Surrogacy law opens door for same-sex parents
Tuesday, 30th March 2010
From the 6th April, gay couples will be able to use a fast-track system to become legal parents of surrogate children, as two men are allowed on a child’s birth certificate for the first time.
Under the changes, biological parents will no longer need to be identified on the certificate as the final piece of the 2008 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act comes into force.
Aimed at helping same-sex, unmarried couples who go through the process of surrogacy, the Act will allow couples to secure legal parenthood through an original and simplified system.
Provided courts are satisfied that a couple are in a stable relationship; that no fees, other than expenses, are paid to the surrogate mother; and that it is in the child's best interest, then they will be awarded with a parental order for a birth certificate to be drawn up with both named as parents.
Currently, only heterosexual, married couples are able to apply for parental orders following a surrogacy agreement. Normally, a surrogate mother must be named on birth certificates, and, if married, her husband is listed as the father.
Those children affected by the changes will still be able to access original birth certificates upon their 18th birthday, and critics believe the demands of parents will be put above a child’s right to clarity over their genetic makeup.
“It could even result in deception to exclude the natural father where the mother conceived naturally but uses this provision to cut him out of the child's life,” Baroness Deech, formerly of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, warned in the Daily Mail.
But gay rights groups have accordingly welcomed the ‘radical’ changes, claiming that “lesbian and gay couples no longer have to go through the unpleasantness of adoption”, with Ben Summerskill, Chief Executive of a prominent gay rights group, adding: “We are delighted that the reality of people's family lives is being recognised at last.”
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