The Rumplestiltskin Law

Great Guardian article. I like this line
Unaccountably, affluent women almost never seem to have babies for very poor couples

Yes, it's such a mystery isn't it.

If surrogacy is legal then trade in organs should be legal because surrogacy is definitely worse than selling a kidney. After all, healthy adults have two of those, the operation and recovery takes a lot less than 9 months and - crucially - it doesn't involve selling babies.

Here’s the link for the Times article:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/surrogacy-must-be-a-gift-not-a-baby-market-clk9r26n9

Very powerful article in the Guardian..
Catherine Bennett

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/09/who-better-than-men-to-rule-on-delicate-subject-of-surrogacy-law-commission

Are the Times actually the only sane news source now? Those adverts and the question on payment in the event of miscarriage made me feel sick!

Here’s a great quote from Martha Gill’s opinion piece in The Times today.

I briefly followed an “independent surrogate” on social media. My understanding of “independent” was that the whole process was completely underground - she finds her intended parents online; the man comes to her house to provide a sperm sample; she inseminates herself; she relinquishes her child at birth.

I, needless to say, found it all impossible to get my head around. All that because it makes you feel good to gift people a baby? Suffering all the worst parts of pregnancy, labour, third degree tears and weeks/months of recovery... all for the warm fuzzy feeling and an undisclosed sum? That’s not a fair swap. “Sacrificing their health to please strangers” indeed.

we changed our mind because the baby was born disabled

This chills me to my core. These are children we are talking about not picknmix, not a washing machine, human beings. If there is an injury at 6 months old resulting in life long disability do those purchasers get to return the child as long as they kept the receipt?

Transactions are conditional.

Parenting is not conditional.

Surrogacy is slavery.

Sell one woman you sell them all.

Sell one baby you sell them all.

There are women being trafficked to provide surrogate babies, they are dying and imprisoned.

The fourth trimester exists.

Perhaps instead of trying to restrict opinion to those who would lower themselves to abuse via a surrogacy arrangement (because it is abuse), the opinions that should count are those of parents. The people (particularly mothers) who having lived the process of gestation and birth and understand the enormous responsibility, the closeness to death that bringing life entails.

Surrogacy is slavery.

Surrogacy should be banned.

Rich people should not be able to buy kidneys, livers, bodily organs, nor should they be able to buy babies.

Exactly - if I'm not even able to buy/sell a small part of a human, I definitely shouldn't be able to buy/sell a whole human.

^^ I am relatively sure those are genuine US adverts although they are so i cannot be sure...

*Advertising in respect of surrogacy
Advertising in respect of surrogacy
We provisionally propose to remove the ban on advertising surrogacy arrangements with the effect that anything that can be lawfully done with respect to a surrogacy arrangement can be advertised. Information on international surrogacy arrangements is accessible on the internet. If domestic surrogacy is to be regulated and facilitated in such a way as to increase its attraction compared to the international surrogacy arrangements, then it must be possible to convey that message freely and to provide information to those that need it.

No cases have reached that level in our courts but I’ve read plenty of surrogate contracts American women sign and the language is awful. I often say it reads like a slave contract. We bought and own you for the next 9 months and you better obey, or else.

Payment for being a surrogate
We think it must also be the case that any fee payable to the surrogate could not be dependent on the pregnancy resulting in a live birth. Therefore, the fee would be payable even where the child is stillborn. More difficult is whether a fixed fee would be payable following a miscarriage or termination.

We take the view that for payment to be linked to the child being born alive would be incompatible with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (“UNCRC”).19 We invite consultees’ views as to whether any fee being paid to the surrogate for her services should be able to be reduced in the event of a miscarriage or termination and, if so, if any reduction should be confined to the case of a miscarriage or termination in the early stages of pregnancy.

Jesus Christ

Payment on results

I agree @SirVixofVixHall

If it's illegal to buy kidneys or any other organs, then how on earth is surrogacy legal. Beggars belief.

And yet women in the USA are no longer able to have abortions post 6 weeks in many states albeit subject to Roe V Wade in the Supreme Courts.

Presuming that along the line, once pregnant, the 'host' will be subject to a contract between her and the foetus.

Presuming that if unable to make that payment, the result is prison.

Can she be sued? Yes she sure can in the US for breach of contract.

