Surrogacy Law: Home

In Australia, people are increasingly using the internet and online social media platforms to source sperm or seek a person with whom to co-parent a child - known as 'elective co-parenting'. In this article, we examine these emerging informal avenues of family creation that, in some instances, circumvent the use of regulated fertility clinics. We argue that it is timely for the law, regulatory bodies, and the broader community to pay closer attention to the legal and ethical problems that may arise using these risky methods of family creation.

This article examines some of the issues of ethics, policy, practice and countervailing human rights associated with the current approach and concludes by suggesting how the law should respond to the complex challenges posed by cross-border surrogacy in order to minimise the risk of harm to the intended Australian parents, surrogate and the child through regulation.

Ireland is one of the only European countries without any form of assisted human reproduction specific regulation. This research aimed to review of assisted human reproduction regulations to compare Ireland with other developed countries.

This article considers SALRI’s report and argues that, although the consequent legislation is a welcome reform, the wider question of commercial surrogacy, currently precluded in all Australian jurisdictions, remains an enduring question. The view that commercial surrogacy is inherently exploitative has been challenged by recent research, with the seemingly tenuous distinction between commercial and non-commercial surrogacy also being questioned.

Australian law affirms a binary construction of fertility/infertility. This model is based upon the medical categorization of infertility as a disease. Law supports medicine in prioritizing technology, such as in vitro fertilization, as treatment for infertility. This prioritization of a medico-legal model of infertility in turn marginalizes alternative means of family creation such as adoption, fostering, traditional surrogacy, and childlessness.

The regulation and reform of surrogacy law will inevitably have an impact on the system of birth registration and the content of birth certificates. In Australia, a review of the role of states and territories regulating surrogacy has emphasized that not enough information is being recorded on birth certificates to safeguard children’s rights.

number of countries including Nigeria, are still struggling to find the appropriate legal framework to provide guidelines for this reproductive process to curtail inherent unethical practices associated with that development. The paper explores the available regulatory instruments in Nigeria and in cognate jurisdictions such as Australia and the United Kingdom, through a comparative study to ascertain the efficacy of the existing instruments in ensuring that unethical practices and abuses associated with ART are eradicated.

There are different funding arrangements for fertility treatments between New Zealand (NZ) and Australia. In NZ, thereare two options for patients accessing treatment: either meeting specified criteria for age, no smoking and BMI for publicly funding or funding their own treatment. This differs from Australia, which has no explicit eligibility criteria restricting access to fertility treatment.

This article considers the current law in Australia that regulates early release of superannuation on compassionate grounds, for Assisted Reproductive Technology (‘ART’) to alleviate a ‘mental disturbance’. We examine the role of the fertility industry and third-party intermediaries in this pursuit.

In Australia, the National Health and Medical Research Council has banned the use of assisted reproductive technology for social sex selection, but notes “there is limited research into the question of whether Australians support the use of sex selection for non-medical purposes”. This paper investigates Australian attitudes to sex-selection technology by different means (IVF, abortion, and a hypothetical pill), for different reasons (medical, family balancing, any reason), and by differing respondent characteristics (age, sex, education and religiosity).

Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) has undergone considerable changes over the last decade, with consequences on ART outcomes in different regions of the world being unknown.

On 2 December 2015 the Attorney General, Senator the Hon George Brandis QC, asked the Committee to inquire into and report on the regulatory and legislative aspects of international and domestic surrogacy arrangements.

Australian surrogacy laws are restrictive and limit access to domestic surrogacy. Despite the introduction of laws in some Australian jurisdictions that penalise residents entering into international commercial surrogacy arrangements, hundreds of Australians resort to surrogacy arrangements in India and other countries each year. This article discusses legislation, policy and practice as they relate to Australians' use of surrogacy in India.

The social and legal acceptability of third-party reproduction varies around the world. In Australia, gamete and embryo donation and surrogacy are permitted within the regulatory framework set out by federal and state governments. The aim of this paper is to describe the social context and regulatory framework for third-party reproduction in Australia.

Australian gay men have only recently become parents through surrogacy arrangements. They have had to overcome a discriminatory legal, social, political, culturaland financial environment.

In Harriton and Waller, the High Court considered for the first time whether ‘wrongful life’ constitutes a valid cause of action in Australia. The Court held it does not, first because establishing damage in wrongful life cases would require an impossible comparison between existence and non-existence, and second because the recognition of wrongful life actions would be contrary to sound legal policy.