 So South Africa is often portrayed internationally as a place for all the dooms and glooms of the world. There are ever two areas of our law that are highly legislated and tightly controlled. Our government's obsession with collecting our taxes and our surrogacy laws. While hijackers and thieves roam our streets more often without sanction, may the force be with you if you ever enter into a commercial surrogacy agreement. I've extrapolated some salient features of our regulatory approach. However, unfortunately, Julia's plagiarized some of my speech, so please forgive her. I think the most important part of our present legislation that works incredibly well in practice is the fact that we have a preconception surrogate motherhood agreement. Now, the purpose of having a preconception surrogate motherhood agreement is a two-pronged purpose. An application is brought before the High Court of South Africa, requesting that the agreement be confirmed prior to conception taking place. Now, the High Court's order creates absolute certainty as in advance amongst all the parties as to their parental rights and responsibilities and the respective role of the surrogate mother, as well as all the obligations of the parties during the surrogacy process. It declares the commissioning parents to be the parents up front of the child prior to conception and to the exclusion of the surrogate mother. We have previously spoken about the fact that there is one exception to this rule and that is where you enter into a traditional surrogacy motherhood agreement. In that case, the traditional surrogate has an elective to keep the baby and she may exercise her right at any point during the pregnancy and she has a 60-day cooling period after the birth of the child to elect to claim full rights and responsibilities of the child. So in practice, traditional surrogacy agreements are often thought of as difficulty. As a rule in my practice, I will not touch a traditional surrogate motherhood agreement unless it is a sister or perhaps a niece of the intended mother. The second approach of our pre-conception surrogate motherhood agreements, the effect of that is to authorize the reproductive medicine specialist to then proceed with the artificial fertilization treatments on the surrogate mother. So no embryos may be transferred into the uterus of the surrogate mother until such time as we've been to a high court and a high court order is issued to this effect. So what happens in practice is that upon the birth of the child, the birth certificate is then issued in the names of the commissioning parents and it's clear cut. The commissioning parents hand their court order to what we call the department of home affairs. Departments of home affairs then registers the commissioning parents on the day of the birth as the parents of the child to the exclusion of the surrogate mother. So you can see that's a highly effective method in practice. So Julia's already gone through the persons that may be eligible for surrogacy in South Africa. I'm just going to recap very quickly on that. Our liberal constitution has embodied following parents to have rights to be eligible for surrogacy. So you have our heterosexual commissioning parents. Heterosexual commissioning parents have a bigger burden of proof in our high courts because the intended mother needs to show the court that she has a permanent and irreversible medical condition and that she cannot give birth to a child. So we do not make allowances for any Hollywood style surrogacy. So we have our same sex male and female commissioning parents. Obviously same sex female is highly unusual. We both have issues with their uterus. A single parent of any sexual orientation may become a parent. And although it's not been specifically mentioned in our legislation, persons who cannot give birth to a child due to their gender, such as transgender persons. This on the domicile aspects. The commissioning parents have got to be domiciled in South Africa. The rationale behind this enactment was to prevent the possible abuse of a surrogacy legal system and to prevent potential trafficking of children, stateless born children and the potential of children being abandoned in our country by foreign commissioning parents. This is an excellent safeguard in practice. And I just hope it's going to continue. I see there are some changes in terms of habitual residence, which I don't think is safe. I think there has been some submissions made that if the parents are habitually resident in South Africa that they may then be eligible for surrogacy. I think this is going to create great difficulties in practice because people will set up shop in South Africa for the purposes of showing that they are habitually in South Africa and then leave the minute the baby's born. So the genetic link requirement. Section 294 of Act Encourages Commissioning Parents to always attempt to use their own genetic material, where that is not medically possible, then the genetic material of at least one of the commissioning parents must be utilized. Now this scenario often poses great difficulty and injustice in practice, where your commissioning parents are both infertile and particularly where we have single intended, single intended parent, where that parent is infertile. Now, the biggest anomaly in our regulatory approach and the argument that we led at the constitutional court case, which Julia deferred to earlier, is that we're an intended mother carries the pregnancy herself. She has the elective to use what we call double donor gametes, provided that she is carrying the pregnancy herself. However, when in the context of surrogacy, this is prohibited. So the constitutional court case, as you know, refused to overturn this section of our act on the basis that this class of infertile persons will not be given equal rights and protections under the law. And our arguments that they were being discriminated against. Anybody, so as Julia showed you previously, there has been some submissions made to the new certain cases, a judge may at his own discretion dispense with a genetic length requirements. Okay, so commercial surrogacies is prohibited in South Africa. Now the practical difficulty with this prohibition must be read in conjunction with the provision that a surrogate mother may be reimbursed for her out-of-pocket expenses. Medical expenses, life insurance, maternity clothing, vitamins, et cetera. Now our courts require absolute transparency with regard to the amount of out-of-pocket expenses which are contracted to be reimbursed. And in every one of my contracts, which is confirmed before the High Court of South Africa, I set up an individual