Wired magazine has written an in-depth fhttps://www.wired.co.uk/article/coronavirus-lockdown-surrogacy-industryeature about the difficulties parents are currently experiencing as a result of the COVID pandemic international travel restrictions:
“We’ve sorted out a good system with the Home Office to get children who are born abroad British passports issued, now we have to work with the Foreign Office on travel,” says fertility lawyer and Brilliant Beginnings founder Natalie Gamble. “There are lots of moving parts.”
In Ukraine and Georgia, the Foreign Office has to request permission from the ministry of foreign affairs in those countries for parents wishing to travel there. Getting home again is a more complicated issue. UK surrogacy law treats the surrogate and, if she is married, her husband, as the child’s legal parents. This means that many of these children are not born British in the same way that other children born overseas are. Therefore the Home Office has to either grant or confirm British nationality, and from there the Passport Office can authorise the local embassy to issue an emergency UK passport for the child.
“Once you’re pregnant and the baby’s due there’s not a lot you can do to defer that,” says Gamble.
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