Children’s Voices in Surrogacy Law

Children’s Voices in Surrogacy Law is a project which gathers and analyses the views of children and young people on surrogacy law reform, with a current focus on the United Kingdom.

Phase One involved 25 children who had experience of surrogacy; they were either born through surrogacy, their mother was a surrogate or their family member had a child through surrogacy. Phase Two involved children from schools who did not have experience of surrogacy. The three topics under discussion were: parenthood, contributions to surrogates and origin information and contact. The data was collected through focus groups, using specially designed decks of playing cards and through artwork. The artwork theme for Phase One was: What Surrogacy Means to Me, and for Phase Two, the theme was: What I Learned About Surrogacy Today.

The project asked important questions about identity rights of the child, including whether children should know the identity of their surrogate, whether she was a traditional/genetic or gestational surrogate and whether they should know about the involvement of gamete donors. It also explored what children of surrogates should know about the arrangement and contact between the families.

The project aims to continue to research the views of children, including those born through international surrogacy and children in other jurisdictions!

The project is led by Dr Katherine Wade (University of Bristol), Dr Kirsty Horsey (University of Kent) and Dr Zaina Mahmoud (University of Liverpool) and is funded by the Institute of Medical Ethics, Research England and a University of Leicester CSSAH funding.

Child Identity Protection (CHIP) welcomes this research that emphasises the voices of children affected by surrogacy, showing the importance of identity.

More information available here: https://childrensvoices.le.ac.uk/

Contact: katherine.wade@bristol.ac.uk