It’s tragic that some women can’t conceive, but surrogacy is too risky an answer

Brits are renting wombs around the world despite the harm it can do. This pernicious cash and carry should be banned

- Martha Gill

Meghan Trainor holds her daughter, who was born through surrogacy.

Is public opinion turning against surrogacy? Last week Meghan Trainor faced a fierce backlash after the singer posted a picture with her newborn, praising her“superwoman surrogate”. When Lily Collins announced her “surrogacy journey” last year it sparked a similar outcry.

These reactions mirror a wider shift: in the past few years laws have tightened up to restrict surrogacy in Greece, Spain, India, Thailand, Russia and Slovakia. In 2024 Italy made ita “universal crime” - wording that puts it on a par with genocide. Britain, strangely, is heading the other way. Recently, ministers even considered loosening our laws, although that idea has stalled. Before 2008, 50 children a year were born through surrogacy to British parents. That number is now closer to 500.

Why the rise? “Social acceptability has increased among young people.” says Helen Gibson, the founder of Surrogacy Concern, a charity. The demographics of surrogate parents are widening too. In 2019 the law opened up this option to single people, and would-be parents are drawn from increasingly older cohorts. Between 2020 and 2025 the number of men in their 50s applying for parental orders, which transfer legal parentage from the surrogate, rose from 44 to 95I. In that period there were even applications from men aged over 70 and women aged over 80 ~ something that worries campaigners.