Gamble & Ghevaert

The November edition of leading international law journal, International Family Law has published our substantial article ‘The chosen middle ground: England, surrogacy law and the international arena’.  The article discusses the problems of international surrogacy law from the UK perspective and takes stock of the history of surrogacy law in the UK, explaining how the law has evolved over the past 25 years through the Warnock Report, the 1985 Surrogacy Arrangements Act, the 1990 legislation, the Brazier Report and the most recent changes in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008, and examines where surrogacy law in the UK now stands.

Without harmonisation of international surrogacy laws, and in an increasingly globalised world in which prospective parents are increasingly crossing borders for fertility treatment, UK fertility law simply has not kept pace. The article examines the legal problems which arise for foreign couples coming to the UK for surrogacy, and the difficulties for British couples conceiving through surrogacy abroad (looking in particular at the importance of the Re X and Y case which involved a British-Ukrainian surrogacy arrangement and which we dealt with in the High Court a year ago). The article considers the way forward, arguing that international surrogacy law desperately needs to be reviewed.

If you would like to read the article in full, please contact us for a copy.

More information about international surrogacy law from our website.