Integrated analytical report on ectogestation and legal parenthood
To help inform our research project on the implications of ectogestation for defining parenthood in the UK, we commissioned an independent report on how legal parenthood is currently allocated and recorded across different jurisdictions, relating to existing law and scholarship in this area, alongside associated ethical and social dimensions.
Although still in early development, ectogestation (the speculative use of technologies that would enable partial or full gestation outside the human body) raises significant questions for law and society in relation to definitions of parenthood. UK law currently assigns legal parenthood based on who carried the child – but how would that apply if pregnancy were interrupted, or absent altogether?
Written by Dr Zaina Mahmoud, Senior Lecturer at the University of Liverpool, this report:
maps how legal parenthood is assigned in eight jurisdictions, including the UK as the comparator jurisdiction, and the relative roles of gestation, genetics, marriage and intention;
examines how each might respond if gestation were to take place outside the human body;
considers what would be needed to secure a child’s legal status, identity and nationality in such instances.
The report's central finding is that, although the eight jurisdictions studied allocate legal parenthood on four seemingly different bases (i.e gestation, genetics, marriage, and intention), these bases ultimately depend on the same underlying fact — an embodied act of gestation and birth — which is then used to identify the legal mother and triggers the registration systems that grant a child legal identity and citizenship. Decoupling birth from gestation, either partially or fully, could bring different implications for parenthood definitions and the resulting child's circumstances, including questions over who should be recognised as the child's legal parent once they come to life or the subsequent attribution of nationality.
This work is not about endorsing or opposing particular technologies, but about considering what safeguards may be needed if and when they are used. At the Center for Bioethics and Health Policy, we believe these conversations are most valuable when they happen early, drawing on diverse and informed perspectives to help shape responsible, future-ready policy.
The report complements our interviews with people with learned and/or lived experience of assisted reproduction or alternative routes to family formation, now nearing completion. These outputs will inform the scenario-building and Delphi consensus panels to follow, with initial findings from this work expected in early 2027.
