‘The whole thing is a scandal’: The looming war over surrogacy

Last summer, a family group made an outing to Sherwood Forest, where they followed a hiking trail and enjoyed a pub lunch. It was a lively party: a woman, two men and four children between the ages of seven and 16. But this was not your usual gathering. Sarah Jones, 47, had given birth to all four of the children present – but only Ellie, 17, and Alfie, 16, were “hers”. Jones had carried the other two siblings as a surrogate mother for the gay couple.

Surrogacy is the process in which a woman carries and gives birth to a baby for another couple, either because the intended mother has a condition that makes pregnancy impossible or because two men would like to have a child together. In a few cases, the prospective parent is single.

A surrogate mother and her “intended parents” (IPs in surrogacy parlance) don’t always stay in touch. But Jones, a childminder from Doncaster, insists it has been this way with each of her deliveries. “Before I agree to ‘carry’ for anyone, I always get to know them and feel 100 per cent sure our friendship will continue after the baby is born,” she says. “They have to share my Left-wing politics and to laugh at the same things. All the relationships with my IPs have lasted. The kids love each other; they have a cousin-type relationship. My IPs give my children advice about school, for example.”

Jones has given birth to eight children in total – three that are her own and five that she has carried for others. She has helped four sets of IPs, including the aforementioned gay couple and three sets of heterosexual partners.

The UK’s first surrogate baby was born in 1985 after former dancer Kim Cotton carried a child for an infertile Swedish couple. According to Natalie Gamble, a surrogacy campaigner and the UK’s leading fertility lawyer, some 500 British families have a child through surrogacy each year: half of them at home and half of whom go abroad. “It’s always been hard to find a surrogate in the UK and there is no legal certainty, so there has been a massive rise in parents going overseas,” she says.

However the above figure only represents the births that are registered. Other commentators maintain that as many as 2,000 babies return to the UK with people who have travelled to use surrogates overseas. Because many of these women live in low-income countries, critics are concerned this opens up the system to exploitation and abuse.

The laws around surrogacy vary depending on the country. The process is well-established in America, where it involves a legally binding agreement between the parents and surrogate. However, UK law is more woolly, as we’ll see below. On the other hand, surrogacy is banned in countries such as France, Germany and Spain.

Recently, Italy joined these countries by outlawing travelling abroad to have a baby through surrogacy after the practice was already banned domestically. Giorgia Meloni, the country’s conservative prime minister, described surrogacy as “a symbol of an abominable society that confuses desire with rights and replaces God with money”.

Surrogacy has never been illegal in the UK. But it is a divisive topic that arouses a strong emotional response from people on both sides of the debate, as well as a slew of ethical concerns and legal grey areas. Those in favour argue passionately that it’s the only method for some loving couples to have a family; those against maintain that surrogacy is an abuse of the mother’s rights, as well as the child.

The conversation around the subject in the UK is about to go up a notch. In 2023, the Law Commission published a lengthy report on surrogacy, suggesting changes that would allow the process to become easier. Commentators believe Labour’s Government will start the process to turn these recommendations into law.

Could a new culture war be about to erupt?

Natalie Gamble started to represent surrogate-seeking parents after having two children with her female partner in the early 2000s. “Back then, the law didn’t even recognise my wife and I as legal parents,” she says. “I wanted to move family law into the modern world.” Since 2009, Gamble has helped 2,000 families find happiness. Alongside her legal practice, she runs Brilliant Beginnings, a non-profit professional surrogacy agency.

“I am passionate about helping people build families in different ways that are ethical and responsible,” says Gamble. “People don’t just do this because they ‘feel like it’ – they have no other option to conceive a baby. A child doesn’t care what the family structure looks like, and it doesn’t matter. What matters to them is that they are loved.”

Parents are not entering into this lightly, she says. “When it’s done well, surrogacy is overwhelmingly positive and an incredible collaboration. The children are so wanted, and evidence suggests they thrive long-term.”

