Surrogacy tourism 'skyrockets' in US as wealthy international couples take advantage of lax American laws

Surrogacy tourism 'skyrockets' in US as wealthy international couples take advantage of lax American laws

 

Couples from around the world that are unable to conceive a child on their own are finding that the United States’ lenient laws towards surrogacy have made the country an ideal place to find a woman to carry their child.

Having exhausted options in their home countries, where paid surrogacy is often illegal, these couples are heading to states like Illinois, Massachusetts and California, where relaxed laws allow them to find the appropriate surrogate.

Shelling out up to $100,000, couples from as far away as Uruguay, Turkey, and even China are finding that the U.S. has become an ideal country to conceive a child biologically via a surrogate.

Each year, approximately 1,400 babies are born via surrogacy in the U.S.

Though the number of these births arranged to foreign parents isn't traced, one Encino, California clinic estimates that up to half of their 2010 births were for international clients.

Children born to international parents via surrogacy are U.S. citizens from birth - a law that has become a point of controversy of late.

While for years Mexican citizens have rushed into the U.S. to give birth to their ‘border babies’ on U.S. soil, in March a suburban Los Angeles townhouse, where a dozen Chinese 'maternity tourists' paid $35,000 to stay and have their babies born in the U.S., has been shut down.

But for many, their baby having U.S. citizenship is not a major motivator to come to the States. They come because in their home countries, paid surrogacy is illegal.

In countries across Europe, from The United Kingdom to Italy and Serbia, commercial surrogacy is illegal, while in some countries the laws are so complex and restrictive that would-be parents turn to other countries.

Across the U.S. laws vary by state, with six states criminalising paid surrogacy, including New York, Michigan, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Washington.

The surrogacy-friendly laws in California - along with those in Illinois, Arkansas and Massachusetts – allow for these types of contract or paid surrogacies. According to a Chicago Tribune survey, two dozen surrogate babies were born to international parents in Illinois last year.

CELEBS WHO USED SURROGATES

• March 2011 - '30 Rock' star Elizabeth Banks who has a self-proclaimed 'broken belly' welcomes baby Felix
• January 2011 - Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban announced the birth of Margaret Kidman Urban
• December 2010 - Sir Elton John and partner David Furnish welcome Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John
• June 2009 - Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick were elated when her twins Marion Loretta Elwell Broderick and Tabitha Hodge Broderick were born
• March 2003 - Former 'Good Morning America' host Joan Lunden had twins, Kate and Max, at the age of 54

‘We're getting inquiries from international parents constantly,’ Zara Griswold, director of Family Source Consultants in Hinsdald, Illinois said. ‘Because of the referral process, it's skyrocketed.’

And becoming a surrogate has become a viable option for many U.S. women, particularly military wives who use it as a supplement to income and as a way of helping out those in need.

The latter was the case for Laurie Thompson of McHenry, Illinois, a mother of three of her own children, part time bus driver and the wife of a U.S. Army Reserve unit administrator. Thompson has opted to be a surrogate twice now, the first time for a Serbian couple entering their 40s that had exhausted all options to have a child.

And now she is carrying twins for a same-sex couple.

Thompson, 34, said that her motivator was not money, but the idea of helping people in need. Rather than donate her eggs, she submitted an application to Family Source Consultants in Joliet, Illinois, and saw three applicants – one of which was the Serbian couple she decided to carry a baby for in 2008.

'I want to help them,' she said at the time, according to the Tribune.

The road to becoming a surrogate isn’t a breeze; laws in Illinois require that potential surrogates undergo medical and psychological testing at the beginning of the process.

Additionally, the law requires that surrogates be 21 years of age or older, have health insurance and previously have given birth.

During her first surrogacy – for which Thompson was paid $20,000 to $25,000 – she had to take Leuprorelin, a drug that controls ovarian stimulation during in vitro fertilization. She told the Tribune that a side effect was major headaches for at least two weeks.

Additionally, her husband Damion had to administer harsh progesterone shots with a 1 1/2-inch needle – often on a daily basis.

After a rather difficult pregnancy – in which the foetus pushed up against Thompson's lungs and she developed gestational diabetes, a condition developed often by mothers during the third trimester - baby Sofia was born and handed off to her loving parents.

Thompson told the Tribune that the couple still send notes updating her and her husband on baby Sophia’s progress, while sharing photos of the baby girl in a stroller and with an American flag.

‘It's kind of like being part of someone's family on the other side of the world,’ Damion Thompson said.