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

and yet we do not seek to legislate against dysfunctional families or useless parents having children
What do you think the Children Act does?

Well I understood that it protected children once they are born but I'm not aware of any act of law that prevents a dysfunctional or useless person, man or woman, from conceiving a child and having it in the first place which was my point.
Otherwise why are so many children born to to dysfunctional or useless parents? But correct me if I'm wrong.

Would it cost £26k in legal fees to have a DNA test ordered?

The issue over money arose when the biological mother's partner came round demanding an extra £3000 from the men

It says in another part of the article that she wanted “the remainder” of the money. Which suggests it was the rest of what they had agreed.

so that suggests to me this was about them paying the remainder of the money they had agreed to pay her. I suspect they decided not to pay it when she gave birth early and the court case was to settle this

According to the paper the court case was about the fact that the mother put her partner down as the biological father on the birth certificate when this was in fact not true and it was Steven - one of the gay men - who was the biological father. There was a DNA test to prove this.

The issue over money arose when the biological mother's partner came round demanding an extra £3000 from the men (not sure what for) when they had already paid the agreed expenses of £17,000 (In the UK 'altruistic' system surrogates are usually paid between 12,000 to £15,000). The men could not afford this extra money as they had used all their savings up in legal costs, her expenses, equipment for the babies etc.

The Go-Fund me page, as I understand it, is to re-coup some of their losses.

Actually despite financial coercion being the main reason organ sales are illegal, that is less awful than buying a baby because the kidney doesn't grow up knowing it's a commodity.

Imagine contract law actually applied in surrogacy.
Baby kept by mother - mother sued for breach of contract, or arrested for kidnapping?
Baby born early - fee reduced or discounted
Baby born with health problems - mother investigated for how she conducted the pregnancy, or payment suspended, or refund demanded, or baby rejected
Baby dies after birth - same
Embryo miscarried - same

And surely it would open a legal challenge from dying people who have found organ donors willing to donate for a fee? If a baby can be contractually demanded surely a kidney can be too? What's to stop the legal challenge there if babies born to surrogate mothers become goods bought on lay-by?

We'll see sob stories from dying people desperate for a transplant and willing paid donors complaining the law is an ass? And that it's their body and their decision to sell half their liver, or a lung, or a kidney? (Except nobody will comment on the financial pull and why no rich people ever sell their organs).

and yet we do not seek to legislate against dysfunctional families or useless parents having children

What do you think the Children Act does?

It's the difference between families doing the best they can when things go wrong, and intentionally creating a child to live in those circumstances.

Michelle you are spot on. Whataboutery with regard to other situations that are less than ideal for the child - that omits the reality that surrogacy is intentional, deliberate and has financial implications. Children should not be for sale, no matter how nice or how sad the commissioning parents are.

Barracker your posts are absolutely spot on. Especially this:

If you don't want your genetic material to be used by another person who will create, with her body and at risk to her own life and health, an entire human with it, then give birth to that human and have rights to the baby she made with her own body, then don't donate your genetic material for the purpose of it going into another person's body

The impacts on children raised by surrogates is no different to the impacts to children raised by their biological parents.

And this just isn't true. Adopted children, children born of donor sperm and children with absent parents can have issues relating to that, the fact some biological parents are crap and your relative's child was fine doesn't disprove any of that.

I’m a bit confused about what has actually happened legally in this case. The men are seeking funds to pay for their £26k legal bill. I would like to know what exactly their legal costs were for. As stated upthread- the surrogate could not be ordered by a court to sign a parental order for these babies. The men have the babies so one of two things has happened. Either she signed the order voluntarily or she remains the legal mother of the children with PR but the judge ordered that the children are to be cared for entirely by their father and his husband. Both options suggest she had no intention of keeping these babies and raising them as her own. (A Judge would not order removal of a woman’s children from her care entirely if she wanted to keep them unless there was serious risk of harm- this would require social services involvement too) so that suggests to me this was about them paying the remainder of the money they had agreed to pay her. I suspect they decided not to pay it when she gave birth early and the court case was to settle this. They probably agreed to pay it in exchange for the signing of the parental order- or whatever paperwork was necessary for them to have the babies. The surrogate registering the babies herself was probably the only leverage she had in order to get the money she was owed. Not sure why she registered her partner as the father though. Maybe at that point the negotiations had broken down and with the men refusing to pay she thought she would be raising the babies.

