A special issue on commercial surrogacy will feature in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Law and Medicine.
Chief Judge John Pascoe of the Federal Circuit Court of Australia says:
The fundamental issue for any community in relation to surrogacy is the sanctity of human life and how the community deals with the human rights of those affected, be they adults or children, or the unborn. The problem that confronts any community is that commercial surrogacy has the potential to commodify the creation of life and the children born of it.
As such, it is essential that the law responds in an effective way to commercial surrogacy, addressing the needs and requirements of the disparate and sometimes conflicting parties to such arrangements, including surrogate mothers, donors of genetic material, donor-conceived children and fertility clinics. Any response by the law to commercial surrogacy needs to recognise the fundamental premise in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child that the best interest of the child is unequivocally paramount.
These issues, and more, are explored in the collection of scholarly articles to be published as part of the special issue, providing an important contribution to the ongoing debate on commercial surrogacy. The articles include:
- Commercial Surrogacy: What Role for Law in Australia?
- The Regulation of Commercial Surrogacy: The Wrong Answers to the Wrong Questions
- Responsive Regulation of Cross Border Assisted Reproduction
- Commercial Surrogacy and the Human Right to Autonomy
- Genes and Gestation in Australian Regulation of Egg Donation, Surrogacy and Mitochondrial Donation
- The Family Courts and Parentage of Children Conceived through Overseas Commercial Surrogacy Arrangements: A Child-centred Approach