Law Commission consulting on paid surrogacy in the UK

Are you really comparing that to IVF performed by medical professionals?

No I was using prostitution as an example of where I've heard the arguments you're giving before.

IVF as fertility treatment for intended parents isn't comparable to carrying, birthing and handing over a human being for cash.

Also, you do have to accept that there is another human being at stake. Intended parents aren’t vetted and when there isn’t the biological link or bond established through pregnancy, attachment is going to be harder work.

Knowing who our biological ancestors are and wanting to learn about them is a natural part of our forming our identity and learning about our place in the world.

There’s something deeply unsettling about knowing your mum was perhaps flogging her eggs for cash and you were using the body of a woman to gestate. That you were created to order to please adults.

Surrogacy is immoral regardless of the sexuality of the couple, but I have to admit that willfully depriving a child of a mum really upsets me. The child is craving the warmth, the smell, the heartbeat of the woman who has carried them and is cruelly snatched away & in some cases deprived of a woman altogether, on the grounds of ‘love’ and often justified on the basis that the child will want for nothing materially.

Everyone deserves the chance of a mum don’t they, even if some mums are less than ideal. We rightly push for equality everywhere, so why can’t we apply that equality to a child having access to a female parent?

You should check out the surro forums of women who have just gone through the process & are in that post-partem period. The dissonance is heart-breaking. There they are bleeding and sobbing, affirming each other that their tears and grief, pain and loss is irrational and that this will pass.

But it's not a job women do if they could earn the same money doing a different job.

How very presumptive.

I don't agree with paid surrogacy but because of the impact on the mother. A poster earlier suggested trauma related symptoms to the baby?:

Nothing. I would not be surprised though if children taken away from their mothers at birth later showed trauma-related symptoms.

but that's not generally the case (as far as I'm aware) in adoption so don't see why it would be here

being penetrated by up to 20 strangers a day

Are you really comparing that to IVF performed by medical professionals?

And the selling of a human being (payment only on delivery I think you suggested?) is no problem at all.

Is selling IVF 'selling of a human being'?

I'm not obliged to support everything a woman does just because she might choose to do it. Laws shouldn't be based on individual desires but on protection of the most vulnerable.

This.

That's the prostitution argument. But it's not a job women do if they could earn the same money doing a different job. Same applies to surrogacy

Ah yes, its just like any other job. I hear this argument about prostitution too- being penetrated by up to 20 strangers a day, or dying in agony of placental abruption because you have undertaken a dangerous pregnancy due to financial hardship is just the same as having a career in an industry that carries increased risk. And the selling of a human being (payment only on delivery I think you suggested?) is no problem at all.

I will never support an industry that literally has women risking their lives for cash

The majority of workplace deaths are suffered by men but does that mean you wouldn't support women working in industries like construction, heavy industry, civil engineering or veterinary work involving large animals?

I'm not obliged to support everything a woman does just because she might choose to do it. Laws shouldn't be based on individual desires but on protection of the most vulnerable. Besides nobody is arguing that a woman can't get pregnant, just that she shouldn't be able to do
so for payment. A surrogate died recently in the US, whilst carrying twins for a couple who travelled there to circumvent the laws in their own country and rent her body. I will never support an industry that literally has women risking their lives for cash. I don't support allowing people to sell their kidneys to wealthy buyers either.

I am uncomfortable when women are dictated to regarding what they can and cannot do with their bodies by others (and find it particularly troubling when it's other women). You can support a woman's right to do something even if you find it objectionable.

I'm not dictating what women do with their own bodies. I'm not objecting to women becoming pregnant. I am questioning the pressures on poor women to act as paid for surrogates and questioning how it's possible to 'gift' a child.

Gronky I think that's partly why I can support altruistic surrogacy - so a sister being a surrogate. There is free choice there.

However, commercial surrogacy is very different. How do you know that the women have a choice and aren't just forced into it by circumstances or by others for the money? This is a big problem with surrogacy in India for example - rich westerners have no clue whether the Indian women are actually doing it out of choice.

The same applies to prostitution - there's always someone who pops up to say they did it at uni for beer money as it's easier than flipping burgers. Fantastic for them. However, the majority of prostitutes in this country have been trafficked here, or forced into it by men/circumstances. There's no free choice there - should we legalise the commodification of women's bodies because a few women are happy with it, or should we stop it because the majority aren't?