budget. There's been a custom that we've established in the High Courts of South Africa that a budget of between 6,000 and 8,000 rand per month should be a reasonable allocation of expenses. But the difficulty with this often is that a 6,000 rand, which is a 330 pound monthly reimbursement, might be seen by one judge as a reasonable form of out-of-pocket expenses, but to another judge, and as this happened often, another judge may perceive this as a form of commercial surrogacy. So in every, I think there was a gentleman here from Hong Kong, he asked the question earlier about the list. So in each and every surrogacy application that I bring before the High Court, I draw an itemised list of what she's entitled to spend the 6,000 rand monthly allowance on. How I came up with this list was that I actually did a personal shop, maternity clothes, vitamins, special nutritional requirements. We did a budget for travelling expenses that obviously varies from place to place. And we came up with a figure of between 6,000 and 8,000 rand per month. I normally take it a step further in my agreement, so that in my cap limits on each individual expense based upon what we feel is reasonable for vitamins, for maternity wear, et cetera. And in this way, we safeguard any issue that may result in an interpretation of there being a commercial surrogacy. Now evidence of the surrogate mother's financial position has to be placed before the courts. We have to show the court that the surrogate mother is able to fully provide for all her monthly living requirements. The difficulty with our courts is that the courts tend to draw an adverse inference in a situation where a surrogate mother is not financially well resourced. Now the difficulty in our country is that it's incredibly difficult to find surrogate mothers as it is. And then the surrogate mothers that we are entitled to use have to be financially supported. Now a workable solution in our act, and there is a big lacuna with this regard is that I believe that monthly reimbursement should be regulated, published from time to time in what would be our government gazette, and then an escalation should be provided for on a year-to-year basis to make allowances for inflation. Okay, so this is a topic I'm sure none of you were expecting, but HRV in the context of surrogacy. I don't know if any of the practitioners around the world have come across any cases where there are potential parents who are either one or both or HRV positive. Now the incidence of HRV infection in South Africa is significant to the extent that I'm now seeing many HRV positive commissioning parents who also require the assistance of a surrogate mother. The number of HRV infected persons in South Africa during the course of 2017 was reported to be 7.2 million. Of those persons, 61% are presently taking anti-retroviral treatment. These cases require special attention. They must be carefully managed before the courts. It's a balancing act on the one hand of protecting the right to privacy and dignity of the HRV positive commissioning parents, while also on the other hand ensuring that the surrogate mother is aware of any risk factors associated with potential onward transmission to her. Now generally the way I deal with the HRV cases in practice is that firstly, any person in South Africa who is HRV positive has a legal and a moral obligation to advance their sexual partners of their status. And by correlation, a surrogate mother has the right to know the status of the commissioning parents. She's going to be carrying the pregnancy for. So the right to know is protected in practice with a confidentiality agreement of absolute non-disclosure by the surrogate mother. Now HRV tests are carried out regularly prior to the court order being obtained and thereafter on a three month basis right throughout the pregnancy. Now in practice when a commissioning parents is HRV positive, a consultation is then arranged between myself, the HRV expert and the positive commissioning parents to ensure that there is rigid compliance with the anti-retroviral treatment protocol. The commissioning parents' viral load is required to be suppressed to the extent that it is undetectable. The surrogate mother is also required to consult with the HRV expert and then all the risk factors of potential onward transmission are explained to her. A further consultation then takes place between the surrogate mother and the reproductive medical specialist. The purpose of which is to explain all the techniques which will be used such as sperm washing and other precautionary measures which will be taken within the laboratory as well as prophylactic treatment to prevent any onward transmission to her. Now the manner in which the courts view these cases is to ensure that adequate measures have been and will be taken in the future to prevent an onward transmission to the surrogate mother. The health of the commissioning parents is obviously of crucial importance. Evidence must be submitted to the court to the effect that the HRV positive commissioning parents is in excellent health, that is viral load is completely suppressed and that further that it doesn't suffer from any other opportunistic infections associated with HRV. Now the health aspect of the HRV positive parents also extends to the parents where a parent has a serious medical condition. We need to show the court that the longevity of the commissioning parents is not going to be affected. You've got to look at the best interest of the child in this context as to whether it would be in the best interest of a child to have a parent whose health is compromised to the extent where they may not live for a long period of time. Now long expectancy of those infected with HRV and who are highly compliant with their antiretroviral treatment protocol have been found to be virtually identical to those living without the HRV infection. And now by following these practices, we are then able to embrace the rights of HRV infected persons within the realm of our constitution. They also have the right to reproductive autonomy. So some further slides on the prevention of transmission. I'm just gonna talk quickly about my personal journey. I've got five minutes, it's not that long. So my struggle with infertility started approximately 20 years ago and I'd undergone several failed in vitro fertilization attempts using my own eggs as well as donor eggs. After undergoing a number of failed RVF treatments, the accumulation of hormones in my body triggered on an autoimmune disease that was a genetic family related disease and I was then advised to immediately come off all hormone treatments. Very unfortunately for me, this