Questioning South Africa’s ‘genetic link’ requirement for surrogacy

Abstract

South African law currently forbids those seeking to arrange a surrogate motherhood agreement from creating a child that will not be genetically related to at least one of them. For a surrogacy contract to be legally valid, there must be a ‘genetic link’ between the child created through a surrogate and the parents who will raise it. This law is currently being challenged in the High Court of South Africa, and in this article I critically explore salient ethical facets of the dispute. I argue that the law is unjust and should be revised.