by Lucy Marsh, Family Education Trust
Last week saw two gay men trying to change the law so that surrogate mothers would have no legal rights over the baby they carry and give birth to. Fashion entrepreneur and social medial influencer Adam Frisby and his partner Jamie Corbett brought a petition to force a debate in Westminster Hall.
The couple intentionally went to the US to obtain a baby because they would be recognised as the child’s parents from birth. Under American laws in certain states, the surrogate mother has no right to withdraw her consent or change her mind about handing over the baby to the commissioning parents once she has given birth.
They wanted to be able to bring this baby to the UK and automatically both be put on her new birth certificate, erasing the mother who carried and gave birth to her. They wanted this to happen without any legal process or safety checks, despite commercial surrogacy – surrogacy for the purpose of commercial gain – currently being banned in Britain. Their petition said: “Families should not have to go through months of court proceedings and social worker visits to be recognised as the parents of a child they planned and love.”
Current UK law means parental orders can only be granted after a statutory six-week buffer, whereas granting them automatically from birth skips all home visits and background checks that are supposed to ensure the safety of the child.
Frisby and Corbett expected the UK to change its law so that anyone can bring in a baby born to a woman abroad without questions asked or formal paperwork required to ensure the mother was freely consenting or that the baby is from where they claimed.
In essence, two gay men wanted the law to change to enable anyone to freely buy children and move them across borders without scrutiny. Commercial surrogacy is illegal across the EU, where it is classed as a form of child trafficking
You can watch the couple’s interview with Sarah-Jane Mee on Sky News The UK Tonight in which they described their shock at the result of the debate and complained about visits from social workers before obtaining a parental order for their daughter.
They said: “Families like ours were reduced to statements like ‘wealthy men exploiting women.’ Earlier this week an MP told us he believed in ‘traditional, stable family structures’ involving biological mothers. I was genuinely shocked to hear that from an MP in 2026, after today, maybe I shouldn’t have been. Because at times it honestly felt like we weren’t listening to a debate about changing an outdated law, we were listening to people degrade families like ours.”
Westminster Hall debate
Due to the petition reaching more than 100,000 signatures, MPs debated the petition relating to surrogacy law and legal parenthood on 7th September. You can read the transcript of the full debate on Hansard but the good news is that thanks to some brilliant MPs who spoke up for women and children, the Government rejected the petition and will not remove parental orders or surrogate mothers’ rights at birth at present.
It was great to see cross-party agreement from the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats and the DUP, with particularly good speeches from Scottish Labour MP for Edinburgh North & Leith Tracy Gilbert who called for Parliament to have a full debate on surrogacy and the “fundamental questions it raises about the rights of women and children.”
Tracy Gilbert told the House that 50% of responses to the Law Commission’s consultation called for a total ban on surrogacy in this country, and that she supports one. She also mentioned a new paper from the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner saying women in the UK are already being identified as at risk of forced surrogacy.
Shivani Raja, Conservative MP for Leicester East, said that “children are not commodities, and women’s bodies should never become a marketplace.” She added that “however well-intentioned reform may sound, weakening safeguards risks opening the door to commercialisation and exploitation.”
Jonathan Hinder, Labour MP for Pendle and Clitheroe, also spoke against weaking surrogacy regulations, saying that “Pregnant women are not factories, and babies are not goods to be ordered.” Jonathan also read out the testimony of a surrogate mother who described being sent home from the hospital car park: “They had the baby. They were happy. They didn’t need me anymore, so they told me to go home.”
Battle against surrogacy just beginning
While it’s excellent news that the Government rejected this petition, the battle against the growing demand for surrogacy is far from over.
During the debate, the Minister for Public Health and Patient Safety, Dame Diana Johnson, said: “Given the limited parliamentary time available, the Government are not in a position to bring forward legislation on surrogacy reform immediately. We will, however, continue to consider options for future reform.”
On the Law Commission’s recommendation that intended parents become the legal parents at birth, she said the Government “will respond in due course as time allows”. The Government’s written response on the petition page (from 20 May) says: “The Government supports surrogacy as a part of assisted conception options”. They call surrogacy “a crucial route to family formation for many LGBTQ+ people” – while ignoring the wellbeing of children created in an unnatural manner.
