The Law Commissions’ Report on Surrogacy – a missed opportunity

In their recent report on surrogacy the Law Commissions of England and Wales and Scotland (LCs) maintained that their recommendations would provide: ‘a robust new system to govern surrogacy which will work better for children surrogates and intended parents’. In my critique of the report I have summarised its recommendations and suggest that they may not fulfil the Commissions’ optimism.

In the report’s recommendation that a new administrative pathway for domestic surrogacy replace the current judicial route two major defects stand out.  First intended parents and surrogates will be expected to state prior to conception that they accept that the prospective child will be the child of the intended parents yet the surrogate may withdraw from the agreement at any point following conception up to six weeks after the child’s birth. Second surrogacy must remain an altruistic act. Most persons involved in surrogacy arrangements would be allowed to charge a professional commercial fee for their services but not the most important person in the surrogacy process...

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