Gamble speaks with pride of the families she has helped create. “People are always sending me the most wonderful photos,” she says. “I recently received a picture of a family Christmas from a couple who’d had dozens of rounds of failed IVF before turning to surrogacy. The whole wider family was smiling at the camera – the six-month-old baby at the centre laughing in his high chair,” she says. “What people don’t realise is that surrogacy creates not just parents, but also grandparents and aunts and uncles. If it wasn’t for surrogacy, this happy family would not exist.”

She feels “very sad” about the law change in Italy. “It’s part of a wider attack on LGBT families and infertile couples conceiving families in non-traditional ways. Measures to criminalise things never work, it tends to drive them underground and is counterproductive.”

Surrogate mother Sarah Jones is also upset. “It’s designed to hurt gay couples, but it’s also unfair on the children who have already been born – it will stigmatise them,” she says. “Everyone involved in surrogacy should feel pride.”

Jones became a surrogate in her early 20s after seeing an advert for egg donors in the back of a magazine, “I was already a single mum to Charlotte, my two-year old daughter, and at that point didn’t want any more kids,” she says. “I knew I was blessed. I hadn’t struggled to conceive and felt empathy for those who did. To me, it didn’t seem much bother to change someone’s world.”

Egg donation didn’t appeal to Jones, however, so she declined to respond. “I didn’t like the fact that it would be anonymous and I wouldn’t know the baby.” A few years later, she stumbled across Surrogacy UK, a website that talked about “creating lasting friendships” between the mother, her family and the intended parents. “That appealed to me,” she says, initially opting not to discuss her decision with relatives and friends.

Jones attended an event held specifically for the purpose of matching mothers and prospective parents. As it is currently illegal to advertise surrogacy services, the agencies have to be creative. “I sat next to a woman who would turn out to be my first IP – we chatted for hours,” she said. “She’d had several failed IVFs. After getting to know her for three months, I decided to carry for her. I could see how much joy this would bring not only to her family, but to mine. Charlotte, six at the time, was fully on board.”

She insists that she had no doubts at any point in the process, either in this case or the pregnancies that followed – the first three with her eggs and father’s sperm, another via IVF and the last using egg donation. “The funny thing is that I don’t really like being pregnant that much,” she says. “I’m not an earth mother. I get grumpy and miserable. My view is that this is a small sacrifice, giving up a small part of my life that leads to something amazing.”

Jones recalls the first time she gave birth for someone else. “The mum and dad sat next to me the entire time I was in labour,” she says. “As soon as the baby was born, I handed her to the parents for skin-to-skin contact. It was a wonderful thing to be part of.”

After two more surrogate births, Jones met her husband (they are now separated) and had two children of their own, followed by one more surrogacy. “I marked my retirement with five tattoos, representing the star signs of each surrogate baby,” she says.

So no regrets then? “When I first told friends and family about my plans, they were worried that I didn’t understand what I was getting myself into,” she says. “They thought my IPs would be rich baby snatchers. But the reality is that it’s all very boring. When my babies were born, there was no drama. The parents just bought me tea and toast.

“I really don’t understand why people can’t just get their head around a woman having a baby and not wanting to ‘own’ it,” she says. “Not every woman feels maternal at birth – and not only women can feel maternal. This is a bond that grows with living with your child day to day, looking after him or her when they are sick.”

Jones is, however, opposed to “commercial surrogacy”, when large sums of money change hands to create a child. “I don’t think anyone should be paid for this,” she says. By law, a surrogate is only allowed to receive “reasonable expenses” but the parameters around this are vague.

“For my first surrogacy journey, I was paid £5,000 and the second £7,200. Both times I was out of pocket,” says Jones. “This process is very expensive – it’s not just the maternity gear, but petrol to and from the hospital, the parking and the loss of earnings. A surrogate mother only gets six weeks statutory maternity pay and I needed five weeks of bed-rest with one of my pregnancies, so I couldn’t work.”

