16. Surrogacy

Abstract

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter first discusses the legitimacy of surrogacy, and considers the particular issues raised by outsourcing surrogacy to India. It then turns to the regulation of surrogacy in the UK. Although commercial involvement in surrogacy is prohibited, the court has a wide discretion to retrospectively authorize payments to surrogacy mothers. This chapter considers the increasing number of surrogacy cases reaching the family courts, many of them involving overseas surrogacy arrangements, and evaluates how the law might be reformed, once the Law Commission has completed its review.