BODY & SOUL

I know the real cost of having a baby by surrogacy

A former senior judge has called for the ban on paying surrogates to be lifted. Would-be mother Sophie Beresiner agrees
Sophie Beresiner: “Half the child’s genes will come from my husband, but he wouldn’t be the father in the eyes of the law”
Sophie Beresiner: “Half the child’s genes will come from my husband, but he wouldn’t be the father in the eyes of the law”
CHRIS MCANDREW FOR THE TIMES

I have been living and breathing and agonising through surrogacy for a year now. Trying (and, frustratingly, thus far failing) to have a baby via another woman. In the infertility community we nauseatingly refer to it as a “journey”, but it’s more of a huge emotional and logistical rollercoaster that I’m riding, along with reportedly thousands of other couples in the UK. Our numbers are rising, but the surrogacy conversation is still so quiet. Until this week, that is, when it became decidedly more noisy.

Sir James Munby was the head of the Family Division of the High Court — and, as such, the most senior family judge in England and Wales — until his retirement this year. In an interview last week he said