Part of having agency is having the ability to surrender said agency, both in full and in part. My initial impulse is that payment should be held in escrow until successful delivery of the child but that would limit surrogacy to financially stable women. Whether this is desirable is not a question I can easily answer.

I am uncomfortable when women are dictated to regarding what they can and cannot do with their bodies by others (and find it particularly troubling when it's other women). You can support a woman's right to do something even if you find it objectionable.

*childless couples no longer have hordes of orphans and illegitimate babies to adopt

I can't quite put my finger on what I don't like about that phrase- it's a touch glib.*

Not glib, I hope - it was meant to evoke the sort of Dickensian attitudes that used to prevail, sorry if that didn't come across? I meant that I am glad to live in a time where children aren't any longer removed from their mothers because the mothers are seen as 'unfit' for whatever bullshit reasons. I still walk past a former 'foundlings institute' most days ffs . Stories of the magdalene laundries are still coming out today and I find them so distressing that any woman could have a baby forcibly taken from her.

I was genuinely trying to give my view that the women I've met through doing surrogacy here at home and also in the US are not poor or desperate, and actively want to become surrogates because they find the idea appealing - they really want to help other couples become a parents by giving a gift only they can give. Again, I know there are always examples to be found of where it goes wrong but in the vast majority of cases it goes right and I wouldn't have DD without that generous impulse. Sorry if that makes you but hey ho.

And yes this very much ties into issues around adoption and what's been called variously on this thread the 'primal wound' and attachment disorder? I have adopted family members and yes, this is definitely a thing. My understanding is that children born from surrogacy have much healthier psychological outcomes - the oldest ones are well into adulthood now and say it's something to do with them being so very wanted by everyone involved, and not feeling that sense of rejection that adopted children talk finding hard to deal with later in life. I don't think you can compare adopted children to surrogacy children in that respect.

Attachment disorder isn't caused by separation as an infant. That's not to say it doesn't lead to attachment difficulties

@avocadoincident shame it wasn't acknowledged back when I was a child 40-odd years ago. Back then it was all "oh you're fine, we're just going to gloss over it all." I had to figure out my feelings for myself when I was decades into adulthood.

If attachment disorder (a phase I first heard on MN a few years ago and which gave me my lightbulb moment) is so widely known amongst the teaching community, I wonder why we allow surrogacy at all? . It seems like a no-brainer to me.

@Materialist brilliant post

@EverardDigby @MrsSpenserGregson
Any teacher will tell you the fall out from teaching children who have been adopted. Attachment disorder is painful and horrific and many of these children cannot come to terms with this invisible loss. I'm particularly thinking of one who was taken at hospital close after birth (so imo no different to a surrogate set up in terms of time spent with birth mother). The anger and grief is profound

Bowlofbabelfish, egg donations in the UK are unpaid but clinics can give the donor "compensation" of upto £750 for expenses. I know of a young woman who did it recently to pay for a gift for their boyfriend. It made me extremely uneasy hearing about it and I suspect she's in an abusive relationship. :( I was quite shocked that donors are paid anything; it's a lot of money to someone poor and vulnerable.

The baby Z case was interesting and the judge came across as compassionate, but the birth mother and her family were so obviously just much nicer people.

I don't mean this in a derogatory way- but they could have been characters straight out of a Dickens' novel. The family was the archetypal plain but very decent, very kind empathetic working class family coping with a vulnerable family member.

I wonder if the decision would have been the same if they had simply been adequate rather than exceptional.

It will be available but anonymised so tricky to find without more details

Reading a bit more on the Baby M case it is reported that the mother was hostile and abusive about the father, used homophobic slurs and also disrupted court proceedings. It would be very interesting to read the full judgement if it is available.

I'd need to read the judgement before commenting on that case. Whether you agree or not the biological father is the other parent and under the children act parents can apply for contact with their children.
I don't think baby M is the same case as the Spanish egg donor case is it? That mother had several older children. The Spanish donor case showed how the welfare principles of the children act are applied to cases of surrogacy. It's never the case that a baby would be removed from their mother because of the surrogacy contract solely, primarily or even tangentially

I haven't read the full Baby M judgement but I don't think the baby was removed because of the surrogacy agreement was she? She used to post on MN and I think there were other issues that led to the child being deemed better placed with her father.

It's in the Spiked article that Barracker linked to on Thursday, Not.