Surrogacy

Surrogacy affords opportunities for patients without structurally functional uterus including those with inheritable natural genetic and iatrogenic absent uterus and in some instances repeated implantation failures to have children. Surrogacy is undoubtedly fraught with significant emotional, social, moral, ethical, religious and legal landmines and controversies. At present, there is no internationally agreed and unified surrogacy law.

In the UK (and generally in most countries) the surrogate mother is regarded as the legal mother lawfully overriding natural paternity and maternity claims. The contractual or intended parents are enjoined to apply for custody of the offspring through a parental court injunction or order.  Controversial court cases could easily arise from badly organised contractual agreements and in situations where the surrogate mother changes her mind and lay claim to the child or children. Occasionally prolonged court battles over parentage, care, custody and ownership of surrogate born child can result with significant emotional, socioeconomic, moral, ethical, religious and legal problems and controversies.

Surrogacy is now becoming a beehive of commercial “big business” activities and accusations of wrongful exploitations of the less privileged or socio-economically disadvantaged  segments of the society are been made.

The recent removal of donor anonymity in IVF code of practices (in UK and other developed worlds) and changes in IVF laws will further support the use of surrogacy. It is very pertinent, that appropriate counselling before, during and after contractual surrogacy to prevent lasting or long term complications including permanent psychological and emotional scarring to the participants be instituted from the beginning.

Further research into the psychological, welfare and other sequelae and benefits of surrogacy involving the contractual participants, the surrogates and offsprings, like their donor counterparts, are vital and cannot be overemphasized.