The debate on surrogate motherhood: the current situation, some arguments and issues; questions facing law and policy.

Abstract

Abstract Recent incidents where a woman has intentionally conceived and borne a child by a man for that man and his partner to possess and bring up have attracted a great deal of media excitement and general public concern and debate. The last few years have also seen the publication of the Warnock Committee's Report on “Human Fertilisation and Embryology”1 which discusses surrogate mother practices among other related questions, the passing of an Act outlawing commercial arrangements for surrogacy, and the introduction of a Bill in the Lords outlawing all surrogacy arrangements. At the same time the pace of change in the field of reproductive technology has raised similar challenges to those posed by surrogate motherhood, dilemmas which child-care law and policy need to address. This occurs against a back-drop of intensified debate in the 1970s and 1980s about the general direction of policy and practice in relation to children and their parents or parent substitutes. Recent manifestations of this debate...