Surrogacy in the United Kingdom: an opportunity for the debate on its regulation in Spain

Abstract

Surrogacy has been allowed and regulated in the United Kingdom since 1985. Although initially the legislation was more oriented towards discouraging this practice and protecting the minors involved, the experience of all these years has been positive, and they are even immersed in a social and legal debate to reform the law, and change and improve those aspects that have become obsolete, or that have been shown to be an obstacle in this way to form a family and recognize a new form of filiation. Likewise, the United Kingdom has been able during all these years to produce sufficient empirical evidence on the emotional well-being of children conceived by surrogacy, on the satisfactory parental and family relations in general of these families, as well as on the altruistic reasons of the gestating women. Therefore, in the current legal, social and ethical discussion in Spain, it would be interesting to study and take note of the British experience in surrogacy, a country with which we share greater social, cultural and even normative similarities in terms of assisted reproduction, than other countries or social contexts.