Presented by: Dr Adiva Sifris is an Associate Professor and Director of Clinical Units at Monash University
In Australia altruistic surrogacy arrangements are rare, and compensated surrogacy arrangements are prohibited and, in some States, criminalized. The Full Court of the Family Court of Australia has determined that the intended parents of children born through compensated surrogacy arrangements should not be recognised as the child’s legal parents.
Recently, in a situation where a child was born to a single woman and conceived through an assisted conception procedure, the High Court of Australia in Masson v Parsons & Ors [2019] HCA 21 (‘Masson’) concluded that the known donor of semen was, in the circumstances of that case, to be regarded as a legal parent of the child.
This lecture will address the predicament in Australia of children born through compensated surrogacy arrangements and explore whether the decision in Masson has illuminated an additional pathway for determining the parentage of such children.