More and more childless Britons head overseas to find surrogate mothers

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/mar/14/childless-britons-increasingly-surrogate-babies

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Childless Britons desperate to start a family are fuelling a growing global trade in surrogate mothers by paying up to £85,000 for a child, research reveals.

UK citizens are statistically the likeliest in Europe to look abroad for a way of having a child, as increasing numbers of infertile straight couples and gay men and women engage the help of agencies in countries such as Thailand, India and the US to find a suitable surrogate.

Figures provided for the first time by some of those agencies show that 271 individuals or couples from the UK have had a baby in that way over the past three years. The figures were collected by Families Through Surrogacy (FTS), an Australia-based not-for-profit group that helps people worldwide to arrange a surrogate at home or abroad, and discourages exploitation of the women involved, who are almost always from a poor background.

However, the real figure is likely to be about five times higher, the group claims, because only a small number of the surrogacy agencies contacted gave details of how many clients they had helped. That could mean about 450 British people or couples a year are choosing this method. It often proves to be a lengthy, complicated and expensive process, and can lead to complications over the legal status of the babies.

The numbers of Britons opting for cross-border surrogacy is rising. Using someone else to carry a child for you is legal in the UK, but only if it is done on altruistic terms, with the would-be parents paying the woman “reasonable expenses”, such as loss of earnings up to a maximum of about £15,000. Commercial surrogacy is illegal.

“Even though surrogacy is legal here, Britons go abroad because it’s commercial surrogacy, and therefore quicker – you are paying for the service,” said Paul Gittins, a spokesman for a conference FTS is holding in London this week to advise a growing number of interested Britons how best to pursue surrogacy in an ethical way. “And it can be cheaper, depending on the country you go to and the arrangements you make.”

Of the 271 British cases recorded, 170 had a child born in Thailand, 68 in America and 23 in India, FTS’s survey shows. Six babies were born in Georgia and two each in Ukraine and Mexico.

Thailand last month banned commercial surrogacy following the case of a boy known as baby Gammy, which made headlines worldwide last August. Pattaramon Chanbua, the Thai surrogate, alleged that Australian couple Wendy and David Farnell had rejected Gammy when they discovered he had Down’s syndrome, but took his twin sister, Pipah, back to Australia with them.

“This trade is part of a general phenomenon of medical globalisation,” said Professor Allan Pacey, a fertility expert at Sheffield University. “With increasing opportunities for travel and the lower cost, combined with easily accessible information over the internet about what is available, some couples are looking outside their national borders for solutions to their infertility. This may be driven by a desire to avoid regulation or legal constraints in some countries. Surrogacy is legal in the UK, but we suffer from a chronic shortage of women willing to do it. So I think it’s inevitable that women who need it will look elsewhere.”

Sam Everingham, the founder of FTS, said: “Our results confirm that cross-border surrogacy is a growing means to family-building. In many countries access to international adoptions has declined greatly. There has been a rise in commercial agents offering ‘fast-tracked’ solutions for singles and couples who are either ineligible for adoption or domestic surrogacy, or do not have access to other routes to parenthood in their own country.

“Many singles and couples in the UK are not able to locate a surrogate at home, so cross-border arrangements become their last resort. Many already travel to countries like Greece for more affordable IVF than in the UK.”

Previous research by Everingham has found that surrogacy costs about £34,000 in India and about £85,000 in the US.

While India, until recently a popular destination for international surrogacy, has also introduced restrictions, Greece has recently relaxed its laws to allow heterosexual foreigners to strike surrogacy deals. The trade is also growing in Mexico and Nepal.

A Department of Health spokesman said: “We advise anybody considering surrogacy arrangements in the UK or abroad to seek sound legal advice and to use licensed fertility clinics in order to protect the welfare of both the children and adults involved. Commercial surrogacy is illegal in the UK.”