News media have reported that the Indian government took steps at the end of October 2015 to ban commercial surrogacy, notifying clinics to stop embryo transfers for non-Indian passport holders. Legislation to regulate commercial surrogacy has been pending since 2008, but the government's new bill would exclude foreigners from the practice. See Nida Najar, "Indian Wants to Ban Birth Surrogacy for Foreigners" (N.Y. Times Oct.
ECHR Ruling in US-French Surrogacy Cases
In two judgments on June 26, 2014, a chamber of the European Court of Human Rights held that French laws, denying legal recognition to parent-child relationships legally established in the United States between French parents and children born through surrogacy, violated the children’s right under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights to respect for their private life.
New Projects for the Hague Conference
The Conclusions and Recommendations adopted by the Hague Conference General Affairs Council at its meeting in April 2012 include two interesting new projects in connection with the Child Abduction and Child Protection Conventions. The Council authorized a new Working Group to develop a Guide to Good Practice on the interpretation and application of Article 13(b) of the Abduction Convention which allows a court to deny a return order where there is a s
North Carolina will Compensate Victims of Eugenics Program
See Kim Severson, Payment Set for Those Sterilized in Program (NY Times Jan. 10, 2012).
New Issue: International Law, Policy and the Family
Online access to the August 2011 issue of the International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family is available here.
Debating Surrogacy in India
Surrogate Mothers in India are the subject of this story posted (with video) on the PBS Religion and Ethics Newsweekly (Sept. 30, 2011). The same subject is tackled in Made in India (2010), a feature-length documentary film by Rebecca Haimowitz & Vaishali Sinha.
Maternal and Child Health in Africa
Here are two stories from the New York Times considering maternal and child health issues in Africa:
Russian Abortion Law
Russia’s new law restricting advertising of abortion services is discussed in this article: Sophia Kishkovsky, Russia Enacts Law Opposing Abortion (NYT July 15, 2011). This is part of a larger policy initiative by President Medvedev to boost Russia’s falling birthrates, and observers suggest that additional legislation is in process.
Mexican Immigration to US is down, but the birthrate is up
Here’s a report released by the Pew Hispanic Center on July 14 showing that during the period from 2000 to 2010 the Mexican-American population increased by 4.2 million as a result of new immigration and by 7.2 million as a result of births. The study notes that “[t}his is a change from the previous two decades when the number of new immigrants either matched or exceeded the number of births. Between 2006 and 2010, new immigration dropped by 6o%, both because of declining job opportunities and increased
Sex Selective Abortions in India
This study, published in The Lancet, concludes that “Selective abortion of girls, especially for pregnancies after a firstborn girl, has increased substantially in India.” The authors sought to explain increasingly large differences between the census numbers of young girls and boys reported in 1991 (4.2 million), 2001 (6 million) and 2011 (7.1 million). Based on their investigation, it appears that sex-selective abortion is not common for first pregnancies or second pregnanc