All-male Law Commission discussing surrogacy

SadlyMissTaken That’s very at odds with the image the surrogacy lobby likes to present to the public of kindly women helping other women. But it is not surprising at all.

Sadly that says it all all really

I went to a conference on international surrogacy a year or so back, in London. I was one of a few women there (aside from a panel of surrogates). The room was stuffed to the gills with men both representing the intended parents (single men and gay couples) and the agencies/companies organising the surrogacy. I'd say there were around 200 men there to 10 women.

You have always been a strong voice against surrogacy and it would be great to get your thoughts as a lawyer on how this consultation can be tackled

Thank you. I suppose we will have to tackle the consultation paper. I started it and gave up. I found the wording very opaque. I've had to respond professionally to many Scottish Government consultations (of varying degrees of obvious bias) but this one is by far the most complicated I've seen.

Excluding representation from half the population on any serious issue is problematic

Lass, I appreciate we are on the same side of this argument and I take your point that what’s wrong with this proposed law supersedes the sex of the people judging it.
You have always been a strong voice against surrogacy and it would be great to get your thoughts as a lawyer on how this consultation can be tackled.

Getting back to the discussion...
Yes, absolutely the IVF industry is driving this and yes, infertile women were at the initial forefront of surrogacy arrangements.

However, the Baroness warnock example actually proves how the lived experience of recent motherhood in fact did allow Warnock to see the inhumanity of surrogacy at the time.

Surely for a law to be passed, relevant and appropriate people with an understanding of the rights of the child should be included in the legislative process. A bunch of middle / older aged men who have and never will be pregnant are definitely not a suitable group.

KTara, I think your point is really good. It's about the ability to empathise with the people who will be in a position to be surrogates. These will be women of few financial means.

Surrogacy is an invasive procedure, with considerable health risks and even a very altruistic woman will weigh up those risks very carefully.

If history is any guide, it wouldn't be the first time that wealthy women have made decisions that had a negative impact on poor women. And absolutely, the most salient point here is class - or, more bluntly but also more honestly, money.

I am not saying that. I am saying there is no substance to your arguments that a woman will see any objections to surrogacy.

The argument isn't that any particular woman would necessarily object to surrogacy and so should be included. It's that a non-diverse group of people, especally a group that has no experience of a very significant part of what they are discussing, will be much less likely to have the same sort of wide-ranging and in depth consideration of the issue as a diverse and experienced group of people would.

We see this time and again in policy discussion - representation matters.

Happy days.

This is a great piece from a gay man. www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/06/52715/

Thus the threat in my opinion of legalising commercial surrogacy comes from the reality that it will be women who are in more desperate circumstances who see this as a means to make ends meet, possibly also to provide for children they already have, with a risk of exploitation for those women

And the reality is there will be women exploiting those vulnerable women. Try reading the final few posts on the Rumplestilskin thread. There's plenty of the precious female insight there - and all saying surrogacy is wonderful.

This thread reminds of equally blinkered posts on threads about abortion - that only women should have a say in framing legislation. Good luck with that- in the UK polls show it is women, not men, who want to reduce time limits.

I think the killer point is that no one would contemplate consulting on legislating on matters which would affect religious or ethnic minorities without including them within the decision making panel.
If you want to argue experience shouldn’t matter, fine, but that should be applied across the board. The fact it isn’t, and that it’s always biological females who are left out, tells us a lot.

These are decisions which male people will never have to make, because they do not have the reproductive capacity

This issue affects humanity. I think there is a serious lack of logic being displayed here

By you. This issue affects women primarily, as the sex class that carries and births these babies. Not including women on a panel to discuss an issue that affects women more, is sexist bullshit. This is not a hard concept. It’s not a new discussion. It’s pretty much a huge part of feminism, making sure women have a say and have power over things that affect them. It’s just idiotic to argue it isn’t.

Sorry in my point about imbalance of power, I missed the obvious point about wealth (ie class) being the biggest differential.

I am not sure it is lived experience so much as the hierarchies of power which affect people differently. Thus the threat in my opinion of legalising commercial surrogacy comes from the reality that it will be women who are in more desperate circumstances who see this as a means to make ends meet, possibly also to provide for children they already have, with a risk of exploitation for those women. These are decisions which male people will never have to make, because they do not have the reproductive capacity. Sperm donation is not analogous because it does not involve more or less growing a baby, feeling that baby inside you etc etc, and then having no rights over that baby.

It is a sex-based, probably also racialised, issue and the reason having an imbalance of power in the decision making body is problematic is because there is more likelihood of that imbalance and the hierarchies of power being replicated in the decisions made.

I also think there are issues for a baby in being taken away from its mother (using mother in the sense of having grown and birthed the baby, not genetics) - and I think it is barbaric to plan to do that in advance. I hesitate to use the word barbaric because it is so strong but I am struggling to get my head around the extent to which the commodification of child-bearing is being normalised.

No , I'm sure I'm not. Stupid me.

Equally I don't get why you place so much reliance on "female insight".

This issue affects humanity. I think there is a serious lack of logic being displayed here.

You’re really not getting it.

The argument that it's a great idea to leave it all to men to decide everything in law about women is a shit idea and has been through history

I am not saying that. I am saying there is no substance to your arguments that a woman will see any objections to surrogacy.

The point is, you need at least half the commission whodoknow, so that decisions affecting women are made by other women who will have insight into what impact it can have

Well Baroness Mary Warnock thinks surrogacy is fine; my husband would ban it.

You do not need a woman to make this decision. You need people who can objectively look at the normalisation of the ever increasingly unnatural ways of creating babies to order and the commercialisation of that process.

Frankly, if anything given this sorry mess was supported by infertile women in the first place I don't see why you place reliance on a female candidate.

If she were on it your argument about the necessary lived experience falls flat on its face.

It doesn’t actually. The argument isn’t we all, with the same lived experience, will think the same. The point is, you need at least half the commission who do know, so that decisions affecting women are made by other women who will have insight into what impact it can have. An all male commission is a disgrace. Men deciding if rich people can pay poor women for use of their bodies is a bad idea, it shouldn’t need spelling out why that is.

The argument that it's a great idea to leave it all to men to decide everything in law about women is a shit idea and has been through history.

Christ alive this is FWR let's all give up and go home eh the men know best for us little ladies

'Plenty of women have used surrogates and plenty of women have been surrogates'

But it's perfectly valid to have the decision made by a bunch of people who never have and never will be pregnant and give birth, and further have no idea of the experience of even being female and so even less chance of being able to empathise, ie men.

Every day we see examples of how little most men understand the female experience at all. Or even want to try. Yet they are, and always have been, the ones deciding what we can and can't do with our bodies, what we must do, what we must be shamed for, and etc.

Baroness Mary Warnock, who initially was opposed to surrogacy but changed her mind, is the mother of 3 children.

If she were on it your argument about the necessary lived experience falls flat on its face.

And in response to Lass, I think being a mother absolutely is of importance in terms of understanding what it means to separate a baby from a mother. The fact that an entirely male group is determining what will be the fate of a massive group of disadvantaged women does mean they lack the lives experience to understand the physical and emotional abuse involved in setting up a baby to never be with its mother

Plenty of women have used surrogates and plenty of women have been surrogates. This idea of "you can't understand unless you are..." is a dangerous way of making policy.