And so it came to pass: Mail on Sunday - gay male couple offered fertility treatment including surrogacy

Yes indeed Nothing. I'm trying to remember if there was any mention at all of the "safety" of the surrogate as per health risks. Of course his top notch agency screens surrogates for health as part of the screening for suitability.

As much as I am opposed to surrogacy, if we are to have more regulation then protecting the surrogates and screening is a bonus I suppose. I was appalled at the British woman interviewed who has had 13 babies through 10 pregnancies. (Not sure if that includes her own two children or if they are an additional two pregnancies). Everyone knows risks of things like PPH increase the more babies a woman have. No way should anyone who has had more than four or five be accepted for surrogacy. The NHS has to manage these high risk pregnancies remember, apart from the risks to the mother etc.

However, if the "industry" is regulated in a way Dustin and the lawyers dream of I can't see how that can prevent people doing their own diy version. The regulated version will be a lot more expensive with lots of lawyer fees for both commissioning parents and the surrogate, screening, counselling etc.

Those who can't afford it will try a cheaper method with all the risks that involves, both legal and medical.

Fleetwoodsnack

The NHS, and many countries, are shit useless when it comes to thyroid disease- endocrine disorders generally. They only test something called TSH- thyroid stimulating hormone. It’s a pituitary hormone and tells you nothing about what level your active thyroid hormones are at. I had to pay private, and still do, for full hormone panels. I asked for them, was refused and told it was quackery to ask. For real. The threshold for treating in terms of TSH, is far too high at 10.0. Eurothyroid, normal thyroid function, will have a TSH of 1. What happens then, is you get sicker and sicker as your TSH rises and the active hormones Free T3 & T4 lower. It makes it harder to treat and obviously you get more severe symptoms. In addition, they only fund a certain drug, roughy 1/4 of women don’t respond to it because our body can’t convert it to usable thyroid hormones. Some have started giving synthetic versions of T3, but the company that produces it just raised the price by something like 5,000% so the NHS can no longer afford it. They don’t fund an animal hormone replacement that’s identical to our own, because despite being the oldest thyroid hormone in the world, it hasn’t gone through the same safety testing ( no money in it, it’s a cheap drug ). I can’t tell you the hell i, and millions of women worldwide, go through with this bastard disease. Hypothyroidism is hell. Now I am peri menopausal after just getting my hormones right after 4 years!!! I actually had an endocrine collapse because I was untreated so long. My GP told me to, ‘reduce my expectations of life’ now I was getting older ( 39 at the time ). My husband insisted we use our savings for private care, overall initial cost £2,000 and monthly costs of £60 not including quarterly testing. But I am very fortunate I could go private. I had a support group and almost none of them had the money to do what I did. Still haven’t found a way of preventing the excruciating mid cycle pain from endometriosis!

Anyway, as long as gay guys can get women to carry their babies, that’s the main thing.

OK Nothing- crossed wires i think. Yes, I accept that you can get pregnant via DIY insemination in the home. However, this is not how the vast majority of surrogacy happens. Therefore- the use of a clinic= not unusual, as some posters were suggesting.

Iused2BanOptimist thanks for that summary. I hadn't really considered the surrogate being left with the child, for one

"I didn't say you had to fuck him, nothing"

What on earth? I'm not looking to get pregnant!!!

You said this "I think nearly all surrogacy is done through IVF clinics, not the surrogate sleeping with the father of the child. It does also tend to be donor egg. If it was a heterosexual couple wanting to use a surrogate, would people be expecting that the surrogate has sex with the man?"

No clinic =/= having sex with the man.

That's all I have been saying.

Iusedtoban

The interesting thing for me is that when it comes to "safety" and surrogacy, the thing I think of first is the safety of the woman who will be pregnant and give birth, not a risk free activity, and apparently even less risk free if IVF (due to teh common practice of implanting multiple fertilised eggs to try and make sure one "takes").

There was a site I read about USA and where surrogates have died (always a risk when a woman has a baby) it is beign hushed up somewhat by the industry - and it is an industry.

The fact that when this chap says "safe" about surrogacy he is not thinking of this at all but rather making sure he gets what he paid for (baby) says it all really.

I didn't say you had to fuck him, nothing. I just don't see why people are so surprised about the use of an IVF clinic when I think one is involved in the majority of surrogacy situations. The only difference here is that the NHS is paying for it.

And to be fair, if I was offering to have a baby for a couple, I would 100% want it done through a clinic. Not mess around with a jar of someone else's bodily fluids in my own home.

They do nothing but not the most appropriate medications and levels have to reach a much higher (lower?) Level than gmc guidelines to merit treatment.

Happy to be corrected if I've summarised that badly.

Hold on

They don't fund thyroid treatment on NHS?

WTF?

Funkyfunky I thikn you are completely not understanding my posts for some reason.

I'm going to leave it there. I don't knwo what you're arguing wiht me about. But clearly to get pregnant with a man, you just need the semen, you dont' actually have to fuck him, and I'm not sure why you think that.

Baracker at 14.38 encapsulates the issues beautifully.

Purple
I’ve been wondering for a while about the purpose of the survey carried out by Surrogacy UK that said the 65% of surrogates (who responded) wanted to give up their parental rights at birth.

I listened to all of Dustin's blogs on radio 5. He talks a lot about keeping parents (commissioning) and surrogates "Safe". (No mention of the baby).

