NHS to pay women 15,000 to be surrogates for gay men
Surrogate mums could be given £15,000 of Health Service money to have babies for gay men, it has emerged.
One NHS organisation – the North East Essex Primary Care Trust - is considering funding the service for infertile couples - homosexual or heterosexual. A report presented to directors said: ‘It appears that the majority of applications for surrogacy to be funded on the NHS stem from heterosexual couples, but consideration would need to be taken for any homosexual couple or single person who wished to become a parent through surrogacy.
‘There are more extreme scenarios to consider, such as the husband or parents of a dead woman applying for surrogacy to provide a baby using the dead woman's embryo.’
Critics suggest the idea is daring as it is so difficult to arrange everything.
Currently, surrogate mothers are not allowed to be paid, but are given expenses of between £7,000 and £15,000 to carry a baby to full-term.
Most of the 50 surrogate pregnancies that take place each year are arranged between friends and family who make private finanacial arrangements; it is illegal to advertise for a surrogate, and agencies that supply surrogates are not allowed to arrange expenses.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which rules on the value of medical treatments, said funding surrogacy was up to individual trusts.
A Department of Health spokesman told the Daily Mail: ‘It is down to the individual trust. We do not endorse or seek to suppress it.
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