Report 262: Joint Report on Surrogacy

The Scottish Law Commission published a joint report with the Law Commission of England and Wales recommending a comprehensive range of reforms to make the law of surrogacy work better for children, surrogates and intended parents.The recommendations in the report seek to protect the best interests of the child by providing greater certainty to surrogates and to intended parents as regards legal parental status, enabling the intended parents to be recognised as the legal parents from birth, as long as that remains the wish of the surrogate, while protecting the surrogate’s autonomy throughout pregnancy and childbirth. Our recommendations also provide important protections against the exploitation of women who become surrogates, by putting in place safeguards and checks before conception takes place.