News & Commentary

2025 marks my 25th year in law as a qualified solicitor in England and Wales. As such, it felt important to mark the occasion as life is precious and passes by so quickly. Successful family life is a personal aspiration and central focus for many people. Families are an important pillar of society too. Yet despite this, building and maintaining happy, healthy and well-functioning personal and family lives can be difficult to achieve given the often uncertain and complex world around us.

Louisa Ghevaert spent a memorable evening at Women In Change Awards 2025 in London on 3 July 2025 celebrating the transformative achievements of women from all walks of life. Women In Change is a community of female change-makers driving positive impact on a one-to-one basis, through organisations and on a global scale. This year’s powerful women finalists and leaders demonstrated leadership, positive change and social impact that has helped make the world we all live in a better place

On 19 June 2025, Louisa Ghevaert had the pleasure of attending Resolution’s Modern Families Forum 2025 in London. Lord Justice Peter Jackson delivered an illuminating keynote address on legal parentage and the challenges this can present for families when the circumstances of a child’s conception, parentage and parental responsibility fall into dispute. This was followed by a modern family law case update and sessions which grappled with the technicalities of who has or doesn’t have parentage and parental responsibility in law.

DNA testing firm 23andMe avoids bankruptcy with an announcement on 19 May 2025 that it will be bought by US biotechnology company Regeneron Pharmaceuticals for $256 million (approximately £192 million). Regeneron Pharmaceuticals plans to operate 23andMe and continue all consumer genome services as a wholly-owned company subsidiary. However, this continues to raise questions for 15 million users worldwide about what will happen to their genetic information?

On 10 May 2025 Louisa Ghevaert attended the Growing Families UK and EU Surrogacy and Donor Conception Conference 2025, together with an industry professional networking event on 9 May 2025 in London. This brought together fertility, surrogacy agency, academic and legal experts from around the world, as well as past and present intended parents building families through fertility treatment, international surrogacy and donor conception.

Louisa Ghevaert was delighted to attend the launch event of WEALTH: Women In Health in partnership with Covington & Burling LLP on 2 April 2025. Its aim is to build a powerful community of women across the full value chain of health and investment to advance the health, wealth and position of women in the world. WEALTH was created because whilst women drive approximately 80% of major healthcare decisions, women are underrepresented and underserved across the industry and this needs to change.

Louisa Ghevaert was pleased to attend Progress Educational Trust’s event “Is Fertility Treatment A Solution To Population Decline?” on 26 March 2025. Fertility is continuing to decline across the globe and birth rates are steadily falling. Fertility rates are now at the lowest in the UK since World War II. As such, this event looked at a range of factors influencing declining global fertility and birth rates and debated whether fertility treatment can bridge the gap and solve population decline.

On 23 March 2025 came news reports that genetic testing firm 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy following financial difficulties and concerns about data privacy. Its recent decision to file for bankruptcy is aimed at procuring a sale. However, it leaves its 15 million users around the world questioning what will happen to their genetic data?