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

As demand for surrogacy soars, surrogates, parents and children are being failed by the UK’s outdated laws that are “creaking at the seams”, experts have said.

Figures obtained by the Guardian show the number of children born to surrogate mothers in 2025 is just under 1,000; This figure is twice the figure in 2015. This increase is due to an increase in the number of same-sex couples wanting to become parents, increasing infertility, and changing cultural attitudes.

Data shows that applications for parenting orders to transfer legal parentage from the surrogate to the intended parents, usually made shortly after birth, have risen to over 980 in 2025.

Of these, 150 children were born in the United Kingdom, where surrogate mothers could only receive money for expenses. The remainder were born abroad, mostly in the United States, Ukraine, Nigeria, Georgia, Colombia and Mexico, where surrogates can be paid to have children.

Surrogacy agencies in the UK told the Guardian they are busier than ever. Helen Prosser, founder and director of Brilliant Beginnings, said that they had to turn away new prospective parents because the demand for surrogate mothers had risen far above the level they could provide.

A Law Commission review published in 2023 called on the government to change UK surrogacy law, including granting legal parentage to intended parents from the birth of the child.

Currently, the surrogate must be listed as the baby’s mother on the birth certificate, while intended parents must apply for a parenting order after birth, which can take months. Experts said this could be distressing for the new family and deter many prospective surrogate mothers who do not want to become the child’s legal mother.

Advocates also recommended greater regulatory oversight of surrogacy agencies and pre-pregnancy medical and preventive screenings. The proposals were accepted and a bill was drafted, but the government said it was not a legislative priority.

The review’s author, Prof Nicholas Hopkins, said that in an environment where arrangements with surrogates are riskier and less well regulated, the best way to prevent prospective parents from going abroad is to ensure there is a properly regulated plan in place in the UK.

Study co-author Prof Gillian Black said there were also cases where a child needed hospital treatment and only a surrogate could legally consent. “This does not reflect the realities in which the child is cared for and lives with the intended parents. The surrogate mother does not want this responsibility at all,” he said.

Significant disagreements regarding the ethics of surrogacy exist globally. The UK allows an “altruistic” model, but countries such as the US, Mexico and Nigeria allow women to be surrogates in exchange for money. Countries that heavily restrict or ban surrogacy include France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, called for the global abolition of surrogacy, calling it a “system of violence, exploitation and abuse against women”.

He argued that this left “poor, impoverished and crisis- and conflict-affected” women and girls vulnerable to exploitation by people from “richer western states”.

Hopkins said that although the draft bill had passed in parliament, the “significant” problems identified in their report would remain and more parents would opt for overseas surrogacy, where there could be a greater risk of abuse or legal difficulties.

Prosser said the “darkness” in the current legal system was unattractive to surrogates, pushing more prospective parents to go abroad.

“It has a bit of a wild west feel to it in some places,” he said. “Aside from the risks involved in establishing a relationship with a surrogate mother, there are language barriers and sometimes difficulties.

“Our disappointment is that in the UK we could make it easier for people to stay here, but law reform has been delayed.”

Prof Kirsty Horsey, who researches surrogacy regulation at Loughborough University, fears “culture wars” concerns could influence the government’s hesitancy to push ahead with legislation change, given the growing debate on the issue.

Its latest report, Surrogacy in the UK: Mythbusting and reform 10 years later, said the law was “creaking at the seams” and had unnecessary barriers that were leading to transnational surrogacy increasingly taking place in jurisdictions where neither surrogates nor parents had legal protection.

He said people are not always aware that if they have a baby through surrogacy in a country where surrogacy is illegal, or if they are involved in complex multi-jurisdictional arrangements, they may have difficulty obtaining legal parentage when they return.

New Zealand, Australia, Ireland and Canada said they were changing their approaches to better reflect who the intended parents are, make it easier for people to access reliable sources of information and “send the message to citizens that there are good, well-regulated ways of doing surrogacy in their territories.”

A couple in the United Kingdom who are facing a long court battle to become parents of their baby born through surrogacy recently launched an initiative. petition changing the law to recognize intended parents from birth. Within a few days it received more than 100,000 signatures, the threshold for debate in parliament.

Rachel Westbury, who runs surrogacy agency Nappy Endings and has been a surrogate many times, said the current waiting period for parents using her service was about three years.

“A lot of people have had enough heartbreak and it’s hard to wait,” he said. “So we get couples to look in different places [globally] just to speed up the process. People are so desperate.

“We have a really big shortage of surrogates in the UK because of the restrictions.”

Westbury said there needed to be more education about surrogacy in the UK and the different reasons why people were turning to it, including an increase in people being treated for cancer at a young age not being able to have children.

“We had the midwives look over the parents head to toe and tell them to leave the hospital, because even though the baby is their baby, they’re not the ones carrying the baby. I think the lack of education is probably scary for people,” she said.