Dr. Andrea Mulligan:

As I have said, when the child is born, the intended parents and the birth mother should all have some legal right to the child. Ultimately, if they disagree - they do not usually - those rights would have to be adjudicated upon by a court. One would always have to go to a court in such a position and look at the best interests of the child. There should be some kind of compromise whereby she is a parent of the child but the commissioning parents are guardians or, potentially, parents as well. There is no reason a child only has to have two parents. One must ensure everyone at the point of birth has some legal standing and then ensure everyone has legal rights, so if they disagree, the courts would ultimately have to resolve the dispute.

I am not the only person with difficulties with the pre-birth orders and many advocates have problems with them. Apart from the perspective of the woman, it is very important to have a post-birth best interest analysis of the child. For example, there is a UN special rapporteur report on this, which I mentioned in my briefing document, and it has expressed concerns about pre-birth orders because they decide the child's destiny before being born and there is no subsequent court process whereby the interests of the child are considered. From both the perspective of the child and the surrogate, pre-birth orders are a little tricky.