Professor Deirdre Madden:

I return to the issue flagged earlier of whether surrogacy should be actively discouraged. I do not believe it should be. I take issue with the notion - this is not the Senator's language but language used by somebody else in the room this morning - that infertile people are desperate people picking up children from under a bush. That is not how I would depict people who have difficulties with childlessness. I would depict people who enter into surrogacy arrangements as responsible, committed, caring adults who want to have a child of their own and who would be fit and loving parents if given the opportunity. I would rather see them in that light rather than as desperate and willing to go to extraordinary lengths to have a child. I do not believe surrogacy needs to be discouraged. It should be properly regularised and protected.

In some ways we must acknowledge that birth certificates are already legal fictions. We do not test every child born in this jurisdiction to find out whether the father is really his or her father before his name is entered on a birth certificate.