What is Surrogacy? How Many Types of Surrogacy ?

What is surrogacy? 
Surrogacy is when a woman carries a baby for a couple who are unable to conceive or carry a child themselves for medical or physical reasons. The intended parent(s) are person or persons who become the legal parent(s) of a child born through surrogacy.

Surrogacy is when another woman carries and gives birth to a baby for the couple who want to have a child.

The HFEA does not regulate surrogacy. We recommend that you should seek legal advice before proceeding with this option.

There are two types of surrogacy: 

• Traditional Surrogacy: This is a pregnancy where the surrogate is genetically related to the baby and becomes pregnant through artificial insemination. While this used to be common, most surrogacy arrangements today involve host surrogacy.
• Host surrogacy is when IVF is used, either with the eggs of the intended mother, or with donor eggs. The surrogate mother therefore does not use her own eggs, and is genetically unrelated to the baby. There are three stages to ‘host’ surrogacy:

• Egg donation The female intended parent, or an egg donor, undergo special procedures to extract a number of eggs.
• Fertilisation The eggs are fertilised with sperm in the laboratory, resulting in embryos.
• Embryo Transfer The embryo is transferred into the womb of the surrogate mother.

The Embryo Transfer can be transferred to the surrogate either ‘fresh’ or after having been de-frosted from storage. For a fresh embryo transfer the cycles of the surrogate and the egg donor must be synchronized, and this is done using hormone medications.

In cases where embryos have been frozen already and the de-frosted embryos are being transferred, the surrogate mother is provided with hormone medications to ‘ready’ her womb lining.

Legal rightsSurrogacy is not regulated by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). Surrogacy agreements are unenforceable in England and therefore any patients seeking this treatment must seek independent legal advice.

The birth mother :At present, the Law states that the woman who gives birth to the child is the legal mother when the child is born and will have parental responsibility regardless of genetic relation to the child, any contracts or payments.

The intended mother The commissioning/aspiring mother will not be the mother of the child even if her eggs are used as part of treatment services provided. She has no legal rights in relation to the child by virtue of her eggs being used or under any surrogacy agreement.

The father The child’s legal father or ‘second parent’ will be the surrogate’s husband or partner unless:

• • Legal rights are given to someone else through a parental order or adoption. 
• • The surrogate’s husband or civil partner didn’t give their permission for their wife or partner to carry the pregnancy. 
• • If your surrogate has no partner, or they are unmarried and not in a civil partnership, the child will have no legal father or second parent unless the intended parent actively consents.