Something was just wrong, but Olivia Maurel did not know what. Until she found out that her parents paid for her. She found her biological mother after a long search.

Olivia Maurel always knew something was “off” about her birth. The secretive behaviour of her mother made it clear to her: the woman who raised her did not give birth to her. “There were no pictures of my pregnant mother, and I am five days old in the first pictures of me.”

The 31-year-old was born through surrogacy in the American state of Kentucky. In her home in Cannes, southern France, the now mother-of-three opens up about her search for her identity, the daily consequences of surrogacy and her fight against the legalisation of the practice in France. “We neglect the effect surrogacy has on children.”

Growing up as an only child in a well-off family, Maurel says she got everything she could ever ask for. “I had a very good education, and my parents dressed me in the best clothes.” However, emotionally speaking, Maurel claims to have lacked a lot. “It was difficult for me to grow up in a family where emotions and feelings were little talked about.”

Maurel faces the consequences of that every day. “My husband sometimes says that I hardly ever hug him. Well, no one ever taught me to hug.”

According to a senior police officer who spoke to DH, Kevin, the alleged fake doctor, operated a small clinic in Rajajinagar without a medical degree. Kevin was arrested on Wednesday.

Bengaluru: A fake doctor and a child trafficking agent were arrested in an illegal surrogacy and child trafficking operation uncovered by the Central Crime Branch (CCB) last week. According to a senior police officer who spoke to DH, Kevin, the alleged fake doctor, operated a small clinic in Rajajinagar without a medical degree. Kevin was arrested on Wednesday
 

Kevin used his connections to forge documents in the names of couples who were purchasing infants through a network of seven female agents, including Ramya, a senior police officer told DH. 

All the agents, including Hemalatha, Sharanya, Murugeshwari, Suhasini, Radha, Gomathi, Mahalakshmi, and Kannan Ramasami from Tamil Nadu, have been arrested.

The investigation revealed that Ramya convinced a relative, who had accidentally conceived and wanted to abort the child, to sell the baby instead. Ramya provided some money to her relative, took the baby, and sold it to a customer through the gang.

Police suspect that more individuals may be involved in the operation. A similar case has been reported in Erode, Tamil Nadu, and the CCB is investigating possible links between the gang members and that case.





 

The lawyer, who agreed that adoption should be encouraged, however, added that in the case of adoption, there is no biological connection of the child with the couple.

New Delhi:

The Delhi High Court Friday said the law regulating the procedure of surrogacy is intended to curb the exploitation of surrogates and no one wants India to become an "industry of renting a womb".

The court made the observation while hearing a plea by an Indian-origin couple living in Canada challenging the March 14 notification issued by the Centre amending the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act to ban donor surrogacy by altering Form 2 under Rule 7 of the Surrogacy Rules, 2022.

"This reproductive outsourcing was supposed to be curbed by the legislature and that too at the instance of the Supreme Court and we cannot go beyond it," a bench of Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Mini Pushkarna said.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court Tuesday stayed a contentious provision of the Surrogacy (Regulation) Rules, 2022, for seven couples, allowing them to accept donor eggs to bear a surrogate child.

A two-judge bench led by Justice B.V. Nagarathna made the exception for the couples after it received medical reports in each case confirming that the women were unable to produce their own eggs due to underlying medical conditions.

The order brought relief to the couples as they had initiated the steps for surrogacy, but could not complete it due to a sudden amendment brought about in the rules in March last year. 

These couples had opted for surrogacy based on their respective doctor’s medical advice.  

The amendment in the surrogacy rules, notified on 14 March 2023, disallowed donor gametes for surrogacy. The amended rule says “couple undergoing surrogacy must have both gamete from the intending couple and donor gametes is not allowed”.

This weekend Anna, Matt and Brendan will uphold a somewhat belated annual tradition.

Every year gay couple Matt and Brendan take their son Baker to Anna's house and help her and her children put up their Christmas tree lights. "Then we have a picture in front of it," Anna says. "We didn't get around to it this year, so instead they'll help us take them down!"

As always, they'll exchange presents, including for Baker, 3. "I'm like his aunt," Anna says.

