Ms Natalie Gamble:

Yes, it was. I apologise if I was not clear. The sense I was trying to convey in this regard is that if a great deal of structure is erected around surrogacy, then there are safeguards because everyone must have legal advice, screening, psychological assessments and a third-party agency involved to offer support. That is always going to add to costs. The US is the model that has all that professional support. We can take much comfort from the fact that such arrangements are ethical, that everyone is giving informed consent and that there is openness and transparency. Everyone in that situation has their own professionals in the game, if I can put it that way.

The flip side is that level of structure and support adds significantly to the cost of the process. Therefore, intended parents who have sufficient wealth to enable them to access options such as US surrogacy, can do so with a great degree of assurance that they do not have to worry about the ethics. Less wealthy parents are not able to access those kinds of options in situations where they are looking at other places - in Ukraine, for example, though obviously not now - where there is less professional support and structure available. Intending parents in those situations must be more alive themselves to ensuring the requisite ethics are being followed. They must ensure they meet their surrogate and understand what screening is taking place. In other words, they must ensure they have done their own due diligence. Therefore, when I said it was easier to make ethical choices if one is wealthy, that was what I was describing. I was not alluding to any threat to surrogates.