MPs: ‘We reject the commodification of mothers and babies through surrogacy’

In a parliamentary debate, MPs have spoken out against an attempt to further liberalise surrogacy law.

Responding to a petition calling for the ‘intended parents’ in surrogacy arrangements to be “recognised as their child’s legal parents from birth”, MPs raised concerns about extending a system that is exploitative and already restricted in many European countries.

Although surrogacy is permitted in the UK, payments are supposed to be limited to “reasonable expenses” – including if a child is born abroad. Wherever the child is born, the surrogate mother will be automatically recognised as the child’s mother under UK law, and that status can only be changed through a court order.

Slippery slope

Conservative MP Rebecca Smith highlighted what she described as a move “well beyond the purposes originally used to justify IVF and assisted reproductive technologies” to where “surrogacy has become just another service routinely offered at clinics across the country”.

“Technology allows us to separate genetic parenthood, gestational motherhood and social parenthood. However, it does not mean those relationships are interchangeable. Technology may give us choices, but it does not absolve us from making ethical judgments about those choices.”

She noted that in countries such as France, Germany and Italy, surrogacy is restricted or even prohibited, reflecting the “serious ethical questions that arise when a child is intentionally separated from the woman who carried them in the womb”.

“By its very nature, surrogacy involves a woman’s body becoming a means to an end. She is carrying a child for the benefit of another family. My concern is that our efforts to help people to become parents risk constructing a system in which women’s reproductive capacity becomes merely a resource for others to use.”

‘Women are not factories’

Jonathan Hinder, Labour MP for Pendle and Clitheroe, said: “The petition asks the law to privilege an arrangement made before pregnancy and birth over the women who actually give birth, many of whom go on to deeply regret their role as a surrogate mother. Pregnant women are not factories, and babies are not goods to be ordered. I believe this is crossing an ethical line, where human life is treated as a business transaction.

“Implementing the demands of the petition would seal the commodification of mothers and babies through surrogacy, and we need only look at the global surrogacy industry to see where that leads: wealthy couples exploiting desperate women; international human trafficking rings; and exportation and erasure. That is the end destination when we start from the principles implied in the petition.”

Labour colleague Tracy Gilbert added: “The Government must immediately recognise the harm and risk that is being inflicted on women and children through international surrogacy and take steps to cut off the UK’s growing demand for it, as that is the only way to play our part in ending the coercion and trafficking of women and children.”

Speaking as the Minister for Public Health and Patient Safety, Dame Diana Johnson reported that the Government will “continue to consider options for future reform” while prioritising the “welfare of children”.

Middle-aged men

Earlier this month, The Times revealed that more than 100 single men over the age of 40 have applied to be recognised as fathers to babies born through surrogacy.

Data from the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service also showed a large increase in same-sex couples applying to be the legal parents of surrogate babies – almost three times more than a decade ago.

Since 2019, single adults have been permitted to use a surrogate mother to have a baby.