21 November 2011
I was delighted to attend the Fertility Show and give a lecture to a packed audience on the complex laws surrounding international surrogacy for a second year running. The Fertility Show is a popular commercial event and approximately 3,200 people attended the two day event on 4 and 5 November 2011. It provided a wealth of information about fertility treatment, IVF, surrogacy, egg and sperm donation, family building, holistic fertility treatments, charitable organizations in the fertility sector and an impressive line up of expert speakers.
This year, the Fertility Show had a strong focus on cross-border fertility treatment, with an array of foreign clinics from all over the US, Spain, South Africa, Barbados, Cyprus and beyond. I spoke alongside Dr Gad Lavy, founder of New England Fertility, and gave an overview of the complex laws and pitfalls associated with international surrogacy. The session was sold out, indicative once again of the growing interest in international surrogacy as a family building option. In the absence of international unification of surrogacy law and practice, there has never been a greater need to understand and grapple with the complex legal issues international surrogacy creates, particularly as there is a public policy prohibition against commercial surrogacy in the UK.
