---

Judge rebukes ‘self-centred’ pair in surrogacy deal

President of the England and Wales Family Division Sir Andrew McFarlane has commented on the case of a couple, one in her late 60s and one over 70, who commissioned the birth of two babies abroad through surrogacy. 

Ruling in Re Z (Unlawful Foreign Surrogacy: Adoption), he said that the applicants, Ms W and Ms X, had commissioned the babies for £120,000 in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. 

The unlawful clinic used women from Ukraine as surrogate mothers. The two individuals who donated gametes to create the embryos had been chosen by Ms W and Ms X to replicate their own racial characteristics.   

Both surrogacy, and the placement of children with same-sex couples, are unlawful in that jurisdiction. 

The two children were born on the same day to two different surrogate mothers and through donated eggs. 

Though the children were born in Northern Cyprus, they did not have any rights there, or in Ukraine through their birth mothers. 

Refused leave to enter 

The commissioning parents were refused leave for four years to enter Britain with the babies. 

In Britain, the only route to lawful parentage of the children was through adoption, since the surrogate mothers were legally their parents.

The women who gave birth to the children had since returned to Ukraine and could not be found. 

The judge agreed to make an adoption order but warned that the decision should not be taken as a precedent. 

A court declining to make an adoption order would result in children that were “permanently stateless and legally parentless”, he said. 

The unlawful operation was exploitative and purely for commercial gain, he commented. 

The judge criticised the commissioning parents as “entirely self-centred”, with no thought as to the long-term welfare of the children. 

'No thought'

The judge said it was astonishing that the applicants had given no thought to the impact of having parents over 60 years older than them, and said that the children would likely become carers in their teens. 

Anyone considering following the pair’s footsteps to introduce a child into their family “should think again”, he said. 

“If the court had been asked before these applicants set off for Cyprus whether this was a good idea, let alone one that was legally compatible with domestic policy in these matters, the court’s view would undoubtedly have been a negative one,” the judgment states. 

It concludes that the authorities in Britain may in future oppose the making of adoption orders in such cases.