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

Are the NHS going to protect the welfare of any women involved, ensure they are not being pressured or exploited, give them counselling or psychological assessments which aren't currently required for surrogacy? It's utterly bizarre that the NHS are funding 'treatment' for 2 men, neither of who will be the patient.

It's buying babies. I can't support commissioning babies like you'd do a house. It's just flat wrong.

Not to mention egg donation is much more dangerous than any of these services like to admit, and IVF is hugely invasive. The NHS should not be getting involved when perfectly healthy people want to do something that they can't do by virtue of being the wrong sex - that's reality, not discrimination.

I have to say I'm very surprised the NHS is funding this - I know things are better in Scotland - but still...

Sadly I'm sure the outrage will be more about money than the women involved

The surrogate will still have to undergo hormone treatment prior to implantation.

The whole thing is horrific. So much unnecessary medication.

I'm guessing the surrogate won't be using her own eggs so they will also need a donor and IVF. It really is just treating women like spare body parts to facilitate the wants of men.

I'm still really confused - why is IVF required? Can they not just inseminate the surrogate?

I'm thinking this might actually be a clever move by the NHS. They are addressing the TRA demands that fertility treatment should be available to all but then putting parameters on that make it difficult to actually happen.

However, there is a great danger that abuse will happen to break down those parameters.

It's a slippery slope.

It also massively devalues women's role in pregnancy, birth and mothering - just another commodity to buy.

Should not be..

People need to get their head out of their entitled narcissistic arses and stop thinking that having a child is a human RIGHT.

It certainly should be be funded by NHS and tax payers ‘ money. This makes me furious. It’s unethical and it’s corruption for the government to piss tax payers money up the wall for this sort of thing, and we don’t have a say.

Cambodian women at the sharp end of the international trade.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001bpp

I am implacably opposed to surrogacy. The law commission is looking to bring the laws "up to date". That means to make the process easier - or "safer" in the words of Dustin Lance Black, ie a a watertight contract to protect commissioning parents from surrogate mothers who change their minds.
It also means lots more £££ to be made for agencies and lawyers such as Natalie Gamble who already has an agency just raring to expand.

I recommend listening to these podcasts by Dustin for more information. They are well made and interesting and have some moments such as the one woman baby factory who has had 13 babies, ten pregnancies counting twins and triplets. But make no mistake. It is all smoothing the way for more commercial surrogacy for men who want to buy babies.

As an aside it was news to me that sometimes in the USA both the egg and the sperm are donated so the commissioning parents have no genetic connection. If someone could explain how that differs from buying a random newborn I'd like to know how.

Radio 5 iplayer radio.

It's fucking abhorrent. No one has a right to a child, especially at such an enormous cost to another woman.

My opinion on this is very emotionally driven by my own experience.

At 21 I became infertile because of cancer treatment. I was told I would be entitled to ivf (donor egg) should I need it in the future. They tried to preserve my fertility using zoladex which is a rather unpleasant implant. I was given it monthly not 3 monthly because it was cheaper and they wanted to keep costs down despite me needing at least 3 months worth. Presumably if the cancer killed me in month one they'd have wasted £600 or so.

Several years later I started bleeding again- it's confirmed that I have no egg stock. But I have to try for 2 years before being entitled to ivf because I'm having some form of cycle.

Men can't have children. They don't have wombs. It's just a biological fact.

Why is the nhs spending money on undertaking the impossible? Infertile women have medical reasons for not conceiving.

So, men now have more entitlement to ivf than I do.

I'm not homophobic, I don't care who loves who. But we have an nhs which is on it's knees - I was given a gynae appointment in October there for December 2019 as it was the first available. We don't have the money for this.

Having a child is not a human right.

The human rights for individuals argument has gone too far.

This is not about the HR of the gay men to have a family life.

This is unethical, and costly to the NHS and society and women.

As a tax payer, I don’t want to be funding this.

So grim. But it already happens when people pay for it.

What if the child is disabled and neither the surrogate nor the father/s want this 'faulty product', what then? What happens to the child?

I've always been uncomfortable with the whole concept of surrogacy and even more so now. It's the commodification of babies and women.

It’s don’t care.

Women aren’t really people, after all.

Babyfarming. So much for human dignity.

So the NHS is paying, presumably, for a man, one of the intended parents, to have a wank. Then, presumably one woman, not the intended parent, to go through IVF, which I understand to be pretty grim. Then another healthy woman, not the intended parent, to carry the foetus for 9 months, at significant risk to herself.

So the NHS are paying to put two healthy women at significant risk to their health, and life in the case of pregnancy, just so a healthy, fertile man and his male partner can have a baby? I’m pretty sure that endangering two healthy people with no benefit to themselves is not what the NHS is for, especially when people are suffering and dying because the NHS can’t afford to provide the treatment they need.

Yet again men pay women for the use of their bodies, only this time the NHS collude. How long til they are buying kidneys or making blood donation a condition of using the service?

Everything can be bought at a price. Do they get to keep the receipt and return the baby if it isn't what was expected?

There are many children waiting to be fostered or adopted, that system involves greater analysis of the child's wellbeing and support for all involved. There is no reason for gay men not to be considered as suitable parents, this is a path to parenthood that does not involve renting a human's body at great risk.

Pregnancy and giving birth are the closest most healthy women come to staring death in the face. It is not to be treated as a business transaction or taken lightly. The physical costs can be immense and the whole chapter will always be life changing because that is how we are designed. Making a business of surrogacy is unethical.

Mothers matter. Women matter. The law needs to reflect this.

That'll be the plan then, to make those agreements difficult to impossible to back out of.

The woman who gives birth is the legal mother irrespective of genetic link. She remains the legal mother until the court grants the Parental Order