UK surrogacy law ‘creaking at seams’ as demand rises sharply

Surrogates, parents and children are being failed by the UK’s archaic laws, which are “creaking at the seams” as demand for surrogacy grows rapidly, experts have said.Figures obtained by The Guardian show there were just under 1,000 children born to surrogates in 2025, double the number in 2015. The rise has been driven by a rise in the number of gay couples seeking to be parents, increasing infertility and shifting cultural attitudes.Data shows that applications for parental orders, which are usually made shortly after birth to reassign legal parenthood from the surrogate to the intended parents, reached more than 980 in 2025.Of these, 150 children were born in the UK, where surrogates can only receive money for expenses. The remainder were born abroad, mostly in the US, Ukraine, Nigeria, Georgia, Colombia and Mexico, where surrogates can be paid a fee for having a child.UK surrogacy agencies told The Guardian they were busier than ever. The founder and director of Brilliant Beginnings, Helen Prosser, said they had been forced to turn away new intended parents as demand for surrogates had soared well above the level they were able to provide.A Law Commission review published in 2023 urged the government to change UK surrogacy law, including by giving legal parenthood to the intended parents from a child’s birth.At present, the surrogate must be listed on the baby’s birth certificate as its mother, while the intended parents must apply for a parental order after birth, which can take months. Experts said this can be distressing for the new family, and deters many prospective surrogates who do not wish to be a child’s legal mother.The lawyers also recommended greater regulatory oversight of surrogacy agencies, and pre-conception medical and safeguarding screening. The recommendations were accepted and informed a draft bill, but the government has said it is not a legislative priority.The review’s author, Prof Nicholas Hopkins, said the best way to prevent intended parents going abroad, where arrangements with surrogates can be riskier and less well regulated, was to ensure there was a properly regulated scheme in the UK.Its co-author, Prof Gillian Black, said there were also cases in which a child has needed hospital treatment, for which only the surrogate has been able to legally consent. “That doesn’t reflect the reality on the ground where the child’s being cared for and living with the intended parents. The surrogate doesn’t want that responsibility at all,” she said.Significant disagreement about the ethics of surrogacy exists globally. The UK permits an “altruistic” model, but countries such as the US, Mexico and Nigeria allow women to be surrogates for money. France, Germany, Italy and Spain are among the countries that heavily restrict or ban surrogacy.The UN’s special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, has called for surrogacy to be abolished globally, calling it a “system of violence, exploitation and abuse against women”.She has argued it leaves women and girls who are “impoverished, destitute and affected by crisis and conflict” open to exploitation by people from “western wealthier states”.Hopkins said that while the draft bill languishes in parliament, the “significant” problems identified in their report will continue, and more parents will opt for overseas surrogacy, where there may be a greater risk of exploitation or legal difficulties.Prosser said the “murkiness” in the current legal system was off-putting for surrogates, and this was pushing more prospective parents to go abroad.“In some places, it’s a bit of a wild west,” she said. “There are language barriers and sometimes difficulties having a relationship with the surrogate, to say nothing of the risks to the surrogate as well.“Our frustration is we could make it easier here in the UK for people to stay here, but the law reform has been parked.”Prof Kirsty Horsey, who researches surrogacy regulation at Loughborough University, fears that “culture wars” concerns may play into the government’s hesitation to push forward legislative change, given the issue’s growing controversy.Her recent report, Surrogacy in the UK: Myth busting and reform 10 years on, said the law was “creaking at the seams” and had unnecessary barriers that led to transnational surrogacy increasingly taking place in jurisdictions where neither surrogates nor parents had legal protections.She said people did not always realise that if they had a baby through surrogacy in a country where it was illegal, or entered into complex multi-jurisdictional arrangements, they could struggle to obtain legal parenthood on their return.New Zealand, Australia, Ireland and Canada are changing their approaches to better reflect who the intended parents are, make it easier for people to access trustworthy sources of information, and “send the message to citizens that there are good, well-regulated ways of doing surrogacy on home soil”, she said. A UK couple facing a lengthy court battle to become parents of their baby born via surrogacy recently launched a petition to change the law to recognise intended parents from birth. It received more than 100,000 signatures, the threshold for a parliamentary debate, within days.Rachel Westbury, who runs the surrogacy agency Nappy Endings and has been a surrogate multiple times, said the current waiting time for intended parents using her service was about three years.“A lot of people have been through enough heartbreak and the waiting is difficult,” she said. “So we get couples looking at all different places [globally] just to try and quicken the process. People are so desperate.“We really do have a huge surrogate shortage in the UK, because of the restrictions.”Westbury said there needed to be more education about surrogacy in the UK, and the different reasons people turn to it, including a rise in people having cancer treatment at a young age which leaves them unable to have children.“We’ve had midwives look intended parents up and down and tell them to leave the hospital because they’re not the ones carrying the baby, even though it’s their baby being carried. I think that lack of education is probably scary to people,” she said.