The Role of professional facilitators in cross-border assisted reproduction

© 2018 The Author The operations of those who facilitate travel across international borders for access to assisted reproduction are little understood. Within the broader field of research into medical travel facilitators, most empirical studies have addressed websites and promotional materials, with few qualitative investigations of individuals who are service providers. The research presented here centres on interviews with 23 professionals facilitating cross-border assisted reproduction. This study sought to understand how facilitators and service providers operate within a professional framework, examining their understanding of the ethical limits on their roles within a largely unregulated and rapidly evolving international ‘marketplace’. Broadly, participants trusted in the market to ‘find its own level’, such that unscrupulous players would not succeed because others would not refer to, or work with, them. In instances where a clear risk to the health of reproductive contributors or to the well-being of future children was perceived, participants understood their own ethical duty to be limited to service denial or withdrawal of participation. Among the eight facilitators who were not legal or medical professionals, there was a striking commonality, in that all had personal experience of assisted reproduction, both as patients and as reproductive contributors. Within this group, and particularly among the six women who directly ‘matchmade’ arrangements between intended parents, egg donors and surrogates, was a strong sense of ‘embodied’ expertise and claims to ethical practice based upon that expertise

Identity disclosure and information sharing in donor conception regimes: The unfulfilled potential of voluntary registers

© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. This article explores the scope and effectiveness of formal donor identity registers currently in operation in assisted conception regimes in Australia and the UK. In particular, it examines the function of voluntary registers which are intended to fill the gaps left by 'central' identity registers which mandate timed release of donor identity on request of donor-conceived adults. There are three 'gaps' left by central registers identified here: conceptions which took place prior to the operation of the relevant registers; parents and offspring who desire access to identifying information or a means of making contact prior to the age set for information release; and parents and offspring who desire information not available under current registers, specifically, identifying information or a means of making contact with other offspring from the same donor. The article reflects on interviews with a set of 21 parents who had undertaken donor conception in Australia through licensed IVF treatment concerning their understandings of disclosure regimes and wishes for, and experience of, seeking information and contact. Voluntary registers established by government bodies in Australia and the UK have largely failed to deliver benefits, and indeed may offer a misleading promise to users, because they have given rise to such a small proportion of matches. These registers are 'passive' in that there is no outreach to parties not on the register to invite them to join when there is a match waiting there. However, voluntary registers could be reframed and resourced on a more facilitative basis to assist users. I propose that formal voluntary registers could be more usefully remade as 'active' registers, making contact with possible participants and offering intermediary services and counselling to establish and communicate expectations and to offer mediated contact, including contact without identity disclosure. Active voluntary registers could adapt current structures into a more flexible and responsive system capable of operating both prospectively and retrospectively. I contend that this is a better outcome than the current polarization between an inability to access information for many, on the one hand, and proposals such as retrospective identity disclosure without consent, on the other

The limits of functional family: Lesbian mother litigation in the era of the eternal biological family

This article contends that a 'functional family' model falters in the context of lesbian and gay intra-family disputes. Functional family arguments have frequently been misused by birth-mothers in child-related disputes between separated lesbian parents. Moreover, functional family claims have been completely excluded from consideration in disputes between lesbian mothers and known sperm donors/biological fathers. I argue that the rise of fathers' rights movements and increasing emphasis on biological family gives both discursive and legal authority to essentialized, gendered and symbolic status claims made by biological parents, valorizing distant biological fathers over mother-led family units, and separated biological mothers over non-biological mothers. Finding that the functional family approach cannot usefully resist the current ideological climate, this article concludes with exploration of an alternative: framing a form of parental status for lesbian co-parents based on intentionality

From discretion to disbelief: Recent trends in refugee determinations on the basis of sexual orientation in Australia and the United Kingdom

© 2009 Taylor & Francis. In Appellants S395/2002 and S396/2002 v. Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, the High Court of Australia was the first ultimate appellate court to consider a claim for refugee status based upon sexual orientation. By majority the court rejected the notion prevalent in earlier cases that decision-makers could ‘expect’ refugee applicants to ‘co-operate in their own protection’ by concealing their sexuality. This paper explores the impact of S395 and S396 on the refugee jurisprudence of Australia and the United Kingdom five years on. Refugee decision-makers in both countries have been slow to fully appreciate the fact that sexual minorities are secretive about their sexuality and relationships as a result of oppressive social forces rather than by ‘choice’. In addition, in Australia there has been a clear shift away from discretion towards disbelief as the major area of contest, with a significant increase in decisions where the applicant’s claim to actually being gay, lesbian or bisexual is outright rejected. In an alarming number of cases tribunal members used highly stereotyped and Westernised notions of ‘gayness’ as a template against which the applicants were judged

The new surrogacy parentage laws in Australia: Cautious regulation or '25 brick walls'?

