ABSTRACT

The regulation of assisted reproductive technology (ART) and surrogacy in Australia has a very complicated history. The Australian government subsidizes ART through the national health system, Medicare. Many of the steps in ART treatments are subsidized through partial Medicare rebates, which are not means-tested. While originally all ART laws contained marital status restrictions on eligibility, these have been successively removed, first by sex discrimination challenges brought by heterosexual unmarried couples and single women, and more recently through legislative reform. The NHMRC Ethical Guidelines require ART providers to continue to store gametes and embryos in the event that there is a dispute about them, but do not have any provision for how such disputes should be determined. In all jurisdictions in Australia, donation of gametes requires the written consent of the gamete provider and use in accordance with the terms of that consent. Like the UK, Australian law dictates that children born overseas through surrogacy require parentage transfer under domestic law.