Egg donor compensation is going up in the UK – so why shouldn’t surrogates be compensated too?

Compensation for UK egg donors is going up. The UK’s fertility regulator the HFEA has decided to increase it from £750 to just under £1,000. The HFEA says it is trying to get the balance right between recognising egg donation as an ‘altruistic act’ while also ensuring that women are compensated for their ‘genuine personal commitment’. They also want there to be enough financial incentive to attract egg donors. See this report over the weekend from the BBC.

Why, then, has the Law Commission recommended that UK surrogates receive less?

The Law Commission’s 2023 law reform proposals for surrogacy instead want to tighten up UK law so surrogates can only be paid strict out of pocket expenses – with zero compensation for their risk, inconvenience and personal commitment. This is a step in the opposite direction and risks removing the flexibility the current law has to allow some compensation.

The gap between how the UK approaches egg donation and surrogacy has no logic

If egg donor compensation should be pitched to address the shortage of donors, why not surrogates too? Current waiting times for UK surrogates are so long and uncertain that a majority of UK parents feel compelled to engage in expensive or risky surrogacy arrangements overseas. We need women to feel able to be surrogates here in the UK, where surrogacy is both ethical and well supported.

But more importantly, surrogates deserve to be compensated for their ‘genuine personal commitment’, just as much as egg donors, and surrogacy is no less an altruistic act.

We support surrogates every day and know their motivation is to help create a family for someone else, never the money in isolation. Our screening confirms that, through careful exploration of our surrogates’ motivations and their financial stability, and the starting point is always altruism. But that doesn’t mean that surrogates don’t want or deserve fair compensation as well.

Surrogacy is a life-changing undertaking, involving time, commitment, emotional investment, inconvenience, risk and pain

It is typically at least a two year process, during which surrogates effectively put their own lives on hold to help someone else.

Surrogacy has a huge impact on their own families too, requiring sacrifices from partners and children, even if willingly made because of the pride they feel in what their partner or mum is doing.

Surrogacy is a calling, not a job

Even though surrogacy isn’t – and shouldn’t be – paid as a job, surrogates still deserve proper financial acknowledgment for the significant work involved. Attending appointments, taking meds, maintaining communication with the parents – it’s a lot.

Modest compensation (in addition to expenses) might be described as a thank you payment, something to partially acknowledge the time, commitment and sacrifice involved for a surrogate and her family, to make the process a bit easier and to enable our surrogates to feel less guilty about the impact their being a surrogate has on their own families. Intended parents want to be able to acknowledge this to the most important person in the surrogacy process – and her family.

So let’s act with the integrity that is the foundation of surrogacy in the UK

If UK egg donors deserve compensation to acknowledge their genuine personal commitment, so do UK surrogates. And just like with egg donation, having the option of receiving some compensation doesn’t stop surrogacy being an ‘altruistic act’. It’s about recognising the enormity of what surrogacy involves, and ensuring surrogates have what they need to be able to do it. It’s about encouraging women to come forward to be surrogates and recognising them for it properly.