I have always been a fan of Tatler magazine and when I got a call from Irish Tatler in the middle of January 2015 asking me if I would mind being interviewed for a piece they were writing on surrogacy, I of course said "yes!!".

Until the day comes when I can't say it any more I will keep on reiterating that in my opinion surrogates are AMAZING women.  They give people who otherwise might not have had the chance to a genetic link to a child the ability to have a family.  Of course they get paid a compensation amount but frankly the happiness that having a child brings far outweighs anything.  In the US, surrogates don't receive enough money to change their lives and so they are really being a surrogate because they want to help others.

Jessica from Irish Tatler wrote a very positive piece explaining the details on how to go about surrogacy in the US and they really pointed out that surrogates are empowered, fully informed women who are able to make the decision to help others have a family.  The article goes high level into the process and nicely gives a plug to my book which is being recognised more and more as THE guide-book on the process!!

I am thankful that they recognised me as an advocate for other intended parents as I believe that I really do have a mission in life - to help others navigate the opacity of the surrogacy world.  This ranges from understanding what is surrogacy to talking through all of the permutations and combinations available.  I will let you read it below.

I had a few long chats with Josie from Plug Magazine in Hong Kong for her article on "How to Make a Baby - Rainbow Family Planning" about how international surrogacy works and the options available to intended parents (IPs) is based in Hong Kong  

As you are probably aware from my visit to Hong Kong earlier this year (when I hosted the Alternative Routes to Starting a Family seminar), commercial surrogacy is not allowed and therefore anyone looking at the process has to jump through many hoops before, during and after they start the surrogacy process. 

As with all countries, especially those with outdated laws, surrogacy is still happening and more and more IPs from China and Hong Kong are now venturing to the US to start their families so what better way to educate than via press articles such as this one.

It is extremely well written and gives those thinking of starting a rainbow family all of the options available to them.  Once again, my mission of making sure IPs are fully informed BEFORE they start the process is still on track.

On the 6th August 2014 I was asked to be a "witness" on BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze show hosted by Michael Burke.  The expert panellists were asked to discuss the morality and ethics behind surrogacy but of course in the very short space of time that we had on the show it is very hard to go through all of the concepts as well as any of the thoughts that I have about it. 

But now that I've had time to digest what the panellists were actually trying to get at (I can sometime be a bit slow on the uptake) I think the following things:

1 - Is it preferable to have babies grown in jars like in "A Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley.  I think that anything is preferable to the current demonization and patronisation of those amazing women who offer to be surrogates by being called womb-renters.  In reality most surrogates are empowered women who are choosing to enrich the lives of others but giving the gift of a child.  They are making informed, educated and consensual decisions about the process.  Of course there are always jurisdictions where exploitation is going to happen but in an open and honest relationship with an agency and surrogate this should not happen.

2- Would increased regulation be the right thing - in arguably a male dominated legislative society I think that increased regulation could be seen as an attempt to prove that women are not able to make decisions about their own bodies as well as an inability to make decisions that are right for them.  Do I think that the current regulation is out-dated, yes I do.  Does it need to be amended to keep up with the times, yes it does.  How can we change it - that is a question that is down to the lawyers but I think anything allowing for increased education, guidance and counselling is a starting point!  I also think that any new legislation needs to include a framework so that surrogate, intended parents and unborn children are FULLY protected.  It finally needs to have a global reach as international surrogacy is here to stay and there needs to be some form of standard set of guidelines.

3 - Do I think that every person going through surrogacy is rich and lazy - in one word, no.  I think that people look at surrogacy as an alternative route to having a family for a variety of reasons but generally it is for 2: an inability to get pregnant or an inability to stay pregnant.  Yes, there are people who want to outsource because they're too busy being busy but I would say 99.9% of the people who go through surrogacy are emotionally exhausted as an inability to conceive or carry and actually financially struggle to save the huge amount of money needed to go through surrogacy and cherish the child born to them by a surrogate.

Anyway, I'm going to be quiet now and let you listen to the show...

On the back of the story of Baby Gammy in Thailand I was contacted by Helier Cheung from the BBC as she wanted to write an article about in which jurisdictions surrogacy is legal.  We spent a long time on the phone talking about our story and all of the different countries but in the end she kindly wrote a personal piece about our family and finally showed a positive side to surrogacy.  A link to it is here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-28679020

Another day, another radio show.  Today's show was with the amazing Noreen Mir!  she and I spoke for about 30 minutes on questions around surrogacy as well as the Alternative Routes to Building Your Family panel discussion in Hong Kong that I hosted.

http://programme.rthk.hk/channel/presenters/programme.php?name=radio3/1_2_3_show&d=2014-05-19&p=5979&e=263132&m=episode

I spoke with Arthur Tam from Time Out Hong Kong early last week and he wrote this article about the seminar next week as well as a little about me and the work that I do to help Intended Parents navigate the surrogacy world.

http://www.timeout.com.hk/gay-lesbian/features/66428/surviving-surrogacy.html

The wonderful team at Hub Culture have just posted an article about "Open Source Families" which is a great way of describing the non-traditional routes to parenthood.  This is the topic of the seminar that I will be hosting in Hong Kong on May 19, 2014




https://hubculture.com/groups/122/news/679/ 

In preparation for the UK Families Through Surrogacy conference in March 2014 I was asked to do a brief interview for the Independent Newspaper, here is what they published http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-surrogate-births-hit-record-high-as-couples-flock-abroad-9162834.html