John needs to get clear in his own mind whether he wants parental autonomy or whether he would be happy to share parenting and if so the degree of his involvement on a day to day basis.

John then needs to think about the practicalities of achieving his goal.  He will need to understand better the wide range of services available in the fertility and parenting sector.  These include UK licensed fertility clinics, the issues surrounding informal conception, the role of the not-for-profit organisations in the UK including Infertility Network UK, Donor Conception Network, COTS, Surrogacy UK, the British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF), the framework surrounding fertility treatment in the UK and options if he were to build a family abroad.

If John decides that conception is the way to go, understanding the basic different fertility treatment options is key.  It may be stating the obvious, but no one is born knowing the difference between IVF, IUI, ICSI, straight or host surrogacy, and it makes sense to take a little time to explore these at the outset.  This can help John to gather more information and medical help and support with better efficiency.

Underlying legal issues

John shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that everything will be straightforward legally.  Building a family through assisted conception often creates a legal minefield.  The law isn’t always logical and he really does need to understand the legal basics, including legal parenthood, parental responsibility, issues of citizenship and the importance of family-proofing his Will.

Having a family is no longer the preserve of straight couples.  Time have changed and with recent improvements to the law there are now more options than ever to build a family and become a parent.  You just need to know how to go about it in the right way.

For more information on our family building service see our website.

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Stonewall publishes guide to the new laws on gay parenting

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Gamble and Ghevaert LLP has worked with leading gay rights organisation Stonewall to produce a guide to the new laws on gay and lesbian parenting, called Parenthood for Same Sex Couples.  Funded by the Big Lottery Fund, the guide aims to provide clear information to service providers about the law on same sex conception and parenting, including donor insemination (and the new legal rights for lesbian couples to be named on birth certificates), co-parenting arrangements, and UK and international surrogacy for gay men.  The guide will be distributed to key service providers nationally (including law centres) and is available on the Stonewall website.

We are delighted to have helped with this project, as we think it is vitally important for there to be good and widespread understanding of the UK’s new fertility laws which rightly recognise gay and lesbian couples as parents of children they conceive together. 

Read ‘Parenthood for Same Sex Couples’.

More information on gay surrogacy law from the Gamble and Ghevaert website.

More information on donor insemination and co-parenting law from the Gamble and Ghevaert website.

More information about our public service work and fertility law services to charities.

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