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

4. No UK court can force a mother (and yes, the woman giving birth to a child is legally its mother under UK law, regardless of whether another woman provided the egg) in a surrogacy agreement to sign the parental order.

Of course not. However, in a disputed case they are entitled to hold that a child is better off with one parent than the other and make an order accordingly. It doesn't sound as if this mother necessarily had any actual interest in keeping the child.

Banning surrogacy is entirely realistic , France Germany and Norway manage fine.

In Germany can face arrest for bringing a child bought from commercial surrogacy abroad back into the country. Not sure how that works practically as the commissioners adopt the child instead before crossing the border to avoid arrest.

If anyone is ambivalent about surrogacy read more about baby Gammy and the child sex offender who 'commissioned' him. That will focus the mind very quickly.

Those poor twins in the future - seeing that their fathers took their mother through legal proceedings to remove them, haggled over the price and promoted the whole thing on the internet with their photos so that people would donate.

The buying and selling of human beings. Horrendous.

They aren’t two random people but I agree that removing a baby from their mother is not good (unless in danger etc).

Love is not enough

No, love is not enough. They have taken advantage of the woman who was the surrogate, she's been through a horrendous time and all this article says is 'me, me, me'

I think surrogacy should be banned but there needs to be enough funding to address the problems caused by 'black market' surrogacy as the problems exist now and will be even worse if it's made illegal. There will be more abuse of women and of children.

Being grabbed from your mum and taken up by two random people is never good

This is always going to have implications for the children, no matter how loving their childhood they are going to have to deal with the fact that they have been taken from their mother and not brought up by her.

this statement just is not true

Of course it's true. There will always be implications of this no matter how good your subsequent childhood is. They will have to deal with the fact that they were only born because somebody paid for them, with the potential feeling that they were a commodity, feeling like you are owned because you were bought is really going to screw up a child well into adulthood.

Well, they aren’t ‘random people’. One of them is the child’s biological parent.

Being grabbed from your mum and taken up by two random people is never good

Having known children born through surrogacy brought up in loving gay families and children born through surrogacy brought up in loving heterosexual families - and equally having known children brought up by their biological parents in abusive homes - this statement just is not true.

I truly find surrogacy extremely upsetting - for the children even more than the mother. It feels so wrong to actively bring a child into the world only to rip it away from its mother when it needs her the most. (Adoption from birth, while an equally sad situation, is obviously different as I don't think any woman gets pregnant on purpose to then give away a child for adoption).

What hath technology wrought

A reasonable expense will depend on the woman's life before the surrogacy, surely. A woman with a highly paid job, a big house with a big mortgage, use of a cleaner or housekeeper, used to weekly/daily exercise, beauty treatments, massages, high cost food bill etc, etc. Why would this woman give these things up because she is carrying a child? If she wouldn't forgo these things to carry her own child, why would she to carry someone else's? She wouldn't. And nobody would want to pay for them. Which is why you won't get rich women being surrogates. You will get poorer women who won't be in a position to negotiate anything other than the bare minimum. If that £17k in eluded IVF expenses, that surrogate mother was receiving very little.

Female empowerment and choices is a bullshit argument. Women with a full set of choices in life don't become surrogates, any more than they become sex workers.

Yeah I stand by the fact that they've been royally fucked over (no need for little stars we can swear here).

Aside from the difficulties of being born premature, attachment disorder is a real thing.

Being grabbed from your mum and taken up by two random people is never good.

Surrogacy is just intentionally creating an orphan.

Fuck that.

I say that as an infertile woman who tried desperately to have a family and just had miscarriages.

What is a reasonable expense onemorecup?

Anything considered to be making a profit
I probably worded it badly. For -profit surrogacy is banned in the UK.

I've missed you Barracker excellent post x

I prefer the law in the U.K. to the US version. It is a risk but it resides with the couple.

Or is there the chance that they're going to be brought up by two loving parents who wanted them and love them?

