What Is Surrogacy?
Surrogacy is an arrangement in which a woman carries and delivers a child for another couple or person. The surrogate may be the child’s genetic mother (called traditional surrogacy), or she may be genetically unrelated to the child (called gestational surrogacy). In a traditional surrogacy, the child may be conceived via home artificial insemination using fresh or frozen sperm or impregnated via IUI (intrauterine insemination), or ICI (intracervical insemination) performed at a health clinic. A gestational surrogacy requires the transfer of a previously created embryo, and for this reason the process always takes place in a clinical setting.
The intended parent or parents, sometimes called the social parents, may arrange a surrogate pregnancy because of female infertility, other medical issues which make pregnancy or delivery impossible, risky or otherwise undesirable, or because the intended parent or parents are male. The sperm or eggs may be provided by the ‘commissioning’ parents, but donor sperm, eggs and embryos may also be used. Although the idea of vanity surrogacy is a common trope in popular culture and anti-surrogacy arguments, there is little or no data showing that women choose surrogacy for reasons of aesthetics or convenience.
Monetary compensation may or may not be involved in surrogacy arrangements. If the surrogate receives compensation beyond the reimbursement of medical and other reasonable expenses, the arrangement is called commercial surrogacy; otherwise, it is often referred to as altruistic surrogacy. The legality and costs of surrogacy vary widely between jurisdictions, which results in high rates of international and interstate surrogacy activity
Types Of Surrogacy :
- Traditional Surrogacy(TS): This involves artificially inseminating a surrogate mother with the intended father’s sperm via IUI, IVF or home insemination. With this method, the child is genetically related to its father and the surrogate mother.
- Gestational Surrogacy(GS): When the intended mother is not able to carry a baby to term due to hysterectomy, diabetes, cancer, etc., her egg and the intended father’s sperm are used to create an embryo (via IVF) that is transferred into and carried by the surrogate mother. The resulting child is genetically related to its parents while the surrogate mother has no genetic relation.
- Gestational surrogacy (GS/DS) & donor sperm: If there is no intended father or the intended father is unable to produce sperm, the surrogate mother carries an embryo developed from the intended mother’s egg (who is unable to carry a pregnancy herself) and donor sperm. With this method, the child born is genetically related to the intended mother and the surrogate mother has no genetic relation.
- Traditional surrogacy & donor sperm (TS/DS): A surrogate mother is artificially inseminated with donor sperm via IUI, IVF or home insemination. The child born is genetically related to the sperm donor and the surrogate mother.
- Gestational surrogacy & egg donation (GS/ED): If there is no intended mother or the intended mother is unable to produce eggs, the surrogate mother carries the embryo developed from a donor egg that has been fertilized by sperm from the intended father. With this method, the child born is genetically related to the intended father and the surrogate mother has no genetic relation.
- Gestational surrogacy (GS/DE) & donor embryo: When the intended parents are unable to produce either sperm, egg, or embryo, the surrogate mother can carry a donated embryo (often from other couples who have completed IVF that have leftover embryos). The child born is genetically related neither to the intended parents nor the surrogate mother.
