UK Couples Turning to Mexico for Surrogacy as Stateless Baby Risk Grows

More British couples are pursuing surrogacy abroad as domestic routes stall, raising legal warnings about babies left stateless by conflicting national laws.

Children born through international surrogacy arrangements can end up legally stateless — belonging to no country — when the laws of the surrogate's nation and the intended parents' nation clash over who holds parental rights. This is the sharpest edge of a growing phenomenon: increasing numbers of westerners, unable to complete surrogacy domestically, are traveling to countries such as Mexico to find surrogates. Among them are Jules Von Hep and Mark Beverlo, a British couple who have been trying to become parents since 2020. After exhausting options closer to home, they are now pursuing surrogacy in Mexico, a country whose laws and legal frameworks around the practice differ significantly from those in the UK. Experts and advocates quoted in the reporting are calling for coordinated international regulation to address the legal gaps that create statelessness risk. The concern is that without cross-border legal agreements, a child's citizenship and parental status can be left unresolved at birth — a situation that can take years and considerable legal effort to resolve, if it can be resolved at all. The UK's own surrogacy pathway is described as difficult and slow, a reality Von Hep and Beverlo say drove their decision to look abroad. Their case reflects a broader pattern in which the friction of domestic surrogacy systems pushes prospective parents toward overseas arrangements that carry their own serious legal risks.

Why it matters

Stateless children have no guaranteed right to citizenship, healthcare, education, or travel documents in any country, leaving families in prolonged legal limbo. The trend highlights a gap between the speed at which international surrogacy is growing and the absence of any global legal framework to govern it.

What's next

Advocates are pressing for international regulatory talks, though the reporting does not specify a timeline or forum where such negotiations are expected to take place.

Key facts

• Jules Von Hep and Mark Beverlo have been trying to become parents since 2020 and are now pursuing surrogacy in Mexico
• International surrogacy can result in babies being legally stateless when the surrogate's country and the parents' country have conflicting parentage laws
• Calls are growing for global regulation of cross-border surrogacy arrangements
• The number of western prospective parents using overseas surrogates is described as rising
• Mexico is among the countries being used by British couples unable to complete surrogacy domestically
• The UK's own surrogacy process is characterised in the reporting as difficult and a driver of overseas demand

Bias & framing notes

Both sources are from The Guardian and share an editorial framing sympathetic to prospective parents and critical of the lack of regulation. Neither article appears to include the perspective of surrogates themselves, nor of governments defending their current legal frameworks. The human-interest angle in Source 1 and the policy angle in Source 2 complement each other but do not provide independent corroboration from separate outlets.

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