‘Not a primrose path’: Commissioning parents' experiences of surrogacy arrangements in Britain

Abstract

The introduction into UK legislation on 1 November 1994 of Section 30 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 was the direct consequence of a married couple seeking to establish their parental responsibility for their genetic twins born to a surrogate mother. Whilst there has been considerable debate in the UK and elsewhere concerning the desirability or otherwise of surrogacy, the arguments for and against its regulation, and its impact on surrogate mothers, commissioning parents and children born following a surrogacy arrangement, little accurate knowledge concerning surrogacy arrangements has been available to inform either this debate or aid policy development. This paper provides information from interviews with commissioning parents undertaken as part of an exploratory empirical study of surrogacy arrangements in the UK, and complements an earlier account of the experiences of surrogate mothers (Blyth, 1994).