It is going to have to be faced at some point in society that not everybody can have everything, and that disappointment and hurt feelings about your situation does not trump other people's rights, or entitle the trampling of them.

This.

You're confusing the right of any woman to create, not create, terminate or proceed with a pregnancy - which noone here is proposing 'banning' and which right relates to her own bodily autonomy

No I'm not. I was responding to a poster who had said that no child should have to face the prospect of walking past their mother, father, sibling in the street and not know who they are. That is just as likely, possibly more so, to happen in the case of a ons with a stranger that results in a pregnancy.

The challenges and distress these situations cause for parents and children is all over MN: they're life dominating, life changing issues and some of those children will spend decades of their adulthood overcoming them

Exactly my point - damage to children is happening in biological families all the time and yet we do not seek to legislate against dysfunctional families or useless parents having children.

There are plenty of individuals not fit to be parents having biological child after biological child - I've tutored fostered children born to mothers and fathers who don't give a damn about them. On the other hand, the majority of children born through surrogacy are very wanted children and live in remarkably happy and loving families. I appreciate I only speak from my own experience but I do feel it's not a simple as biological = good/ surrogacy = bad.

We shouldn’t be selling babies. Or gifting babies.

I really don’t see why that’s controversial.

Do you propose banning people from having one night stands then, because a child conceived as a result will be in the same position.

You're confusing the right of any woman to create, not create, terminate or proceed with a pregnancy - which noone here is proposing 'banning' and which right relates to her own bodily autonomy

With the 'right' of a third party (NOT that woman) to take superior 'ownership' of a baby from such a pregnancy - this 'right' should not exist
And also conflating it with the 'right' of a woman to sell her child, which is also a 'right' that should not exist.

Women can make as many or as few babies with their bodies as they wish, and they will have immediate parental rights over any child. The principle of bodily autonomy.

She has the right to surrender that child freely after it is born, by terminating her own maternal rights without coercion, following due process.

What should not be allowable is third party interference in either of those two rights.
Either with contracts, offers of money, gentlemen's agreements, threats, or legal sanctions.

I wouldn't go through another pregnancy for anyone , except maybe my DD in very rare circumstances. I'm amazed people do it.

In the interviews you transcribed from Surrogates in India did you come across anything where the women were thinking about the baby, born or not yet born?

Thank you for asking. In many ways no - the surrogate child was less of a consideration than what they might be able to give their own children through surrogacy.

For most, although not exclusively, surrogacy was an opportunity to escape far more exploitative and dangerous work. Women are often employed in sectors of the service economy that involves other forms of bodily labour such as domestic service, or in employment where they are subjected to sexual exploitation, or work in garment factories, where they endure physical and psychological harm, respiratory difficulties, urinary tract infections, and extreme stress from long shifts and bad living conditions.

Some women work in tanneries where they are exposed to toxic chemicals that result in respiratory diseases and increased risk of cancer.
So being able to earn enough money through surrogacy to put your own biological child through school or to buy your own house for many is a preferable option.

Same could be said for my partner, and i believe he has as much right as me to be heartbroken for the loss of our child.

Yes, he has that right. However he has not has a miscarriage, you sadly have and that is a different experience to the one that your partner has had.

The woman donating the egg doesn't consider herself to be the parent, yet often neither does the woman carrying the baby since there is no genetic link. It means the resulting children have no mother.

Of course they have a mother. The issue is which woman is the mother and not whether or not they have a mother. There is no person on this planet who does not have or has had a genetic, biological mother. They might not have known her but they have all had one. That will be the case until, heaven forbid, eggs can be manufactured in a laboratory.

I guess also, egg donation (especially that a woman doesn't really want to make but feels she has to in order to get IVF) is a big deal because egg retrieval is difficult compared to sperm donation.