obviously left very little opportunity for me to use my own eggs due to the fact that high levels of hormone stimulation are generally required for egg stimulation and extraction. What I did do is undergo a few natural cycles and eventually resorted to donor eggs as that was going to be the only solution to potentially give me a positive outcome. Now 19 years ago in South Africa, I think there were only two other reported cases that I'd known about surrogacy. It's a very lonely place to be when there are no guidelines, no support, no one to turn to and the facility clinic that I was working with at the time who were rated as probably the most, the clinic with the biggest reputation had never done a surrogacy before. Now the first logical step for me to do was to speak to as many people as possible to try and source the assistance of a surrogate mother and I started to tell my story to so many people which was quite subdued in the 90s. In the 90s infertility was not something that was openly discussed, it was something that needed to be very deep, it was something quite shameful. I never felt any shame and I was determined to become a mother through surrogacy and I started to speak to everybody as I said and eventually one of the employees at the law firm that I was working at eventually volunteered her assistance. Now when you're doing surrogacy in an era where there are absolutely no laws, there's no support, there's not even medical support, it was quite a terrifying place to be and I felt this enormous sense of responsibility towards my surrogate mother. So I sat down and we went through all the medical procedures, the medical protocols, because a very long story short, I underwent about five IVF cycles with her each and every one of them failed. My surrogate mother was becoming incredibly disfunded so I then decided to close the door and we terminated our agreement with each other. That agreement was not a commercial agreement because in the pre-2010 era, persons could enter into surrogacy agreements and commercial surrogacy wasn't prohibited so you could technically pay your surrogate whatever you wanted to. I didn't pay my surrogate but I did reimburse her for loss of earnings because there was so much time for her out of her work situation, I didn't want to compromise her. I then approached an adoption agency and I asked them to source a surrogate for me. They had met a lot of birth moms through the process and I thought that would be a good place to start. So my second surrogate mother came through an adoption agency and she was physically in fabulous health and I was quite optimistic that it was going to work well. So another interesting challenge came my way with my second surrogate mother on the day that my two embryos, I'm a lost, only two embryos were going to be transferred into her uterus. I met her at the clinic at the day hospital and on her bed lay our open agreement and she then at the 11th hour raised queries that she no longer wanted to have two embryos transferred into her uterus because she was not willing to carry twins. This was something that was discussed openly between us but a motivating factor behind us was the fact that she wanted more money and she made monetary demands on me at the hospital bed and what does an intended mother do when you have the last two embryos left and all you wanna do is have a baby so I conceded to her demand. But I walked away the day after embryo transfer knowing that I had made the biggest mistake of my life and believe it or not, I went home and I prayed like mad that that surrogacy was not going to work. Fortunately for me, the pregnancy test was negative and I could terminate my agreement with her. At the time it seemed like the cruelest punishment that could ever happen to any parents. When you walked a 10 year journey like I had walked with infertility where every single door was closing in my face it was just nowhere to turn anymore. I still remained very determined I was gonna become a mother by any means and I then looked to adoption and very fortunately for me after lots of trauma involved in adoption as well I was able to adopt two girls and both from birth. So I was really satisfied after that and then two years after my second daughter was adopted I was approached through a mutual friend and she had met someone who had heard my story and she felt a lot of empathy towards me and she wanted to be considered as a surrogate. At this point in time I had my children and I was really not interested in going down a surrogacy route again. I was encouraged to meet her and after I met her I realised that this was a very, very special person. This was a person doing it for all the right reasons. She had life, she had compassion, she had a tremendous amount of empathy towards me and my infertility journey. I did things completely different this time. I changed fertility clinics. That was the best thing I could ever have done. I always tell my clients that when you're in a rut with a fertility clinic, get up, take your file and move on to somebody that is going to have a whole fresh new approach towards your case. So we moved fertility clinics and to cut a very long story short, we felt pregnant first time. It was incredible. I mean I couldn't believe it, it's quite surreal. And then of course when things have gone so wrong for 10 years you kind of expect the worst outcome during a pregnancy. But thank heavens the pregnancy was completely uneventful. It was a beautiful experience. I was very much involved in the day-to-day pregnancy with my surrogate mother. And my son, as you can see in the photo, is now 10 years old. He's the light and love of my life. There's just one thing I want to talk about. I think I've got like a minute. My third surrogacy arrangement was in a sense a commercial surrogacy arrangement. In a sense that you might feel for this commercial. I never believed and I never regarded this as a commercial agreement. The surrogate mother offered me her womb. She offered to love and nurture this child and to make me a parent through surrogacy. And I in turn gifted her with money. She was a single mom. She had two kids and she was alone and needed financial support. It was an agreement based on the reciprocal needs. It was a beautiful arrangement. It worked very, very well. Today my surrogate mother and I are very good friends. I have a niche surrogacy law practice in South Africa which also registered the surrogacy advisory group, a non-profit organization which gives free advice, support, facilitation services, matching of surrogate mothers. And I'm now living the dream, doing what I'm passionate about every day of my life. Thank you. Thank you.