BACKGROUND Personality differences between surrogate mothers (SMs) who gestate and relinquish and intended mothers (IMs) who commission a genetically related or unrelated baby have been unexplored in the UK. Furthermore, the psychological effects of the arrangement have not been determined in a prospective longitudinal study, making this the first quantitative report of psychological functionin...

BACKGROUND Surrogacy was prohibited in the Netherlands until 1994, at which time the Dutch law was changed from the general prohibition of surrogacy to the prohibition of commercial surrogacy. This paper describes the results from the first and only Dutch Centre for Non-commercial IVF Surrogacy between 1997 and 2004. METHODS A prospective study was conducted of all intended parents, and surro...

At a time when increasing numbers of lesbians and gays consider parenthood using reproductive assistance in infertility centers, the present review aims to summarize the results obtained so far by lesbians after intrauterine insemination (IUI) and in-vitro fertilization (IVF) using donor spermatozoa (D-IUI and D-IVF, respectively) and gays entering into gestational-surrogacy programs. Data show...

The research is aimed at identifying the specifics of ana (mother -Kazakh)/mat’ (mother-Russian)/mother semantic broadening in Kazakh, Russian and English languages. componential analysis method lexicalized word definitions used to do this. It has been revealed that they present a prototype mother markers, as well “woman”, “giving birth”, “raising”, “single-generation” distinguishers, which pro...

Having an unintended birth is associated with maternal and child health outcomes, the mother-child relationship, and subsequent fertility. Unintended fertility likely also increases the risk of union dissolution for parents, but it is unclear whether this association derives from a causal effect or selection processes and whether it differs by union type. This article uses data from the 2002 Na...

Even if reproductive medicine has been remarkably successful during the past few decades, with the introduction of in vitro fertilization in the late 1970s and intracytoplasmic sperm injection in the early 1990s, it has been repeatedly mocked by infertility due to an absolute uterine factor. No treatment has been available for the women suffering from an absent or dysfunctional uterus, in terms...

Ann [not her real name] lives in Kampala, Uganda, with her husband and one child from her husband’s previous relationship. When she was married in 1996, Ann happily accepted his then four-year-old boy in the hope that one day she would have a biological child of her own. Unfortunately, in the early years of her marriage, she suffered several miscarriages including one that caused “extreme pain”...

The number of patients asking for pregnancy after being treated for breast cancer is steadily increasing. Chemotherapy, in particular alkylants, might impair fertility. The prognosis of breast cancer is not negatively affected by a consecutive pregnancy as shown in retrospective studies. The relative risk concerning survival is reduced to 0.2-0.8 by pregnancy. However, a short interval of less ...

Background A family traditionally consisted of a married man, his wife, and their children. The new reproductive technologies including use of the third party as egg, sperm and embryo donation and also surrogacy have changed the traditional meanings of lineage, ancestry and family. The increasing number of lesbians and gays in addition to single women requesting fertility treatment from IVF cen...

Chinese law neither generally prohibits nor expressly permits surrogacy. As there has been a massive underground surrogacy market in the country, surrogacy lawsuits have occurred from time to time. Chinese courts are called to decide a number of disputed issues regarding validity of surrogacy contract, parenthood of the surrogate child, and sole care and control of the surrogate child. This art...