UK Gives Long-Awaited Victory To Childless Families

Childless couples are free to pay surrogate mothers large sums to have babies for them following a landmark High Court ruling on Wednesday. 

A senior family court judge allowed a British couple to keep a child even though they had technically broken the law by giving more than "reasonable expenses" to the American natural mother.

Mr. Justice Hedley said the existing rules on payments were unclear and put the baby's welfare at risk. Only in the "clearest case" of surrogacy for profit would a couple be refused the necessary court order to keep the baby, he added.

The ruling will be seen by infertile couples as a signal that they can now pay women to bear children without fear of prosecution. However, it led to renewed calls for reform of 25-year-old laws discouraging "rent a womb" surrogacy.

Andrea Williams, the director of the Christian Legal Centre, said: "Children are not commodities to be bought and sold.

"The regulations that we have regarding surrogacy are supposed to ensure that there is no element of profit in the whole process. Once a line is crossed within the system where profit has essentially been made, this leads to a weakening in the regulations and the effectiveness of the law."

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