Gay dads take surrogate to court after she bans them from seeing twin baby girls

Eternal pessimism? I think private arrangements will always go on, with the potential for exploitation so regulation is needed

True surrogacy must involve a high degree of medical intervention and can easily be banned.. A private arrangement whereby a women is impregnated by one half of a gay couple isn't surrogacy.

I just don't think banning surrogacy is realistic

Surrogacy is completely illegal in Sweden, Norway, Austria, Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland.

So it's very possible to have a ban on surrogacy in Western European countries.

This is not an LGBT issue. This is a women's and children's rights issue. Women are not vessels. Children are not commodities.

just don’t think banning surrogacy is realistic- Why not?

Because it will be seen as an infringement on the rights of same sex male couples to have children

No such right exists.

@Soontobe60 there is no renting out in the U.K. though.

I’m not sure about how these things work but I assume the surrogate would be entitled to M.L. and would have planned that?
Even wo having to look after a baby And fir that baby to be premature, she would have needed to recover after the birth anyway.

I would also like to know why she would have had to be with the babies when they were in NCU. Surely, her role stopped after she gave birth, regardless of the circumstances?

Let's not kid ourselves here. This is about buying and selling a human being. It's ironic that you can't buy a kidney or heart or lung to keep someone alive in this country, but you can buy a baby? Dressing it up by saying it's 'expenses' is just kidding yourself.
Whilst it's very hard if you want a baby but are not able to by conventional means (IVF, adoption etc) procuring a woman to rent out her womb in order to play happy families is all sorts of wrong.

The problem is that the surrogate mother isn’t genetically the mother. So it’s different than a case where a woman gets pg with another man that isn’t her dh.

There needs to be clear guidelines as to who the child belongs to, bearing in mind that the fathers could also decide they don’t want a premature child with SN and decide to bugger off. Atm The surrogate mother would then end having to look after a baby she never wanted....

In every surrogacy situation one of the three parties - the birth mother, the adoptive parents, or the baby - gives up rights, or in the baby’s case has rights removed. Only people who are happy for that to occur support surrogacy. I don’t.

Other media coverage of the case accuses her of ‘blackmail’ but I can well appreciate she might need to be recompensed for her loss of earnings or compensation from having to take time off in hospital with ill babies who were born 12 weeks early. That’s three months that she isn’t working for and she still has living expenses and may have other children to provide for for all we know. 3K isn’t much at all to cover that and her expenses for looking after herself after she leaves hospital. It seems fair to assume that she will be incurring legal fees too? That’s what these guys are fundraising for their 26K for.

Also her saying the boyfriend is the father, naming the babies what she wants to and so on- it’s legally open to her to keep both the babies, and to name him as the father on the birth certificate if she wants to.

That has to remain her right, surely. Because the alternative way of removing her rights entirely in advance of the birth is not acceptable.

I did lose some sympathy for the mother when she claimed that the babies were her boyfriend's.

I wonder how a figure is decided on?

Part of me feels that there is now too much interference with nature.

No one has the 'right' to have children completely agree but that’s how the argument will align itself.

this is NOT an LGBT issue. And she is the surrogate mother. She made an agreement, of her own accord, and broke it, of her own accord. That's not on is she the biological mother? An agreement doesn’t erase facts- biological facts

Because it will be seen as an infringement on the rights of same sex male couples to have children

No one has the 'right' to have children.

@FamilyofAliens and yet the OP started the thread saying that the details are hazy and there are two sides to every story.

None of you know the details of the case so why paint either side in a bad light? You don’t know anything about the gay couple involved but they’re men so they’re clearly the bad guys .

So the twins are with them now?

So how did that happen?

Court order?

This woman has bonded with her baby.

Babies, plural. Apologies.

We seem to think we're above our biology. And we're not. You carry a child in your womb and it really changes a woman, fundamentally. The agreement you start out with can be broken by a bonding that inevitably happens between a mother and her unborn baby. And that's what's happened here: This woman has bonded with her baby.
That all said, I am not on the side of the mother here. Those fathers are not acting entitled. They're expecting a bona fide agreement to be honoured. They have planned their lives and their family around the arrival of these two babies. I have enormous sympathy for the birth mother and her boyfriend. But her act of changing horses mid-stream is unethical. And here comes the argument "Surrogacy is unethical". Well, this woman should never have agreed to it then. Her body. Her choice and all that. She made a conscious decision, one she was not coerced into, and then changed her mind. And unfortunately, you can't really change your mind on this one. This isn't eBay.

I hate the fact you throw LGBT into the mix suddenly a woman’s right diminish. She is their mother!

This is NOT an LGBT issue. And she is the surrogate mother. She made an agreement, of her own accord, and broke it, of her own accord. That's not on.

Is having children a human right? I'm not sure it is. I am really conflicted about surrogacy as a whole. I understand there are altruistic women who it works for but it is so open to being abuse. Adds another layer of power and control to the patriarchy.

I think anyone entering into a surrogacy agreement should probably have a lot of counselling both before and after. Plus what are the impacts on the children?

More questions than answers.

Because it will be seen as an infringement on the rights of same sex male couples to have children

Is there such a thing in law as the right to have children? I never knew that.

I have real ethical issues with surrogacy but acknowledge that this situation must have been incredibly traumatic and complicated for all parties. The mother may well have been prepared to hand the babies over at the beginning of the process but the truth is that she had no way of knowing how/if she would bond with the babies she was carrying and I suspect the early labour, the babies’ vulnerability and their health complications only increased that bond.

On the financial side of things, it’s complicated to unpick. On the one side, if a woman is putting her health at risk, and is providing a ‘service’ and it is one that may affect her ability to perform her job or day to day tasks in to her full ability then it can be argued that she should be financially rewarded. However, on the other hand, once we start attaching a price to women’s bodies we become a commodity to be bought and sold and it dehumanises us. It starts to remove our autonomy because, “we’ve paid for this, so you’ll do things the way we want them done”. Worrying.

just don’t think banning surrogacy is realistic- Why not?

Because it will be seen as an infringement on the rights of same sex male couples to have children

So the twins are with them now?

So how did that happen?

So it's to advertise their "go fund me"?

I’m really surprised by the vitriol of these comments.

And yet you describe the mother’s and boyfriend’s behaviour as “disgusting” and “outrageous blackmail” without knowing the facts of the case. Interesting.

I don't like how they skim over the details of how the twins ended up being handed over - presumably the mother signed the parental rights forms, but under what circumstances?

Presumably by court order.