Helen speaks at ESHRE about overseas surrogacy - law and ethics

In the run up to the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology’s Annual Conference, the British Infertility Counselling Association and the International Infertility Counselling Organisation gathered a group of international clinicians and counsellors, in the first meeting of its kind, to discuss the challenges as ART goes global.  Helen was delighted to speak at the conference workshop (at the ExCel Centre in London on July 6^th) about overseas surrogacy.

Helen’s talk and further discussions highlighted the diverseness of legal and ethical issues when dealing with surrogacy across the world.  Without any global harmonisation, those working with commissioning parents find that dealing with surrogacy is at best cumbersome and at worst a criminal offence, with some exceptionally stringent consequences for counsellors or anyone involved in surrogacy.  The UK is at the liberal end from a European perspective, unlike Germany and Italy where surrogacy is not permitted, but it still has some way to go to be being a surrogacy destination like the US.  The overwhelming consensus is that surrogacy is here to stay and is a global family building option – where people cannot find a solution in their own country, they will go abroad.  The dilemma that counsellors and legal teams across the world have is how to give support and advice responsibly to ensure that the families created are fully protected.

What NGA would like to see in the UK is a more streamlined approach.  Surrogacy is a collaborative arrangement and everyone’s role needs to be appropriately respected.  We should have contracts at the outset, because they encourage everyone to enter into a complex situation on a fully informed basis, and with the benefit of proper support and guidance.  Where all goes well, the agreement should be honoured so that the parents can, by agreement, become legal parents immediately.  But where there are difficulties for any reason, there should be a mechanism for dealing with them sensitively, weighing up the interests of everyone involved, including the child.

Other speakers included Diana Guerra-Diaz, head of Psychology Unit in IVI Barcelona and on the Catalan Committee on Human Reproduction, Jennie Hunt, Senior Infertility Counsellor at IVF Hammersmith, Uschi Van den Broeak talking on the attitudes and motivations for semen donors as well as Laura Witjens, Chair of the National Gamete Donation Trust.  The audience included attendees from across the globe including South Africa, Argentina, USA, Belgium, France, Israel, Ireland, Spain, The Netherlands, Portugal, Australia, Greece, Germany and across the UK and Northern Ireland.

There is more information about international surrogacy law on our website.

Natalie speaks at leading conference, with Supreme Court justice Baroness Hale

Natalie was delighted to speak alongside Baroness Hale at a leading conference in London on 20-21 June hosted by academics at the Morgan Centre and gathering leading UK and international experts in donor conception and alternative reproduction.

Baroness Hale of Richmond (first woman Justice of the Supreme Court, and former chair of the committee which drafted the very first HFEA Code of Practice in 1990) gave the conference opening address, speaking about the law for ‘new families’ and how the family courts have sought to uphold the welfare of the child in a range of cases involving donor conception, lesbian parenting and surrogacy.

Natalie, invited to give the response to Lady Hale’s address, shared her practical perspective of the issues affecting non-traditional families on the ground.  She talked about the deficiencies of current UK law on surrogacy, and how important the new legal rights are for same sex parents.  She discussed how complex and divisive known donor disputes can be, and how in practice unequal biological or legal parentage between separating parents can raise temperatures significantly.  But she also noted that many parents conceiving in non-traditional ways do so with enormous care and planning, and stressed that the success stories should be remembered as well as the difficult cases which come to court.

A range of eminent speakers on sociological, international and practical aspects of donor conception then addressed the conference, including leading academics from Manchester and Cambridge University, experienced practitioners at fertility clinics, experts in bioethics and international lawyers from Scandinavia (with Denmark being one of the world’s leading suppliers of donor sperm).  Professor Carol Smart and Dr Petra Nordqvist, who hosted the conference, presented the results of their fascinating research project on donor conception, which has explored the feelings of parents and grandparents in different family forms about the implications of having conceived a child with the help of a donor.

You can read Natalie’s response to Baroness Hale here, or find out more about our campaigning work.  You can also find out more about the Morgan Centre’s research: Relative strangers – a key new study of information sharing and senses of connectedness in donor conceived families.

HFEA to update surrogacy guidance to UK clinics

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has voted to update the guidance it gives to UK fertility clinics on surrogacy. The new Code of Practice will:

• clarify what UK clinics should say to surrogacy patients, and
• update clinic procedures and forms for surrogacy.

The HFEA voted to make these changes (following advice from NGA and its own lawyers) at its meeting on 20 March 2013 and will now undergo a period of consultation on the practicalities, before the new Code of Practice is introduced on 1 October 2013. This includes a workshop for clinics and professionals practising in surrogacy, to be held at the HFEA on 30 April 2013.

We congratulate the HFEA on a very sensible decision, which will mean clearer guidance for parents and clinics dealing with increasing numbers of surrogacy cases. In particular, it will be made clear that where a surrogate is unmarried, one of the intended parents (whether gay or straight, and whether or not biologically parent) can be named on the child's initial birth certificate together with the surrogate.This approach will make the HFEA's guidance entirely consistent with longstanding practice at register offices and in the family courts.

You can find out more about the HFEA meeting on 20 March here, and there is more on our website about surrogacy law. 

Natalie on the Today Programme – who should have the rights where a surrogate baby is disabled?

Natalie was interviewed by James Naughtie on this morning’s BBC Radio 4 Today Programme about surrogacy. The programme covered a US surrogacy case which hit the news after a US surrogate mother refused to terminate her pregnancy at 21 weeks when it was discovered that the baby would be born severely disabled.

In the UK, surrogacy law gives all the rights to the woman who carries the pregnancy – she is the legal mother. Although a case like this has never happened in the UK, if it did there would be no doubt (as there was under US law) that the surrogate mother would hold all the cards. But is this the right approach?

In practice, we know on the ground that surrogacy disputes are incredibly rare. For the vast majority of cases, it would make more sense for the intended (biological) parents, rather than the surrogate, to have legal responsibilities much earlier – it’s what everyone involved wants, and the long delay transferring parenthood leaves children vulnerable for far too long. And where there are disputes, we need a more sophisticated approach to balancing the interests of all involved – surrogate, parents and child.

The real lesson of this case is that we can avoid problems like this by giving the right support at the start. Parents and surrogates need to communicate clearly, and those with radically mismatched views on termination should not proceed together. That is why it is so crazy that UK surrogacy law goes out of its way to deny those going into surrogacy arrangements the support they need. Under UK law, surrogacy contracts are unenforceable and illegal for lawyers to draft, and professional matching and brokering services are prohibited by criminal law. It’s time for that to change.

There is more information about surrogacy law and our campaigning work on our website.