Gay couple win landmark surrogacy battle over baby girl

"The pregnancy was contrived with the aim of a same-sex couple having a child to form a family assisted by a friend," said the judge. Instead, the woman deceived the couple into donating sperm so that she could have a child of her own.

"Far from being a child that she conceived with her good friend, as she describes it, her actions have always been of a woman determined to treat the child as solely her own," Russell said, according to the BBC.

In the UK, the agreement between a surrogate and the biological parents is entirely based on trust. There can be no legal documents involved until the baby is born and a surrogate mother cannot be forced to give the baby away if she changes her mind during the pregnancy.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

However, the judge in this case found that the mother deliberately misled the couple from the beginning, in the first ruling of its kind in England and Wales.

The mother was also found guilty of launching a hate campaign against the two men, using offensive language including "stereotypical images and descriptions of gay men" and had insinuated that gay men in same-sex relationships were unfaithful to each other.

The judge ruled that the girl's father is more likely to provide her with a stable home and enable her to grow into a "happy, balanced and healthy adult," the Daily Telegraph reports.

The baby, who celebrated her first birthday earlier this year, will go on to live with her father and his partner, with the mother only allowed supervised contact with the child.