An IVF expert has told the High Court that the law should be changed so that it is presumed that the parents of 
a child born to a surrogate mother are “the commissioning couple”.
Dr Mary Wingfield, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist with the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, with a specialty in infertility, said the fact that a child was the genetic child of the commissioning couple was also a factor, the Irish Times reports.
The case involves a couple who are challenging the State’s refusal to allow the genetic mother of twins born to a surrogate mother to be listed as the children’s mother on their birth certificates.
The surrogate mother was the sister of the genetic mother in the case, the Court had been told, and was not objecting to the couple’s application.
Dr Wingfield said that the “principle of intent” should be the primary consideration.
Dr Wingfield was a member of the Government-appointed Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction (CAHR), which published its report in 2005 calling for regulation for surrogacy.
Asked how she felt about the fact that there has still been no action to regulate surrogacy seven years on, she said: “I’m very, very disappointed. I think we so badly need legislation.”
She agreed with Mr Durcan that the lack of legislation has left people using surrogacy “in a vacuum”.
She said it was “tragic” that the couple had to go to court to be declared the legal parents of the twins.
Gerard Durcan, for the couple, told the High Court that Irish case law accepts the principle that there is a natural “blood-bond or blood-link” between parents and children.
He said: “This is a completely altruistic act by a sister for a sister. . . to bring about a situation where her sister could have what she had.
“The exercise which my clients carried out is an entirely lawful exercise under Irish law,” he said.
On Friday, an expert geneticist told the court that environmental influences from the time of fertilisation onwards have “dramatic effects” on how “we ultimately end up”.
Dr Cliona Molony agreed a surrogate mother could have a dramatic influence on what type of child she produces.
Dr Molony told the court a person’s genome is the DNA given by the genetic mother and father. She said as a result of a person’s genetic make-up they could be fit and slim but still be very high risk for a heart attack.
The CAHR recommended in 2005 that in surrogacy arrangements, the commissioning parents be deemed the legal parents. However, one of the members of the commission, Christine O’Rourke, recommended instead that surrogacy be prohibited.
There is, “a broad cultural consensus that a woman who has just given birth may be uniquely vulnerable and the removal of her baby against her will is repugnant, unless she poses a threat of immediate harm to the child,” she said.
Austria, Germany and Italy, among other countries, ban the use of donated eggs because they believe it is wrong to split motherhood between a birth mother (surrogate mother), a genetic mother (egg donor), and even a social mother (someone who is neither the surrogate mother nor the genetic mother but who raises the child).
A recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights held that Austria, in maintaining this principle, was not in breach of the European Convention of Human Rights.