Why Education Is the Missing Piece in the Surrogacy Journey
By Sanja Jovanović, Founder & Director of Family By Choice
With the ALRC’s final report on surrogacy law reform due in July 2026, Australia is on the cusp of the most significant changes to its surrogacy framework in a generation. Proposals for nationally consistent legislation, regulated surrogacy support organisations, and new pathways for compensating surrogates could reshape the entire landscape for intended parents.
But here is what often goes unspoken in the legal and policy conversation: even when the laws improve, intended parents who are not properly educated about the process ahead of them will continue to face avoidable hardship.
As someone who went through four IVF cycles before becoming a mother, and who has since spent nearly a decade professionally supporting families through fertility treatment, egg donation, and surrogacy, I have seen this gap from both sides.
Legal advice is essential: but it is only one part of the picture
Intended parents in Australia typically begin their journey the same way. They consult a fertility specialist. They engage a lawyer. They may attend an information session run by their clinic. These steps are necessary, and in most jurisdictions they are legally required before a surrogacy arrangement can proceed.
What they are not, however, is sufficient.
A fertility lawyer will advise you on the legal requirements in your state or territory, the enforceability of your surrogacy agreement, and the process for obtaining a parentage order. A counsellor will assess your readiness and explore the psychological dimensions of the arrangement. A clinic will guide you through the medical protocols.
Each of these professionals addresses their own domain with considerable expertise. But no single consultation, and no combination of consultations, can fully prepare an intended parent for the reality of navigating a surrogacy journey from beginning to end. That requires a different kind of preparation.
The knowledge gaps intended parents carry into surrogacy
In nearly every conversation I have with intended parents at the outset of their journey, the same gaps emerge.
They understand that commercial surrogacy is illegal in Australia, but they are less certain about what expenses they can and cannot cover for their surrogate, and those rules differ depending on where they live. They know they need a surrogacy agreement, but they have limited understanding of what happens after the birth: the parentage order process, the timeframes involved, and the fact that the surrogate remains the legal parent until that order is made.
If they are considering international surrogacy, the gaps widen further. They may not fully understand the citizenship and passport implications for their child. They may not appreciate how the legal framework in their chosen destination interacts, or conflicts, with Australian law. They may not be aware of the ethical dimensions that increasingly shape how these arrangements are scrutinised by Australian courts and regulators.
These are not failures of intelligence or diligence on the part of intended parents. They are failures of access – a lack of structured, comprehensive education available to people at the time they need it most.
Where intended parents currently turn for information
In the absence of a clear educational pathway, intended parents tend to piece together their knowledge from whatever sources they can find.
Facebook groups and online forums are among the most common starting points. These communities can provide genuine peer support and lived experience, but the quality of information shared within them varies enormously. Advice that was accurate for one person’s arrangement in one jurisdiction may be dangerously misleading for someone in a different state or pursuing a different pathway.
Books by practitioners who work in this space, such as Stephen Page’s When Not If: Surrogacy for Australians and Sarah Jefford’s More Than Just a Baby, offer more reliable and structured information. They are valuable resources, but a book is necessarily a snapshot in time, and surrogacy law in Australia is shifting rapidly.
Conferences and seminars hosted by fertility societies, legal associations, and surrogacy support organisations offer another avenue, but attendance depends on timing, location, and awareness that these events exist.
Online learning platforms dedicated to surrogacy and family building, such as Family By Choice, where experts including surrogacy lawyer Stephen Page contribute as speakers, are beginning to fill the gap by offering structured, professionally guided education that intended parents can access on their own timeline. These platforms bring together legal, medical, ethical, and lived-experience perspectives in one place, which is difficult to replicate by assembling information piecemeal from separate sources.
Each of these resources has a role to play. The problem is not that information does not exist – it is that most intended parents do not have a clear map for navigating it.
What meaningful surrogacy education actually looks like
Effective education for intended parents goes well beyond understanding the legal requirements. It covers, at minimum:
The regulatory landscape: not just the law as it stands today, but how it is evolving. Intended parents making decisions in 2026 need to understand the ALRC review, the proposed reforms, and what these changes could mean for their own journey.
The ethical framework: how to evaluate an international surrogacy program, what questions to ask an agency, what red flags to watch for, and how to ensure that the rights and welfare of the surrogate and the child are genuinely protected.
The practical process: the realistic timeframes, the costs involved, the steps between embryo transfer and bringing a child home, and the administrative and bureaucratic requirements that often catch parents off guard.
The emotional dimension: the psychological preparation required for a process that involves long waiting periods, uncertainty, and the complexity of building a relationship with a surrogate. This is the area most frequently neglected in traditional professional consultations.
The post-birth reality: what happens after the child is born, including the parentage order process, birth registration, and for international arrangements, the immigration and citizenship steps required to bring a child home to Australia.
Why this matters now more than ever
The ALRC review has surfaced a phrase that deserves wider attention: the antidote to exploitation is education.
This is not just an abstract policy principle. It speaks directly to the experience of intended parents. Those who enter surrogacy with a thorough understanding of the legal, ethical, and practical landscape are better equipped to make safe decisions, to identify and avoid exploitative arrangements, and to build the kind of transparent, respectful relationship with their surrogate that leads to a positive outcome for everyone involved, and most importantly, the child.
As Australia moves toward what may be a fundamentally reformed surrogacy framework, the need for accessible, reliable, and comprehensive education for intended parents is not diminishing. If anything, it is growing.
The law will continue to change. The landscape will continue to shift. But intended parents who invest in their own education, through whatever combination of professional advice, books, peer communities, and structured learning works for them, will always be better prepared for the journey ahead.
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Sanja Jovanović is the Founder and Director of Family By Choice, an online education and support platform helping intended parents navigate fertility treatment, egg donation, and surrogacy with expert guidance at every stage. Stephen Page is a speaker and contributing expert within the Family By Choice platform.
