Surrogacy laws by country

The legal aspects of surrogacy in any particular jurisdiction tend to hinge on a few central questions:

Laws differ widely from one jurisdiction to another.

In Australia, all jurisdictions except the Northern Territory allow altruistic surrogacy; with commercial surrogacy being a criminal offense. The Northern Territory has no legislation governing surrogacy. In New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory it is an offence to enter into international commercial surrogacy arrangements with potential penalties extending to imprisonment for up to one year in Australian Capital Territory, up to two years imprisonment in New South Wales and up to three years imprisonment in Queensland.

In 2004, the Australian Capital Territory made only altruistic surrogacy legal.

In 2006, Australian senator Stephen Conroy and his wife Paula Benson announced that they had arranged for a child to be born through egg donation and gestational surrogacy. Unusually, Conroy was put on the birth certificate as the father of the child. Previously, couples who used to make surrogacy arrangements in Australia had to adopt the child after it was registered as born to the natural mother; rather than being recognized as birth parents, however now that surrogacy is more regular practice for childless parents; most states have switched to such arrangements to give the intended parents proper rights. After the announcement, Victoria passed the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008, effective since 1 January 2010 to make only altruistic surrogacy legal.

In 2009, Western Australia passed a law to allow only altruistic surrogacy for couples of the opposite-sex only, and to prohibit it for single people and same-sex couples. In 2010, Queensland made only altruistic surrogacy legal, as did New South Wales, and Tasmania did the same in 2013 with the Surrogacy Act No 34 and the Surrogacy (Consequential Amendments) Act No 31

In 2017, South Australia passed a bill to allow gay couples equal access to both surrogacy and IVF. The bill received royal assent on 15 March, 2017 and went into effect on 21 March, 2017.

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