Between 2019 and 2025 130 single men applied for surrogacy parental orders for babies born abroad, compared to 23 parental order applications by single men for babies born to surrogate mothers in the UK. 170 single men have applied for parental orders for surrogate born children since the law changed to allow single people to do so in 2019.

The findings, based on data obtained from the Children and Family Courts Advisory Service (CAFCASS), gives rise to concern that single men are effectively going ‘baby shopping’ abroad, overwhelmingly in commercial arrangements in jurisdictions which would not be legal if embarked upon in the UK.

The majority of surrogacy commissioning parents now travel to the US, Georgia, Ukraine, Mexico, Colombia and increasingly Nigeria, where (in the latter cases) low-income women are often paid just a few thousand pounds to enter in to higher-risk pregnancies on behalf of strangers. According to CAFCASS data separately obtained by Surrogacy Concern, in 2025 357 parental orders were applied for in the courts in England and Wales for surrogate babies born abroad in such arrangements, compared to applications made for 139 babies born to surrogate mothers in the UK.

Safeguarding and vetting checks in surrogacy do not compare with those seen in adoption, and campaigners believe allowing Britons to travel abroad for surrogacy is a practice which must end. Campaign groups such as Surrogacy Concern have repeatedly called on the UK government to follow the example set by Italy in 2024, when the government criminalised the practice of pursuing surrogacy abroad.

In May 2024, President Macron of France openly condemned surrogacy, and in October 2025 the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Reem Al Salem, called for all member states to move to implement a ban on the practice.

Helen Gibson, founder of Surrogacy Concern, said: “We are gravely worried by these findings; hundreds of couples and single men are travelling abroad each year to pursue surrogacy, and the majority of single men who undertake surrogacy do so abroad; this involves removing babies from their mothers at birth in exchange for money, before bringing children in to the UK, usually to never see her again.

“Many of these commissioning parents will use ‘donor’ eggs, often obtained abroad from anonymous donors, meaning a child will likely never know their genetic female parent or their mother. Surrogacy treats women like incubators for hire; surrogacy agencies lie to women who often live in desperate poverty that they are not the mother of their own child. Agencies do not tell women that the pregnancies are 3x higher risk for sepsis, pre-eclampsia and postpartum haemorrhage, and in many cases vetting checks are minimal. Commercial surrogacy is banned in the UK; surrogacy is unethical, exploitative and cruel to the child. It is high time the British government banned UK citizens from travelling abroad to pursue surrogacy: we continue to demand they take action.”