Unregistered Surrogate-Born Children Creating ‘Legal Timebomb’, Judge Warns

May 19, 2015

(The Guardian) – The failure by parents to register the majority of children born through surrogacy agreements has created “a ticking legal timebomb”, a high court judge has said. Addressing a conference on the rapid expansion in the number of surrogate births, Dame Lucy Theis said that without a court-sanctioned parental order and improved international legal frameworks children could end up “stateless and parentless”. It is estimated that as many as 2,000 children a year are born to surrogate mothers – mostly overseas – before being handed over to British parents.