The major change that advocates are hoping for is the legal transfer of parental rights. At present, UK law states that the surrogate woman is the mother, and then there is a subsequent process to transfer legal parenthood to the intended parents. “It’s not enforceable and it’s based on trust,” says Gamble. “The uncertainties make everyone anxious – not just the intended parents”.

Gamble says there needs to be a mechanism for intended parents to become legal parents at birth – as happens in the US. “In America, there’s a contract. It’s more transparent. But over here, problems arise, for example, if a couple has a baby in the US and it’s recognised over there but not in the UK – children can be stuck abroad.

“Yes, there is some concerning practice overseas, particularly in places where surrogacy is new or unregulated,” she says. “The answer is to allow it to be done safely at home. We need sensible steps to make sure everyone is protected. We need a better structure, which includes counselling and legal advice. There should be informed consent so neither side takes advantage.”

Gamble understands the theoretical concerns surrounding surrogacy, but that most critics have little direct experience of it. “When the process is managed responsibly, surrogates tend to be very clear they want to do it – they have agency and find it rewarding,” she says. “Those who talk about babies being ripped from their mothers and causing trauma are taking nonsense.”

But what if the surrogate mother changes her mind?

“If I got into the weeds about this subject, I’d start crying and never stop,” says anti- surrogacy campaigner Helen Gibson. “Britain is an outlier in allowing any surrogacy at all. In most countries in the world, you aren’t allowed to use someone else’s body in this way. The whole thing is a scandal.”

In May 2023, Gibson founded Surrogacy Concern in response to the Law Commission’s recommendation to liberalise domestic surrogacy. “I come to this from a feminist perspective; I am not anti-LGBT at all,” she says. “I support the decision in Italy and don’t see it as homophobic: 90 per cent of the couples from Italy were heterosexual.”

Gibson is concerned about “baby farming” in countries like Ukraine, Colombia and Mexico, where women are paid a pittance to carry children for wealthy Westerners. And while she concedes that there is less of a risk in domestic surrogacy, she is worried about this too. “The surrogacy movement grooms a woman away from understanding she is the mother of her own child. Women are exploited, paid little, and the procedure is high risk.”

Research appears to back this up. A study published in September 2024 by McGill University in Canada suggests that surrogate mothers are more likely to experience complications such as postpartum haemorrhage, severe pre-eclampsia and premature birth than women who conceive naturally or via IVF.

Gibson is dismayed by posts from surrogate mothers on X, formerly Twitter, describing themselves as “just the oven” and their pregnancies as “extreme babysitting”. “My concerns about the impact of a child being taken away from their mother have solidified over the past year,” she says.

She shares a document with testimonies from surrogate mothers, who talk about being abandoned and discarded by their intended parents after the birth, despite promises to the contrary. “It has been ten years since I made the biggest mistake of my life, all to help someone,” writes Hannah, who has since been denied contact with her child. “I believe I was lied to, manipulated and exploited because somebody needed my uterus.”

Most of all, Gibson fears for the babies born of surrogacy. “This is never ok from the point of view of the child,” she says. “Mothers are not interchangeable; they aren’t like birds. A new baby craves a mother’s chest to moderate his or her heartbeat, it recognises the mother’s taste and smell. Handing over a newborn interrupts the bonding process. Research shows when a new baby is held too long by someone that isn’t their mum, they go stiff and still and quiet.”

Gibson says she has “nothing but has sympathy” for people who want to be parents. “But I have lots of support from gay men and infertile women,” she says. “We reject that this is a ‘progressive’ way to have a family.”

For those who crave a child, Gibson feels that there is still the option of adopting or co-parenting, when gay people agree to conceive and raise a child together despite not being in a relationship with each other. “If the law changes to allow advertising, it would suck in a whole group of young women who think they are being ‘kind’ for £15 to £20,000 of expenses”, she says.

“It would be grossly irresponsible for the Government to support this. And if they do, they will have the fight of their life on their hands from Britain’s feminist campaigners.”