All-male Law Commission discussing surrogacy

Great article from Catherine.

Entirely agree Joan - thanks for prompt about consultation

I also think having more than one thread is fine - this one is specifically about an article on the subject. There are after all many more trans threads with every development.

Great article. Thanks OP. We all need to respond to this consultation.
It’s been set up as a rubber stamping exercise as this starting point is that there is general support for it.
There’s no way that most people in the UK would support it though if they were aware of it.
The consultation states in its introductory text that they did a first round of consultation in 2017. They received 341 responses that they claim were broadly supportive of full commercialisation of surrogacy. 341, hardly a valid number!

Even though the consultation is intimidatingly long -118 questions and 500 pages including the explanatory text, we need to just choose one, where we can voice our opinion. The more responses the better, so that this horrible inhumane regressive law can’t be passed.

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.

*Later in her career, Baroness Warnock, architect of the UK’s fertility legislation, apologised for having “got surrogacy wrong all those years ago”. The 1984Warnock reportshould not, she said, have condemned the practice^

No- she didn't get it wrong. I feel vindicated however that after the first IVF baby in 1978, teenage me, never having read a feminist book in my life, recognised the problem.

Hopkins’s reforms seem more sympathetic to the delusion, long cultivated by fertility industry shysters, that the desire for a biological child – because others may have one effortlessly – cannot justifiably be thwarted. “Sometimes,” the report says, rather carelessly of the implications for property, “surrogacy can be the only way for people to have children who have a genetic link to them.”

Whilst I don't disagree with any of this - who exactly are the "fertility industry shysters" she is referring to?

The idea that having a baby by any unnatural but scientifically feasible way is an inalienable human right is shared by women and men.

Tbh I'm not sure having only men as members of the Law Commission makes any difference. There are plenty of women who support surrogacy.

That’s such a good article. I wish more people were talking about it.

This is v concerning.

Good article.

The genetic links stuff. That if it's a donor egg there is no link to the 'gestator'. This is a male view. For them genetics is all, they only provide sperm. For women there is a genetic contribution from the egg and also impact on the child during pregnancy as the baby is grown of her body, a womb isn't a bag separate from the person it's housed in no matter how much some people like to present it that way, notably, anti abortionists.

The baby is a part of her, listening to her voice and heart beat, it is impacted by her moods etc (stress eg is not good, have positive emotions been looked into?). She gives birth to it and her body will be ready to feed it. To say there is no connection between them is a massively male perspective and harks back to the days when men owned the children that the women birthed.

Yes this is all v worrying.

Ooh, very good. Surprised the Guardian published it. Aren't we all meant to believe that selling women's bodies is empowering now?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3606313-The-Rumplestiltskin-Law

There’s also a thread going on this topic

That is an excellent article, thank you for sharing it.