Therefore, it’s important to support MPs calling for surrogate mothers to remain mothers in law at birth and urge them to reject the key ask from the Law Commission’s proposed reform on surrogacy law in the UK – in which intended parents would become parents of the child from birth, rather than wait for months to obtain a parental order.
You can view all suggestions from the Law Commission’s website but we believe that it has fundamentally misjudged public opinion on surrogacy in its 2023 review – half of the public oppose it. Please do write to your MP to outline your opposition to liberalising UK surrogacy law.
It’s also important to press the Government for the outcome of its announced review of the recommended agencies listed on the Department of Health and Social Care website including the problematic organisation My Surrogacy Journey. This agency was highlighted during the debate by Labour MP for Bolton West Phil Brickell, who asked for My Surrogacy Journey to be removed due to multiple allegations of bullying and mistreatment.
Ask your MP what due diligence is done before links to these organisations are shared on a government website.
Another action you can take is to ask MPs to call for a ban on British people going abroad to obtain babies. Campaign group Surrogacy Concern has a downloadable letter template which can be used to ask MPs to act on the international surrogacy cases coming to the UK.
A particularly awful example of this is the case of Barrie Drewitt-Barlow who became Britain’s first gay surrogate parent in 1999. Drewitt-Barlow has obtained at least seven children via surrogacy, boasting in an interview that he paid a model in Miami £50,000 to be an egg donor to avoid having an “ugly baby”.
He and his partner Scott have been charged with rape and human trafficking for sexual exploitation – highlighting why parental orders should not be given automatically to commissioning parents at birth.
Moral questions around family creation
The fact that that surrogacy is in the news highlights a deeper moral question about parenthood and the current liberal thinking which regards having a baby as a right for everyone, regardless of their sexuality or relationship status.
The BBC reported this week on a lesbian couple who want to change the law around sperm donors. Nat and Nik Fraser-Edwards, who already have a son via a sperm donor and IVF, have more stored embryos, but the sperm donor has now withdrawn his consent for their use, meaning they will be destroyed.
The couple, who say they have spent £23,000 on fertility treatment, want the law changed so that sperm donors cannot withdraw their consent to father a child once the embryos have been created. Interestingly, some online commentators outraged at women being exploited through forced surrogacy do not feel the same way about sperm donors having the option to change their minds even though the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority (HFEA) states that both sperm and egg donors can change their minds about consent “at any point before embryo transfer or insemination.”
It would appear that “my body, my choice” only works one way…
Both same sex couples in the news want to change the law to suit their desire to obtain a baby because they cannot have one through natural means. We believe where the law needs to change is to prevent selfish adults believing that they can buy a child by any means possible if they have enough money. This includes the increasing number of women in their 50s using donor eggs and sperm to get pregnant. HFEA figures show that the number of British women between the ages of 51-55 undergoing IVF with donor eggs increased by 67% between 2015 and 2023.
Women in their 50s having IVF
The Telegraph featured a story this week about a 53-year-old single mother who has written a children’s book about her journey to having a baby in her 50s, which involved spending £60,000 on fertility treatment abroad using donor eggs and sperm. She said she felt “empowered” by her decision, adding that other women “shouldn’t let stigma and taboos hold them back”.
While the article does touch on the serious health issues she suffered while pregnant, resulting in an emergency c-section, it fails to mention that young women aged 18+ are being targeted online to sell their eggs. Social media adverts paid for by the Scottish government in 2024 aimed to recruit young adults for its “assisted conception” campaign without outlining the major health risks involved in egg harvesting.
The mother claims she’s written a book so that her child will “know how she came into the world”, despite the fact that she has signed a legal document meaning that her daughter will never be able to meet her genetic parents.
None of this is in the best interest of children, who deserve and need their mother and father. The evidence shows that children have the best outcomes when raised by their parents within a loving and stable marriage, yet politicians in the UK seems intent on encouraging the situation where children are created with the express intention of depriving them of one of their biological parents.
This isn’t good for children, and it certainly isn’t good for society – please keep telling your MP that traditional families are not “outdated”!
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