Basically when he and Tom Daley had their baby in California the law allowed them to draw up contracts, they took the paperwork to hospital with them, they left the hospital with a baby with their names on the birth certificate. He praises how everyone knew where they stood. The surrogate mother (and her husband), the nurses, Tom and Dustin. The surrogate was protected from them making a last minute decision they didn't want the baby for whatever reason. They were protected from the surrogate making a last minute decision to keep the baby.

He was appalled, arriving in the UK with the baby to have to go through the British court system to officially get a parental responsibility order. (Sorry, I can't remember precisely what it is called). And that someone would visit their home to check everything was in order, with the implication the baby could be taken from them if certain standards or conditions were not met. That it could all take several months during which time they weren't the official parents of their baby.
In some ways I had a certain sympathy with him as presumably the baby is an American citizen, American parent, born in USA, but Tom is British and they want to raise the baby here, and presumably want it also to have British citizenship, so they have to satisfy the British courts.

Which is all a bit of a side issue. But in the UK the children's act protects children. So babies born through surrogacy have some protection which presumably doesn't exist in USA/California in that the surrogate mother, whether or not she is the biological mother, is assumed to be the mother and has parental rights until such time as the commissioning parents have applied for and acquired a parental responsibility order. It takes a few months. I assume enquiries are made to ascertain their suitability as parents similar (but probably less rigorous) to adoption but I'm just going by what I can remember from Dustin's blog.

Surrogate mothers, especially those who are not the biological mothers, appear to want similar "protections" that American surrogate mothers can have, ensuring they will not be left holding the baby. (Apparently this does happen from time to time, with relationship breakdown between the commissioning parents being cited as a common cause). They want the "protection" of a contract meaning they hand over the baby and their responsibility ends then, a clean cut contract similar to in California.

Anyway 65% of how many exactly?

I've tried to explain as per my understanding from Dustin's blogs. Others may have a more accurate understanding of the law.

I have really complicated hormones and my current thyroid medication I have to pay myself

Thyroid conditions were at the back of my mind but I forgot to type it! I've noticed from on here the nhs doesn't fund certain drugs and also has much higher thresholds for treatment. For me (non sufferer) that's more important than me or anyone else having a baby.

Nothing you already made that comment! I said that I think that most surrogacy does involve a clinic, whether that is implantation of an embryo or just fertilisation with sperm. A friend had a baby via sperm donor and went through a clinic- they didn't just give her a pot of sperm and tell her to DIY. The thing is we don't know how intrusive this IVF treatment is going to be, but I don't think the involvement of a fertility clinic is in any way unusual. Oh and my friend ended up having to take IVF drugs in the end because apparently basic insertion doesn't have a fantastic success rate and it didn't work on her. It did after she took the drugs though.

If you have sperm and a woman you don't need a clinic for anything

If you want a baby and have a functioning womb it's not tricky

Where it gets tricky is where no-one in the euqation has a womb
Or one that is functioning
Then you need a woman outside the relationship
And by law it is her baby
So you get more formal stuff, legal stuff and clinics
As mentioned earlier, there are reasons that IVF is more common now even though it introduces addiitonal risk to BOTH the woman carrying the baby and of course it's a tough process for the donor.

MargueritaPink true, as I said I was just trying to jot down the reasons I've read here before why adoption isn't the automatic go-to. As usual someone else puts it more succinctly:
Adopt because you want to adopt, not because it's the only option left

it's not always the answer and it's never simple.

Of course I realise that. I don’t think the answer is surrogacy at all, and I don’t think we can afford to pay for IVF on the NHS. I have really complicated hormones and my current thyroid medication I have to pay myself. Still waiting for a referral for suspected endometriosis. I resent suffering in pain every month and paying for my essential medication, while people get fertility treatment.

funkyfunky

Lesbians have been using turkey baster + usually male friend who is sympathetic for ages

Surrogates used to use own eggs and get pregnant via semen introduction (no sex) for ages as donor eggs / IVF was much less developed / or didn't exist yet

None of these things involved sexual intercourse.

Where did you get the idea that gettign pregnant with a mans semen meant they had to have sex?

it's not fair on the adopted child to be the fulfilment of someone's wish rather than their own person

But that applies with bells on to a baby created by surrogacy.

Needmoresleep well the Australian father wouldn't have passed any checks

NothingOnTellyAgain
The picture of the donor guy. I made assumptions about him before I read on and found he was a very principled sperm donor (not a "natural insemination donor")
He opposes NI and sought to explain his reasons for doing so by positing a question: "How do you explain to a child that they were just a commodity so that the [biological] father could get laid? Is this not the ultimate indignity to a human being – being reduced to commodity status to be traded off against another commodity, like sex?"...Referring to NI as "ersatz rape" a couple of times, he continued asking questions: "What sort of rock spider would force his children's mothers into sex?" he demanded. "How do I uphold my own dignity and sense of self-worth knowing that I had to bribe or force her into sex [with the promise of children]? I will not destroy my ego for the sake of my sexual pleasure."
Fair play to him.

A lot of surrogates around the world are for some reason less white than the people who want to use their wombs and then hand over the baby.

Funny that isn't it.

Donated egg gets around that. Baby is white.

Nothing, yes, but I think that most of the time, that insemination takes place at a clinic rather than e.g. at home. Maybe I am wrong but I also thought that the surrogate using her own eggs was quite rare too and that the vast majority of surrogacy agreements involve using a clinic.