But the two Adelaide-based families have a particularly special relationship. Anna was a surrogate for Matt and Brendan, enabling them to become parents.

Before she became a surrogate, Anna was an egg donor for three different families. "I got hooked on the wonderful feeling of helping others in a really meaningful way," she says. "It's addictive."

New Delhi: The Supreme Court of India on Monday said that it is important to save the institution of marriage and India cannot go in the direction of Western nations where children being born out of marriage is not uncommon, Times Of India reported. The top court made the observation while denying a 44-year-old single woman to bear a child through surrogacy.

The petitioner, a 44-year-old woman working at a multinational corporation, had approached the Supreme Court challenging the validity of one of the sections of India's surrogacy regulation law.

The section that she sought to challenge -- Section 2(s) of the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act -- defines an 'intending woman' as "an Indian woman who is a widow or divorcee between the age of 35 years and 45 years'.

Intending woman, here in, is a woman who seeks to have a child through surrogacy, a method by which another woman bears a child for a couple or another woman.

The Adoption Authority of Ireland has refused to declare her eligible to adopt her de facto children as they were born through a surrogacy arrangement involving her husband and another woman who donated the eggs

Ireland’s adoption authority has refused to declare a woman is eligible and suitable to adopt her de facto children as they were born through a surrogacy arrangement, the High Court has heard.

The woman’s husband is the biological and legal father of the twins, while another woman donated the eggs. A Ukrainian woman carried and gave birth to them.

The woman, who has always lived with and acted as the children’s mother, was appointed their guardian and joint custodian four years ago but is “not their parent as a matter of Irish law,” she says.

She was years previously diagnosed with cervical cancer, which required chemotherapy and a hysterectomy. In a sworn statement, she said this was a “devastating blow to us and destroyed our hopes at that time of starting a family together”.

A surrogate mother who's currently in a dilemma has taken to social media to seek advice from netizens 

The lady revealed how she carried a baby for a rich couple who unexpectedly divorced and refused to take the baby at the time 

In a chat with a doctor, Amicable Chukwu, she told Legit.ng that a surrogate mother has no right to ownership of a baby 

A surrogate mother who carried a child for a rich couple has shared her experience one year after the contract. 

The lady identified as @chelsea_lugard on TikTok narrated that the couple had refused to take the baby after she gave birth because they had serious marital issues. 

A 67-year-old man was sentenced by the Essonne Assize Court on Wednesday . He was found guilty of an assassination attempt on his niece, which occurred on October 23, 2019 in Juvisy, reports Le Parisien .

12 years in prison

That day, the man, who is also his adoptive father, gave him a violent blow with an axe. Touched at the base of the neck, the victim was able to get out thanks to the computer which was in his backpack and which absorbed the shock. She had been injured in the vertebrae but survived.

In bad terms with the victim, the accused had taken action because he had not digested his refusal to resume contact with him a few months before the facts. The man, of Indian origin , suffered in particular from depression after his eldest son was diagnosed with mental disorders. The latter had been sent to France for his studies, just like his daughter whose adoption had been made without his consent, according to him. The man had also tried to interrupt his schooling twice, without success.

In March of 2018, an SUV carrying two adults and six children drove off a cliff along Pacific Coast Highway. It was deemed a murder-suicide at the hands of Jennifer and Sarah Hart, a white lesbian couple who adopted the Black children from two families in Texas children on board.

When Houston reporter Roxanna Asgarian sought out the birth families of those children, she discovered a flawed and over-burdened child welfare system that routinely mistreats Black families. What started as a newspaper assignment turned into Asgarian’s new book “We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America.”

The book explores how and why those children were removed from their birth families and placed in the care of a couple who abused and eventually murdered them.

The birth mother of three of the children battled drug addiction. Her children were cared for by their aunt and a father figure who was not related to them, but were removed by Child Protective Services when the aunt asked their birth mother to babysit on a day she could not find other childcare.

The other three were removed from their birth family for medical neglect when one child was bitten by ants at a birthday party and their birth mother had a hard time finding a ride to the hospital.