by Tony Rucinski, Coalition for Marriage
A child is now a commodity that can be purchased, provided the seller lives abroad. Marriage in its proper form – the lifelong union of one man and one woman – is the institution that bound a child to its biological mother and father by design. Loosen that, as Parliament did with the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, and you produce the market British family law confirmed last week.
The Times reported on Monday that single British men are “buying babies” from women in poverty overseas. Last Friday, Coram Chambers – a leading family law set – published a practitioner note confirming that section 54(8) of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 – the statutory restriction on commercial surrogacy – is being bypassed in practice. Article 7 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child guarantees every child the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents. The British courts have just told us this right does not stand.
Section 54A of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 opened the parental-order route to single applicants in 2019. Between 2019 and 2025, 130 single men applied for parental orders for babies born abroad; while 23 applied for babies born to surrogate mothers in the UK.