Natalie has been quoted in today’s Telegraph, as part of it’s feature covering the story of Nicole Kidman having had a child through surrogacy. Asked about changing attitudes to commercial surrogacy, she said:
Natalie Gamble is one of this country’s leading fertility lawyers, specialising in surrogacy. A lesbian mother of two children (both born via donor insemination), she won a landmark legal case last year, in which two British parents were allowed to keep a child who had been born via commerical surrogacy.
Since Britain’s first official surrogate birth, in 1985, laws have limited payments to cover only what is described as “reasonable expenses”, such as loss of income. Women cannot make a profit by “renting out” their wombs, nor can infertile couples pay such rates to surrogates, even if they live in countries with different laws.
But, last month, Mr Justice Hedley explained how he had allowed a British couple to keep their child, despite the fact that they made higher payments to a surrogate living in Illinois, in the United States, where there is no ceiling on amounts. In making the ruling, he went further, saying that the welfare of the child was the paramount consideration, and future cases would be rejected only in the “clearest case of the abuse of public policy”.
Ms Gamble says: “The ruling was pretty important. It doesn’t change British law, but it shifts the focus within it, so that people know that, if they do go abroad and pay more than expenses, the chances are that those deals will be ratified afterwards.”
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