Making a difference

Emergency help during the Ukraine war

We gave emergency help to all the British parents expecting babies during the Ukraine war, securing government support, helping individual families to rescue their babies, and winning a Home Secretary decision to issue special visas to pregnant surrogates. We helped rescue 46 babies due when the war broke out.

Finding solutions during the COVID pandemic

We successfully lobbied the UK government to create an emergency passport process for stranded surrogate babies. We later persuaded the HFEA to clarify its guidance to make clear that eggs, sperm and embryos could be exported overseas for international surrogacy so that parents who could not travel were not blocked from building their families.

Ending discrimination against single parents

We worked with a dad through surrogacy to secure a High Court declaration that the law’s exclusion of single parents was incompatible with his and his child’s human rights. It not only enabled single parents to apply for parental orders, but also kickstarted a wider Law Commission review of the law.

First ever UK government guidance on surrogacy

We helped the Department of Health write the first ever official guidance for those going through surrogacy in the UK.

Passport guidance that includes LGBT+ parents

After a national charity flagged that the guidance accompanying UK passport application forms did not include families conceived through gamete donation or same-sex parents, we worked with them and the Passport Office to help re-write it. The guidance we wrote is still part of the booklet which comes with every UK passport application form.

Maternity leave rights for surrogacy

We ran a campaign from 2008 to 2015 (with media and work with MPs and charities) and secured a special form of adoption leave for parents through surrogacy who, until then, had no right to time off work when their child was born.

HFEA surrogacy policy

We worked with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to help it introduce its first ever surrogacy policy, and surrogacy-specific consent forms, to facilitate and support surrogacy.

British nationality for surrogate children

We successfully persuaded the Department of Health to include a law change in new draft regulations which enabled children born through surrogacy abroad to become British automatically on the grant of a parental order.

Changing the law on embryo storage

We successfully lobbied the government to include embryos created by women who could not carry a pregnancy in the extended storage rules. The law change rescued dozens of ‘out of time’ embryos which risked being destroyed.

Legal recognition for same-sex parents

Our founder Natalie Gamble was a leading voice in the fight to win legal parenthood for same-sex parents, interviewed as an expert across the media and quoted extensively in the House of Commons. Her contribution was subsequently recognised with a Stonewall Hero of the Year Award nomination and an invitation to meet the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street.