Worth talking to adult adoptees regarding this: there are plenty to be found in forums online who would say that no, this is not of itself enough. Which is why in adoption circles, both of families who have adopted and adult adoptees, you run into the phrase 'when love isn't enough' quite often. If you apply to adopt, in the early stages you're often talked to about 'adoption is nobody's first choice'. Not yours as a parent, not the child's as a child in need of parenting. It is built out of a situation of loss.

In whose interests is it to minimise the loss involved here? I've heard adult adoptees talk about the pressure to provide their adoptive parents with the longed for child to love, and to hide their own loss and grief. The celebrated 'gotcha' day, which for the parents is one of joy and fulfilment, but to the child may be the day of separation from the person they're no longer allowed to know, but carry half the genetic heritage of.

Adoption is at least frank and honest about these issues, and the interests of the child are always paramount. In this situation the child is a thing, the idea of 'commissioning' a child, a person, horrifies me.

I agree, surrogacy should be banned. Having a child (having in this sense starting to mean owning) is not a right.

This doesn't even touch on what impact this will have on these babies as they grow up. '"Daddy, who is my mummy?"

I believe that that the person who gives birth remains legally the child's mother in the UK anyway and since 1991 all information about people who donated sperm or eggs has been retained and children of donors can access it.

The impacts on children raised by surrogates is no different to the impacts to children raised by their biological parents. Plenty of biological parents raise damaged children, plenty of children raised by their biological parents are neglected and abused, plenty of biological parents divorce and one or the other abandon their children to the other parent.

A relative of mine used a surrogate in S Korea many years ago and had a daughter who she raised as a single parent (the child is now in her thirties) - my relative tried for many years to persuade her (perfectly happy and well adjusted) daughter that maybe she would like to go and see her biological mother, access her heritage, visit the mother-land - the daughter was completely ambivalent - happier to spend her summers going up the coast with her friends.

Eventually my relative persuaded her daughter to go to Korea and they did, they met the biological mother (who showed little interest in her biological daughter) - they did the sights of S Korea and came home never to return again. Her daughter is one of the most well adjusted kids I've ever met - and she never had any idea who her father was and still doesn't.

Surrogacy should be banned.

So called "contracts" giving men enforceable rights over women's bodies, their uteruses, purporting to terminate women's own rights over their own babies - are not worth the paper they are written on, and they never should be.

You can't enforce a contract demanding someone honour a promise to give you their
future blood, or kidney. We don't force people who have changed their mind to the final conclusion of a proposed, altruistic gift because we must never give one person an ownership or legal right over the body of another.
This would be slavery.
"Your body is mine now, you signed it away, you can't exit the contract."
No.

We do not allow such contracts.
No person can own another person's body.
And no person can terminate another person's fundamental human rights.
They can't be bought.

Agreements, and commercial 'contracts' to terminate a mother's legal and moral right to her son or daughter created by her own body, do not exist, in the UK. They are a pretence. A woman in this country has the enduring right to her child during pregnancy and after birth, right up to the moment she finally signs away - without pressure or coercion - that child after it is born, and when she has recovered from the birth.

I noticed a pp reference a contract as if this is something the law recognised. It doesn't.
Another pp wrote that a mother, once she's promised to give up her future child, can't change her mind, it isn't eBay.

She absolutely can.
THAT IS EXACTLY what the law allows, because the law recognised that women have absolute maternal rights over their own babies that cannot be signed away in advance, any more than you can promise to give up your kidney next year and be prevented from changing your mind.

"Oh but you made a promise, and now you will be forced to keep it" is the stuff of dystopian nightmares.
Rumplestiltkin evil fairytales.

The question we should be asking is how civilised society isn't universally horrified by the very idea that one person can demand a child from the body of its mother, assert a claim, discuss the baby she is growing inside her body, HER baby as if it were pre-ordered and paid for goods that SHE should have no rights over.

We've progressed so far into this nightmare that it hasn't occurred to us to turn around and look back at how far we've strayed from fundamental humanity.

Babies are people.
Women are people.
People cannot be bought or bartered.
Women should not be forced, paid, or coerced to conceive, or terminate, or endure a pregnancy, or give birth, or give up their baby against their will.
Regardless of anyone else's wishes.