This article critically analyses recent law reforms that have taken place throughout Australia allowing for the transfer of legal parentage in surrogacy arrangements from the birth mother (and her partner, if any) to the 'intended parents'. Although styled as liberalising reforms, the increasingly complex web of eligibility rules are likely to be an ill fit with the existing and future family formation behaviours of those involved in surrogacy, and may ultimately exclude more families than they assist. While surrogacy policy throughout Australia aims to prevent the exploitation of women who act as birth mothers, prevent the commercialisation of reproduction and protect the interests of current and future children born through these means, this article argues that the reforms are unlikely to meet these aims. The interest of children in having a legal relationship with the parents who are raising them will not be met for many, as half of the regimes exclude children conceived outside the jurisdiction and all of them exclude arrangements where payment has been made to the birth mother. Potential harms are not being prevented, but rather are being exported elsewhere through the increasing incidence of international surrogacy. A more flexible and inclusive approach to parental transfer, such as that which currently exists in United Kingdom law, is recommended

'The ring of truth': A case study of credibility Assessment in particular social group refugee determinations

Credibility assessment has always been a major issue in refugee determinations and its importance increases in the context of widespread introduction of 'fast-track' processes and the manifest trans-national trend to truncate (or indeed remove) avenues for review. This article explores the practice of credibility assessment in lower level tribunals using a case study of over 1000 particular social group (PSG) ground decisions made on the basis of sexual orientation over the past fifteen years. Credibility played an increasingly major role in claim refusals, and negative credibility assessments were not always based on well-reasoned or defensible grounds. The article uses this specific case study in order to found recommendations for structural and institutional change aimed at improving more generally the credibility assessment process in refugee determinations. © The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved

De facto Relationships, Same-Sex and Surrogate Parents: Exploring the Scope and Effects of the 2008 Federal Relationship Reforms

In October 2008 a suite of major reforms concerning family relationships passed federal parliament. Broadly speaking these reforms include same-sex couples within the category of âde facto relationshipâ in all federal laws (previously limited to unmarried heterosexual couples), extend the definition of âparentâ and âchildâ in much federal law to include lesbian parents who have a child through assisted reproductive means and, in more limited circumstances, to include parents who have children born through surrogacy arrangements. The reforms also bring de facto couples, both heterosexual and same-sex, from the territories and referring states (which to date do not include Western Australia and South Australia) within the federal family law property division regime. This article is divided into two main parts, examining the reforms relating to de facto partners first and then exploring those concerning parental status

Unlikely fissures and uneasy resonances: lesbian co-mothers, surrogate parenthood and fathers' rights

This article explores commonalities between parental claims for lesbian co-mothers and other contexts in which intention is a key aspect to family formation for (mostly) heterosexual families: in particular, surrogacy and pre-birth disputes over embryos. Through a series of case studies drawn from recent reproductive controversies, the paper uses the lens of empathy to argue for social or non-genetic modes of parenthood connecting lesbian mothers and other 'reproductive outsiders'. © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V

A preoccupation with perversion: The British response to refugee claims on the basis of sexual orientation, 1989-2003

Britain's approach to refugee claims by lesbians and gay men has been notably hostile in comparison to other Western refugee-receiving nations. For many years decisionmakers in the UK have refused to accept that those fleeing persecution on the basis of sexual orientation were even capable of being refugees under the terms of the Refugees Convention. Since accepting eligibility in 1999, UK decision-makers have repeatedly held that asylum seekers are under a duty to protect themselves by hiding their sexuality. They have also been extremely reluctant to hold that criminal sanctions for gay sex are themselves persecutory and have frequently failed to appreciate the relationship between violence against lesbians and gay men and the existence of criminal provisions. This article suggests that there is a discernible national response in the courts and tribunals of Britain to sexual orientation-based refugee claims. That response carries echoes of the 1956 Wolf enden Report, most notably its 'solution' to the 'problem' of homosexuality: privacy

Reflecting the 'human nature' of IVF embryos: disappearing women in ethics, law, and fertility practice.

Many laws and ethical documents instruct us that disembodied embryos created through IVF processes are not mere tissue; they are 'widely regarded' as unique objects of serious moral consideration. Even in jurisdictions which disavow any overt characterization of embryonic personhood, the embryo, by virtue of its uniqueness and orientation toward future development, is said to have a 'special status' or command 'respect'. The woman whose desire for a child or children created this embryo, and who inhabits the body to whom it may one day be returned, is an omission or at best an afterthought in such frameworks. This paper engages in an historical analysis of this conundrum in the Australian context. It argues that the institutional structure of foundational ethics bodies (made up of a mandated mix of scientific and religious representation, in practice dominated by men, and absent any requirement of the participation of women patients) has produced the embryo as an object of ideological compromise: 'not mere cells' and 'not life', but a poorly bounded and endlessly contested something-in-between. The paper then turns to engage with the narratives of a selection of women patients about their sense of connectedness to their stored or discarded embryos, drawn from a larger study on decision making concerning patient's experience of decision making about IVF embryos. I draw on these narratives to ask how we could reorient law and policy toward the concerns, needs and desires of such women