by Tony Rucinski, Coalition for Marriage
Marriage between one man and one woman is the institution that anchors a child to their biological mother and father. It is the oldest and most universally celebrated arrangement. C4M exists to defend it. We are campaigning for the restoration of marriage – and the return of motherhood to the position of honour it should never have lost.
On 28 April, fashion entrepreneur Adam Frisby and his partner Jamie Corbett appeared on ITV’s This Morning. They recently brought back a baby girl from the United States, born through commercial surrogacy. Their petition asks Parliament to make intended parents legal parents from birth, removing the woman who carries and delivers the child as the child’s legal mother. It has passed 100,000 signatures, triggering consideration for a Westminster Hall debate.
The Law Commission proposed exactly this in 2023. The Government shelved it in 2025. The petition has forced the door open again, and the Government has yet to publish its written response.
Italy has criminalised overseas surrogacy. Greece has closed it to non-residents. Last October, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women described surrogacy as “characterized by exploitation and violence against women and children” and called for its global eradication. Britain is moving the opposite way: the only surrogacy debate Parliament is preparing for is on a petition to liberalise, not to restrict.
Parliament was warned in 2013. David Burrowes told the Commons that the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill “implies that the state now applies another meaning to marriage, which primarily involves the rights and values of adulthood rather than the rights and values of parenthood”. Parliament didn’t heed the warning. We are living the consequences.
Even the Peter Tatchell Foundation puts the logic plainly: “Because same-sex couples cannot have children without assistance, surrogacy is central to parenting equality for LGBT+ people.” Two men cannot conceive a child together. Two women cannot conceive a child together. To recognise their unions as marriage forces the law to redefine who counts as a parent – and from another direction, gender ideology demands the same. Both fronts converge on the same target: airbrushing the real mother out of the family.