ABSTRACT
The most common current form of surrogacy is ‘partial surrogacy’, where the carrying woman is fertilised with the commissioning man’s sperm either as a result of sexual intercourse or assisted insemination. Full surrogacy, however, is where the commissioning couple provide both sperm and ovum so that the child is genetically entirely theirs, although carried by another woman. This necessarily involves the technique known as in vitro fertilisation (IVF) (McHale and Fox (1997), p 635). Full surrogacy may therefore be regarded as a form of womb leasing (Douglas (1991), p 141).
