National Surrogacy Week 2025
- charleneash2
- Aug 7
- 3 min read
National Surrogacy Week in the UK takes place from 1st to 7th August 2025. Its aim is to raise awareness and understanding of surrogacy in the UK. National Surrogacy Week also aims to highlight the positive journey towards parenthood with the help of surrogates and their families. It is also a time to celebrate how far surrogacy has come since the first surrogate baby case in 1985.
How many surrogacy journeys are there in a year?
Family Court Statistics provide insights into many different family cases, including surrogacy. From here we can see there were 67 parental order applications in 2008, but that increased to 384 applications in 2018. A huge increase in 10 years, but what could explain that? With the increase of internet usage thanks to smartphones, and of course social media, there is a greater awareness of surrogacy by surrogates, intended parents and medical professionals. It is now recognised as a legitimate family building option with less stigma than before. Also with more acceptance of less traditional family structures more same sex couples are seeking to start a family through surrogacy.
Is surrogacy complicated?
Here at Calon Law we are uniquely qualified to answer this question as we have been through many surrogacy journeys ourselves, and are qualified solicitors. We have been blessed with two children, but it was not a smooth process. There were many difficulties along the way, so to give you some idea of our journey here are some statistics:
9 years
5 Getting To Knows (where we spend time with the surrogate and her family)
4 Surrogates
4 Rounds of IVF
6 Embryos
4 Embryo Transfers
2 Negative Tests
2 Pregnancies
2 Children
1 Global Pandemic!
Hopefully this shows that sometimes it is not always a case of meeting a surrogate, transferring an embryo and 9 months later, a beautiful bouncing baby. Sometimes life throws a curveball, and surrogacy is littered with them. Whilst being members of Surrogacy UK is ultimately about finding a surrogate to help us, it is also important to make friends in the surrogacy community. There will be tough times and those SUK friends will help massively, as they did for us.
What is a surrogacy agreement?
Surrogacy Agreements in the UK are not legally binding, they are instead based on trust. However there is more to an agreement. It is an excellent opportunity to discuss challenging subjects around pregnancy with each other before embarking on the surrogacy journey together. We would certainly recommend joining Surrogacy UK as they have an agreement that has been refined over many years. Both times we discussed the agreement with our surrogates we had no disagreements, but it did make us think about certain situations as parents, and how we would react. Examples could be if there is a medical emergency and the surrogates life is at risk, would the IPs agree to a termination of the pregnancy? It is terrible to think about such things but it is better to discuss these things before they could happen. Any disagreements could mean the surrogate and Intended Parents are not quite right for each other.
What are the legal aspects of surrogacy?
With every surrogacy journey there will always be complex legal and practical issues given legal restrictions in the UK. Currently in the UK, the surrogate is the legal guardian of a surrogate child, and if she is married, her partner the other guardian. This could mean the Intended Parents, even if they are genetically linked to the baby, would not be the legal guardians. This is why wills for all parties in a surrogacy journey should have a will in place that covers surrogacy elements. Calon Law can help as we are not only parents through surrogacy, but are qualified Wills solicitors with decades of experience, and fully regulated by the SRA. So you can rest assured we will guide you through the Wills process, so you can focus all your energy on enjoying your surrogacy journey!
This Surrogacy Awareness Week 2025 we would like to wish all surrogates and intended parents the best of luck in your respective journeys. We remember well how stressful, enjoyable, worrying and wonderful the process is. To this day we are still good friends with our surrogates and we will be proud to educate our two children how they came into this world. They don't just have 2 parents, they have a very special surrogacy family with 2 special "aunties" and 1 special "uncle".
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