WA Attorney-General and Health Minister Jim McGinty said Mr Ruddock held the power to give couples who want to use surrogacy the clear legal right to be named as the parents of their child.

Proposed surrogacy laws introduced before the WA Parliament earlier this year would give women who had agreed to act as surrogate mothers for infertile couples access to IVF.

There are currently no laws dealing with surrogacy in WA other than the Human Reproductive Technology Act of 1991, which deals only with IVF surrogacy and specifically prohibits it.

WA couples who want to undertake IVF surrogacy must travel overseas or to the ACT.

“For many couples surrogacy is their only chance to have a child and currently, even though the child may have been created using their sperm and/or egg, there is no clear legal path to enable them to become the parents of the child,” Mr McGinty said.

“Mr Ruddock needs to amend the Family Law Act to give couples who use surrogacy access to parentage orders, rather than forcing them to go through uncertain adoption processes.

“Surrogacy is only legally provided for in the ACT, but anecdotally we know that private surrogacy arrangements are occurring, in spite of the existing constraints and uncertainty in relation to the legal status of the children.

“This legislation is vital to protect the rights of the child and its parents.”

Mr McGinty said other states would need Mr Ruddock to make changes to the Commonwealth Family Law Act to ensure couples did not face risky legal hurdles once a child was born.

“Because WA is the only state with its own Family Court and state legislation we are able to introduce our own legislation that will allow parentage orders that can be used to alter birth certificates so that women and couples using surrogacy can be legally recognised as the parents,'’ Mr McGinty said.

“Mr Ruddock should commit to ensuring the thousands of infertile couples living throughout Australia have access to the same level of legal protection for their children.

“The Federal Government has a responsibility to end the uncertainty facing these families and I will raise the issue at a meeting of Attorneys-General in Hobart on Friday.”

Mr McGinty has said that under WA’s new laws, as well as regulating surrogacy arrangements, they would provide a mechanism for commissioning parents to be legally recognised as the parents of the child and allow access to IVF treatment if the commissioning woman is medically infertile.

Commercial surrogacy would be banned under the new laws and altruistic surrogacy, which allows only for the reimbursement of expenses, will be allowed only for eligible people.