I agree with barracker and Floral.
Women do not “host” a baby not genetically linked to them, within their uterus. They grow that entire baby from a scrap of genetic material.
There is a trend to deliberately choose a different egg donor to mother, to try and break that bond between mother and child. I find that so disgusting and disturbing. We are moving more and more towards a world where women are still penalised for their biology, yet their unique ability to grow a child is not respected.
Surrogacy should be illegal full stop. You can’t buy a kidney, you shouldn’t be able to buy a baby. It is a horrible trade in women’s bodies, with a tiny baby included, who is not given the choice to stay with the person they most want to be with, their mother. Barbaric.

It's rare, not very rare.

In the UK you can pre-arrange the handing over of a new born baby.

In the UK a woman cannot abandon her baby or children without legal redress. A father can walk out of a baby unit without any censure.

If a mother can hand a baby over to commissioning parents without any feelings of uncertainty, why wouldn't they be able to do the same with social services?

It will be very rare that a newborn is handed over to social services. It happens; it has to happen in some cases.

In the UK you can't pre-arrange an adoption, so there is no possibility of adopting parents being on stand by.

Legally if a woman is determined she does not want her baby she can't be forced to keep it. It's very rare but women do occasionally walk out of hospital without their baby. The usual rules about freeing the baby up for adoption will apply.

It is noticeable that surrogacy is not something that well off women are typically volunteering to do, so these poorer women would be proportionately much more likely not to be able to pay reparations in a legal case. I hadn’t thought of payment ‘in kind’.

Can she then be sued for not completing the contract or even destruction of their property?

Presuming the mother is of low financial means, could they sue her to go through another pregnancy to seal the deal?

Newborns know their gestational mothers by sound and smell, this has been proven. There are several books that suggest that babies don't see themselves as separate from their (gestational) mother until quite a while after they're born. Everyone was up in arms (rightly) about Trump separating parents and their kids at the US border - if that's wrong, how can separating a vulnerable newborn from their mother be right?

Children aren't possessions. No-one has the right to a child. Rich people should not be able to buy kidneys, livers, bodily organs, nor should they be able to buy babies.

All the 'what if' scenarios. Just ban it, it's not possible to legislate to prevent abuse and harm in this situation and surrogacy isn't necessary, it's about wants not needs. Not everyone can have children. That is very sad, but it is part of life and plenty of people throughout history have managed to have a worthwhile life even if childless not by choice. Adoption is an option (I know it's not for all, but it is an option nonetheless).

Lorit particularly appreciate your thoughts. I too was infertile, I too was suicidal as a result, I did end up having children. I know I'm lucky. I would never have ripped a baby from it's mother so I could have one, what sort of parent would I be if I'd do that to a child?

The importance of the biological link between the gestational mother and the child is something that there seems to be an attack on. Lots and lots of minimising. I guess some people don't like nature, but the reality of it can't be denied. Newborns know their mothers, know the woman they've grown inside for 9 months, by sound and smell (at the very least) and denying them that comfort and connection and sense of safety because of some adult's wants is just cruelty.

And I don't care if some women would willingly do it without being coerced (do we see lots of rich women lining up? Thought not). They don't have the right to do this to a child either.

Rumplestilskin is a Grimm brothers' fairy tale. The fairy tales they produced are not pretty, Disney types. Take other examples: Snow White, Rapunzel, and Hansel and Gretel. However my favourite was The Three Little Elves, though I did wonder why they were just happy with new clothes and shoes whilst the Shoemaker and His Wife enjoyed the luxuries.

So if the baby belongs to the ‘commisioning parents’ pre-birth, what will happen if the pregnancy goes wrong? What if the mother needs an abortion to save her own life? Or an early delivery leading to a poor outcome for the baby? Can she then be sued for not completing the contract or even destruction of their property?

It's also not just about what's best for the mother. Babies are attached from their time in the womb; they're instinctively ready to respond to their mother's voice, scent and body, which has also bonded and readied itself to feed and care for them. It's biological programming to give someone the best start in life.

In surrogacy they get purposefully removed and handed to someone else at the moment of birth. It's a horrific gamble with attachment disorders and someone's future emotional life, let alone the woman who gave birth to them.

Treefloof. I understand that. I was responding to the idea that there is rarely any emotional attachment between the mother and the baby. If a mother can hand a baby over to commissioning parents without any feelings of uncertainty, why wouldn't they be able to do the same with social services?

A contract between a women and commissioning parents doesn't guarantee the care the child receives throughout her life.

Thank you for the link Chatty, I'm going to do that.

Once Upon A Time has messed up all the stories in my head