Dr. Mary Wingfield:

One of the difficulties with surrogacy is that there are so many different groups. It is very important that the rights of all of those groups are protected. I agree that the rights of the child are the paramount rights, because the child is the most vulnerable person in this situation. One of our main proposals is that the Bill should include cases where the surrogate uses her own oocytes for the conception. This links a little bit with cases of home insemination or artificial insemination, because if the surrogate can use her own oocytes, then she does not need to take part in an IVF procedure because it can be done by artificial insemination. There is some medical evidence that there are increased risks in pregnancy if a woman conceives using donated eggs. Her body will not reject the eggs but there are immunological changes that happen. If the surrogate is using her own eggs, she will not have those increased risks. There are certain cases where the woman in the commissioning couple may have no eggs herself for genetic reasons or for premature menopause, or for other reasons, or in cases where there is only parent. There will be a need for donated eggs and one way of getting those eggs is for the surrogate to donate them.

We have extra suggestions in other parts of our submission because it is also very important to protect the rights of the surrogate. We have other suggestions in our document on the age of the surrogate and that she should be medically fit for pregnancy. It is important to protect all of those risks. Certainly we feel that the surrogate should be able to use her own oocytes.

One of our strong recommendations is that counselling be made mandatory for these cases, because there are so many competing interests, and it is quite complex. People choosing to commission surrogacy need counselling. They need legal advice and what is known as implications counselling, which outlines all the implications of what they are doing. The surrogate and her partner also need counselling that is independent from the counselling given to the commissioning couple. Even if that is taking place within a family, such as a woman being a surrogate for her sister, it is important that they have counselling to make sure that the sister who is going to be the surrogate is not being coerced or is feeling that she should do it when she does not want to do it. We have all of those in our submission.