I have sent the following email to the law commission:
Dear Surrogacy Team,
I am writing to express my deep concern at the proposals to reform the current UK surrogacy laws. Many European countries have a total ban on surrogacy, and for extremely important reasons. These countries include Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. The UK should be proposing to join these countries in a total ban on surrogacy, not to further facilitate it.
I believe that all forms of surrogacy should be banned in the UK for the following reasons:
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A human being is not a commodity to be bought and sold, or gifted. Nobody should have the right to deliberately create a baby with the intention to immediately separate it from its birth mother. This is relevant whether the baby is genetically related to the birth mother, or conceived with a donor egg. There is much evidence to show that separating an infant from its birth mother causes neurobiological vulnerabilities into adulthood. Nobody has the right to inflict that kind of psychological trauma upon another human being. Such psychological difficulties are of course seen in adopted children, but adoptions only occur where it is not safe for a child to remain with its birth mother. Creating a child in order to separate it from its mother at birth, is a form of abuse.
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Surrogacy is a means of exploitation of impoverished and/or vulnerable women. If commercialised, it will be a means by which wealthy commissioners (“intended parents”) have financial power over poorer women. Women in difficult social situations will inevitably see surrogacy as a way to improve their situation by earning money, but it is not acceptable for anybody to put these women’s mental and physical health (and even lives) at risk by paying them to carry and birth a baby for somebody else. There is also a risk that, however closely regulated, surrogacy could cause women to be coerced or forced into surrogacy by abusive partners or family members, for financial gain.
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The long term health risks to the birth mother cannot be dismissed. A surrogate mother who has not previously been pregnant or given birth, will not have a full understanding of what she is consenting to when signing a contract to carry a child, give birth to it, and them give it away. Physically, pregnancy and childbirth take their toll upon a woman’s body, and in many cases leave the woman with permanent medical conditions. These include urinary incontinence, faecal incontinence, pelvic organ prolapse, obstetric fistula, nerve damage and gestational diabetes, to name but a few.
Emotionally, a traumatic birth can leave a woman experiencing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for many years after the event. For a woman who gives away the baby she has carried for nine months, she cannot possibly predict how that will feel if she has never carried a baby before, and may find it to be far more traumatic than she expected. Feelings of guilt and grief could lead to mental health problems for the woman for the rest of her life.
For a woman who already has children, the possibility that she could die as the result of a surrogate pregnancy and childbirth, leaving her existing children without their mother, is an unacceptable risk. Of course this is always a risk with any pregnancy, including when the mother is adding to her own family, but the risk is not justified for surrogacy.
In my opinion, this consultation has not been publicised widely enough to collect a representative range of views on the subject of surrogacy reform. I have seen the list of groups and organisations consulted, and it is unfairly biased towards those who would benefit or profit from surrogacy (solicitors, agencies, private fertility clinics and “intended parents”), and there is not enough input from groups representing those who could be exploited or damaged by surrogacy (children and impoverished or vulnerable women).
I have read the following statement that you have made:
“We note the concerns of those stakeholders who felt that the current law was not in need of reform, or that reform was needed to either restrict, or completely ban surrogacy. We do not think that this position is tenable or achievable, and is not what most stakeholders, or Government, have said that they would want.”
I do not believe that you have consulted the correct balance of people to conclude that “most stakeholders” do not want to ban surrogacy, and to claim that a ban on surrogacy is not “tenable or achievable” is ridiculous when so many other European countries have chosen to ban it.
I acknowledge that infertility or inability to have a baby must be extremely painful, but nobody has the right to separate a baby from its birth mother (and I include situations involving a donor egg here) to alleviate such pain. Acquiring a baby is NOT a human right.
I hope that you will now listen to and carefully consider the views of those who believe that all forms of surrogacy should be banned in the UK.