Surrogacy In Australia Essay

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The rapid development of birth technologies in Australia has challenged legal conceptions of ‘family’ and ‘parent’, allowing families of alternative arrangement to have their needs protected. Societal values regarding the structure of families have sincerely changed in recent decades, recognising that whilst many individuals innately desire to parent a child, such cannot be achieved in the conventional way for many. In response to these changing values, the Family Law Amendment 2008 (Cth), Status of Children Act 1996, Assisted Reproductive Technologies Act 2007 and Surrogacy Act 2010 in New South Wales have been enacted, devising solutions for parents unable to naturally conceive as well as those of homosexual orientation.

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Surrogacy as a means of family formation is defined as “a woman carrying a pregnancy for a third party with the express intention of giving up all parental rights to resulting child(ren)”, hence allowing women unable to carry a pregnancy the right to parent a child. As claimed by the “Inquiry into the legislative aspects of international and domestic surrogacy arrangements”, society now recognises many different forms of blended families that are not based solely on genetic connections, expanding the models of family formation beyond traditional relationships. Prior to the enactment of the Surrogacy Act 2010, the Status of Children Act 1996 (NSW) automatically accorded parentage to the birth mother, and the Adoption Act 2000 (NSW) provided the only means to have legal parentage transferred from the birth mother to the intending parents. Accordingly, the newly enacted legal response removed discrepancies in transferring parentage to commissioning parents, providing a system of parenting orders where parties can apply to the NSW Supreme Court to transfer full legal parentage of the child from such parties, thus avoiding the lengthy adoptive process. Furthermore, the article “NSW considers changing surrogacy law changes” further reflects the response of the government to changing values in society. As published by the Sydney Morning Herald in

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