Episode 159 – Order of steps for surrogacy

00:06
Let’s go through the order of steps that you’ll need to go through to do surrogacy in Australia. Now these steps assume that you have found a surrogate. If you haven’t found a surrogate and you want to hear more about that, join me in a regular free Wednesday night webinar at 8pm Sydney time. Your options are finding a known surrogate, so be that telling family and friends about your need for one, or finding an unknown surrogate, which would mean joining online groups or SAS, which stands for Surrogacy Australia Support Service.

00:36
So the steps as I see them are eligibility for surrogacy, spending time to form your surroship, the IVF clinic, counseling and legals, pregnancy and birth, transfer of parentage, and supporting your child to understand their story. Let me take you through each of these briefly. I will say, if you’re looking to hear these steps in more detail, join me in one of those webinars. Those webinars go for an hour, with the first half an hour going through these steps and the process. The second half an hour, I’m joined by a co-host.

01:05
usually a gay dad, a mum or a surrogate who shares their surrogacy experience. The recordings of those interviews are most of these podcast episodes and you can find the video recordings on our YouTube channel. So please check that out to see the beautiful photos that the parents and surrogate share of their surrogacy journeys. Eligibility for surrogacy. So for a surrogate, essentially they need to be fit and healthy enough to have another pregnancy. They have a chat with their GP to go through their previous pregnancies and births.

01:33
and to see if there were any complications. On our SASs website, there’s a form that anyone can download and take with them to that GP appointment. You don’t have to be a SAsS member to access it. It helps the GPs to know what they need to discuss as often they are learning about surrogacy themselves. For intended parents, IPs, they either need to not have a uterus, so be a same-sex male couple or a single man, or because you were born without a uterus or have had a hysterectomy, or

02:03
have been advised by a specialist that carrying a pregnancy would be too great a risk to yourself or the baby. So essentially, IPs need a medical reason to be able to engage with a surrogate or a social reason, which they call being socially infertile. Next, spending time forming your surroship. A surroship is more than a friendship, but different to your life partner relationship, although it is very intimate as you’re creating a baby together. So even if you know each other before this journey,

02:33
You need to have time as a team to discuss your expectations. The big topics like terminating a pregnancy, but also how you communicate and what support looks like. In terms of what to discuss as a team, we have a list of discussion topics. You can find these on our website when joining SAsS or in the further reading section from our webinars. Next, the IVF clinic. 90 % of teams will go through an IVF clinic for gestational surrogacy, meaning the surrogate does not use her own egg.

03:02
As of July 2026 when I’m recording this, there are currently no Medicare rebates for IVF in relation to surrogacy. However, the Australian Law Reform Commission are about to release their final report as part of their inquiry into surrogacy. I anticipate in future years that not only will we see Medicare rebates, but we will also head towards a compensated model of surrogacy and hopefully one set of national laws as opposed to each state being slightly different.

03:28
The IVF clinic will track the surrogate’s cycle so they can plan when to insert an embryo into her. The embryo is made from either an egg from the intended mother or an egg donor and the sperm from the father or one of the fathers if it’s a gay couple. We do frozen embryo transfers in Australia and twin pregnancies are not done for surrogacy. Next, counselling and legals. Surrogacy goes by the laws of the state where the IPs live as that’s where the parentage order is made after birth.

03:58
It doesn’t matter that the surrogate births in her state if that’s different to where the IPs usually live. The counselling and legal stages are often done around the same time. The mandatory counselling uses one counsellor and the pattern is usually one session for the IPs, one session for the surrogate and her partner if she has one, and then one long session as a team. For the legals, there are two separate lawyers and they will draw up an agreement. It’s technically not enforceable except for the surrogacy related costs.

04:27
It’s worth noting that surrogacy is all about trust. As IPs, you trust the surrogate will do the right thing in pregnancy and will hand over your baby at birth. And as surrogates, we trust that the IPs will cover our costs, support us and keep in contact in the future because there’s no law to force a continued friendship. So there’s a lot of trust both ways. Once the counseling and legal work are done,

04:53
The approval process is either an internal ethics board at the IVF clinic or some states have an external approval board. Currently the PRP, patient review panel in Victoria is one of those. Then pregnancy attempts can begin with embryo transfers or home inseminations for traditional surrogacy. Next, pregnancy and birth. Once pregnant, teams can go through the public or the private healthcare system. The surrogate will usually express a preference based on her previous pregnancies and births.

05:21
The IPs are covering the cost of all pregnancy related items and to hear about that in more detail, have a listen to episode 95. There is a lot more to say about supporting a surrogate during pregnancy, birth and then in those weeks and months after birth. I have done some more educational episodes on these topics, so please check them out. After birth, transferring of parentage. So the first birth certificate to be issued, at least currently in Australia, has the name of the surrogate and her partner.

05:51
The reason for this is to transfer the parentage from the surrogate to the IPs. You go back to the IP’s lawyer, apply to the family court, and the judge declares a new birth certificate can be created with the names of the IPs on it. Some states have relinquishment counselling around six weeks after birth, and that’s required before the parentage order. And then lastly, once all of the paperwork is done, supporting the child to understand their story.

06:16
So after all this official paperwork is done, we hope that surrogacy teams continue as friends and stay in contact. As surrogates, our gift is to see the IPs become parents and to see the village the child will grow up in with grandparents, aunts and uncles. For my own team, currently five and a half years post-birth, and we all live in Adelaide, we probably see each other about four times a year in person, in the lead up to Christmas, as we have a tradition where they help us put up our Christmas lights.

06:44
in the new year for the February birthdays that are in my house, in September for Baker’s birthday, that’s the name of the little boy I carried, and then once or twice during the year for like a playground catch up or either a catch up at their house or my house. Also as adults, we get together once a year just for us for what is called a Surroversary, and that’s to celebrate the enormous journey that we went on together. Phew, that’s a quick crash course, or maybe it wasn’t so quick, about the steps in Australia.

07:11
If you are looking for a list of links to get you started, either email me sass at surrogacyaustralia.org or on our website navigate to the webinar section and then there’s a list of further reading. Of course, feel free to join me for a free Wednesday night webinar to hear this in much more detail. If you’re looking for more guidance on how to navigate surrogacy in Australia, please check out SASS, Surrogacy Australia’s support service, so you can have me as your navigation tool on this journey.

07:39
If you are finding these discussions useful, would love it if you could leave a review wherever you listen to this show and you can find more information at surrogacyaustralia.org. Until next time, welcome to the village.