Mothers have ultimate parental rights to a child they created and gave birth to. Regardless of who donated an egg or a sperm.
Her body, her womb, her pregnancy, her birth, her baby.
Children have rights to their mothers.
No money, contract, coercion or threat should ever be contemplated that interferes with that default humanitarian principle.

Lots of countries around the world have banned surrogacy - let’s join them.

What is a reasonable expense onemorecup?

Could a surrogate have her pregnancy massages paid for, a tummy tuck post c section? Kim K paid for some post birth Botox (US), it's possible that the surrogate in the daily record article is willing and maybe even keen to give the babies to the couple and just be paid what she is owed, to the full amount they agreed to, that's why we really need to hear from her, but as a concept it raises questions which we are discussing here.

The law allows for 'expenses' and this is essentially a payment which blows the altruism argument.

I agree surrogacy should be banned-for the simple reason it is not in the childs best interest to be removed from their Mother.
If people for a myriad of reasons can't give birth-adoption is the kinder route. Get children out of the care system and into loving families.

My assumption is that the £17k included the fees to the ivf clinic (which is otherwise glaringly omitted in their list of costs) and this has been attributed to the mother in an attempt to make her look greedy and garner them sympathy. This is misogyny.

The couple also lost my support when they said they did not get to enjoy the first 6 weeks of the twins lives. It implies that having 28 week old twins in NICU is an enjoyable experience. They have a right to be angry they didn’t get a full-term newborn handed to them the way they did with their first child but no one enjoys having their children being kept alive by life support .

For those arguing, they paid for the pregnancy, therefore they should get immediate assess to babies and be able to take them home, it sounds like these were two babies whose futures may have been uncertain for a while. It also raises questions about what clauses need to be in a surrogacy arrangement should things go wrong. Would a surrogate be entitled to agreed payment in the case of a still birth or neonatal death? Should the surrogate offer a discount for pre-mature births because the pregnancy only lasted 6 months rather than 9?

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.

Bodies and babies should not be for sale

they aren't for sale - see above

Women are not vessels. Children are not commodities.

This.
Nor are children a right.
If you are unfortunately unable to have children they you need to make yourself a different life (I have people in my family who took this route, one after harrowing repeated miscarriage).
The “they should adopt” response upsets me as whilst I’m sure kindly meant it ignores the reality of adoption - which usually requires parents who are willing & able to deal with traumatised children often with additional challenges.

I think surrogacy being legal is a horrible indicator of our society.

FWIW I think a surrogate mother should retain rights to the child unless she chooses to relinquish them after birth. No one can predict how a mother will bond with a baby in or out of utero. As for the people paying the surrogate, you pay your money you take your chances. This is a possible outcome. If one of the men is the biological father then he has rights to equal custody, sure.

To misquote Plath, "Women are not machines that you put kindness coins in and babies fall out".

At most they planned to pay this woman under £20k. Given the damage a pregnancy can do to your body and mental health, this is sweet fuck all. They then cracked the shits and would rather spend more than the original amount in court fighting her. They are not people who I'd want to hand children over to.

The whole article is them with their begging bowl out grubbing for cash. There is an unspoken thing that surrogacy must be a charitable thing. I mean little girls are taught to be nice and share and always giving and forgiving, and this apparently carries on to when your an adult and its your womb.

I'd like to see surrogacy banned too, or at least regs tightened up.

This doesn't even touch on what impact this will have on these babies as they grow up. '"Daddy, who is my mummy?"

I'd love to know this woman's side of the story. I wonder if she lied about the who the father was because she bonded with them and/ or couldn't bear to hand them over to these two.

And if an egg doner was used, I wonder what she would think of this.

What we struggle with in society is the idea that what is considered sacred and intimate (child bearing) can be reduced to an economic transaction. Often it's thought that intimate labour and economic activity should occupy distinct and separate domains (think of prostitution for example).

The commercialisation of reproductive labour strikes fear into our hearts because it corrupts what we consider to be the sacredness of of child bearing. But sometimes child bearing IS a commercial exercise - think of the expectation on Royal women to produce an heir for example, or .... the most obvious one .... paying for IVF.