Egg retrieval is a 'big deal' yes, presumably the eggs would be retrieved at the same time rather than separately? I don't know but if it's having to be done separately with another round of medical treatment then that's very different to if it is done at the time of the egg retrieval for the woman's own intended pregnancy.

this happens all the time regardless of surrogacy - especially now with so much divorce or so many children born into step-families or brought up by step-parents. Many children have step-siblings they don't know about and many children are born to biological parents who have 'baggage'? We don't seek to legislate against that.

Likewise adoption involves a great deal of baggage and loss and unideal circumstances. No one would argue that this is the ideal anyone dreamed of, it's people making the best of the situation that has gone wrong. No one says when I grow up I'm going to be a step parent. No one gets married and says at the wedding they can't wait to get divorced and raise kids with someone else's ex in a blended family. Very, very few people have a baby planning that the child will be co parented and will move between two homes on a time share basis for the rest of their childhood. The challenges and distress these situations cause for parents and children is all over MN: they're life dominating, life changing issues and some of those children will spend decades of their adulthood overcoming them.

It's the difference between families doing the best they can when things go wrong, and intentionally creating a child to live in those circumstances.

Children have the right to be created without baggage already being in place. No one should have the right to set up any child to fail. No child should start their life with the prospect that they will never know if the stranger they pass in the street is their father/mother/sibling. No child should start their life being deliberately deprived of either one of their biological parents.

Do you propose banning people from having one night stands then, because a child conceived as a result will be in the same position.

I read in an article about the banning of commercial surrogacy in India onemore of a woman who said it was her body and she could do with it what she wants. She was complaining that her rights to give away a baby she had made in her body had been infringed....but her argument was based on her ability to make that baby to sell for her to have more money. So she was deciding this based on coercion, as has been made clear, if you are rich you don't become a surrogate.

Also, this woman's argument doesn't centre the child, very little of what I read anywhere on surrogacy centres the child.

In the interviews you transcribed from Surrogates in India did you come across anything where the women were thinking about the baby, born or not yet born?

(I'm not asking for detailed accounts, or for you to breach confidentiality, more general feeling, as you have had that experience and can provide insight.)

Agree re sperm donation too. I think children have a right to know who their biological parents are. I would hate for my DH or brothers or sons to have biological children 'out there' that aren't part of our lives.
I guess also, egg donation (especially that a woman doesn't really want to make but feels she has to in order to get IVF) is a big deal because egg retrieval is difficult compared to sperm donation.

There is an unspoken thing that surrogacy must be a charitable thing

It's not unspoken - it's the law. In the Uk you cannot pay a surrogate except for their reasonable expenses.

IMO there can never be enough money to qualify as 'reasonable expenses' for bringing a child into the world to make surrogacy a justifiable project.

Maybe talk to some of the women in India exploited in this way

CharlieParley how do you know I haven't? I've been involved in assisting in research on Indian surrogacy for a number of years and have read and transcribed many interviews conducted with Indian surrogate women. The situation is a complex one and there are a variety of views - not just the 'it's all exploitation' one.

I did not condemn the Indian government - I said there was an unexpected impact to legislation that banned commercial surrogacy but made it okay for close family members. I was referring to some-one else's post that said it should be banned except in the case of sisters.

onemorecupofcoffeefortheroad

Historically, when commercial surrogacy was legal in India, all women concerned had far more control over the situation an could make choices that worked for them.

You might want to get some better information about that. Such as talking to the women who were exploited as birth mothers in non-familial surrogacies. You have no idea how much I wish what you said was true, but it simply isn't even close.

Maybe talk to some of the women in India exploited in this way. The relatives of those who died. The ones who...

Sorry I don't even want to remember all the details. Horrific abuses of women ocurred at industrial scale in India, rent-a-womb scenarios feminists have been warning of for years played out there countless times. Which is why it was made illegal. Which was an enormously progressive step taken by a country which has a lot of hurdles still to overcome in securing equal rights for women. But they took action because it was too horrific a human rights abuse to tolerate in the name of fulfilling the desire of rich, almost exclusively Western couples to have children.

So before you condemn the Indian government for seeking to protect women and children, I urge you to make sure you have all the facts.