Surrogacy on the NHS

I didn't know that California thanks.

I hear that the law hasn't kept up with scientific development when it comes to surrogacy. Maybe the science has overtaken what is natural and maybe science and law has got a bit above its station?

Until science is able to grow babies in bags, everyone has a mother and a father, every human life (and most animal life let's face it) on this planet came from two others. Whilst there can be questions around who the father is there can never be a question around who the mother is because nature made it pretty fucking obvious.

attack the legal system
Will do.

sperm is a few hundred quid

Actually it's free alot of the time. There are websites who you pay membership to who will match you to a sperm donor who does it for free. A lesbian couple can have a baby without ever involving the nhs.

A gay couple could too, but to make surrogacy more palatable they use a donor egg, even though it has serious health implications to two women. That is pure selfishness right there.

Why don't gay men just get a woman pregnant with a turkey baster like lesbians do? Because less women are willing to give away their own baby. But you are that babies mother and that is your child, regardless of what genetic blueprint was used. It's twisting of reality to get what they want when they are actually endangering women.

So you're happy to penalise both surrogate and child because they brought it on themselves. Yup. Thought so.

No, I want surrogacy banned so no child has to end up in a position where they are bought and sold, or where their buyer might change their mind and the child ends up with no-one wanting them.

Think about this from a child's point of view. Not only were you bought and sold. Your mother, the woman who grew you for 9 months, wouldn't even look after for you for 24 hours after you were born. It's fucked up. Surrogacy is fucked up. As others have said, they changed the language to make it seem normal. Let's talk about it as it is. Buying and selling babies. Taking babies from their mothers against their wishes and sometimes the mothers wish. In any other scenario that would be looked at as horrific.

So Elsie sperm is a few hundred quid, an egg can be a few thousand and you need more than one usually. Obviously the process as Fanny points out, and that we all know, to get sperm is entirely different and you get more for your money. A quick wank in a cup usually gets a few thousand sperm so I do think the payment for sperm should be lower than an egg due to the pain processes involved for retrieval.

A lesbian couple already have two of the three things you need to make a baby, two men in a couple have lots of one thing, and are lacking the other two.

If the men in the article become a landmark case and the gay men are to have eggs and Surrogate Mothers paid for on the NHS in equal numbers to say the lesbians who get sperm donors then the costs will go up and the funding will need to come from somewhere.

I'm not sure that just because someone wants a super flashy wheelchair on the NHS they should have one, not if a cheaper one is available and fits their needs. I'm sure a cancer patient might want a brand new, symptom free chemo that costs x3 as much but has to make do with the bargain basement variety that makes you feel like you want to die from the symptoms but could save your life anyway. That's the NHS for you, otherwise go private bu all means.

NHS trusts up and down the country can do boob and nose jobs on request, because it makes someone feel better. The NHS is meant to be life saving not life affirming. Or it was when it started.

Where do we draw the line? Boob jobs for AA cups and breast reduction for HH cups to eradicate back pain and improve quality of life? Babies for whoever wants one for free?

It's an important discussion and one I hope they are having at a senior, governmental level, particularly after this C-19 disaster is over when they check the bank balance and see funds rather depleted.

Ov9 to your point on language. I'll call a spade a spade thanks, anything less would be compelled speech and I think we've been here before. As Curious says, a mother is a mother is a mother and California has a point. It's all nurturing loveliness until CMs can't get to the hospital because of travel distance, delays or restrictions and you actually have to look after the baby you gave birth to. Not very maternal and not even very kind to a newborn baby.

Sorry for getting your name wrong, 0v9.

0bv, what do you think should happen if the surrogate mother changes her mind?

Maybe she has bonded with the baby despite trying not to? Or maybe her relationship with the commissioning parents has broken down?

What do you think should happen if the commissioning parents want to transfer more embryos than the SM is comfortable with? Or if the SM is asked to undergo a termination or fetal reduction and feels unable to go through with it?

The law is easy when everyone has a good experience, like your friends. But it’s really tested when things go wrong, and when it does, it ought to protect the most vulnerable.

I use the term “surrogate mother” not to annoy you, but because if we change the legal definition of “mother” , it could have many unintended consequences. Besides, “surrogate” just means “substitute” or “in place of”. In place of what? The mother.

California

So you're happy to penalise both surrogate and child because they brought it on themselves. Yup. Thought so.

What you're actually doing is making those women more vulnerable. They don't want parental rights or anything like it. They do not see themselves as mothers and are usually not even related to the child they've carried. Their partners and husbands usually don't want to know this child (fair enough) and the marriage would probably be under great strain if they were to be left holding a baby they never planned and don't want. In no possible world is it in their best interests or the baby's for these unrelated people to be shoehorned into a family dynamic to suit someone else's views of what makes a family. It's coercive

You talk about it as if the mother had no say in the pregnancy. Like she was insemiated by a strangers baby in the night and just wants to get rid of the baby asap.
The pregnancy was planned. The mother and her family made the choice to have the baby and took on any potential risk associated with it.

Many of the reasons you give are reasons surrogacy should 100% be illegal in all forms. A child is a human. Not a pet that can be sent back to the pet store if it's is not up to scratch or the buyer changes its mind. A surrogate mother and her family should not be left with a baby they didn't want, but that can happen and the fact the a surrogate mothers would refuse to take the baby shows she shouldn't be a surrogate. No one should. A baby has a right to a it's mother and to be loved and nurtured by that mother. Obviously that doesn't always work out in natural pregnancies, but that is the position we should be starting with and not deliberately going against it.

And she doesn't carry the baby. She creates it, grows it and builds it from her own body. It's not in a bumbag. And she is related to the baby, the egg just gives the blue print, the mother is biologically related to that child from the process of growing it. My friend had a child through donor egg, she is no less that child's mother than I am to mine.

it is not difficult to see why hospitals might also want the commissioning parents on scene, especially for medical checks etc. Otherwise you have confusion over who is actually responsible for the child's needs.

Sorry to go way back to a post from yesterday morning but this is important.

The law is absolutely clear that the mother is responsible for the child's needs. Whether she is a surrogate mother or not. The Court of Appeal judges in the McConnell case were very clear that this is what the law says and that there are overwhelming public policy reasons why it should remain the case.

There is no reason why the commissioning parents need to be present at the hospital. If a hospital is seeking consent from the commissioning parents instead of the surrogate mother they are not acting lawfully.

Remove the finance - even the expenses - and then build a legal system of surrogacy around that. Any financial incentive is likely to affect decision-making and will ultimately impact women of less means than those who 'commission' their babies.

Surrogacy (if it must exist) should include same checks and review as adoption too. It's shocking that it doesn't.

Another thing I wondered - if the NHS is paying for and providing surrogacy IVF, what burden of legal responsibility would they have if a dispute arose in the surrogacy agreement itself?

fanny

You didn't answer the question which is an answer in itself. You're happy to discount the language used by the legal system when you don't like it, I presume. How they're described in law is no reason to go over the heads of the women who fit the definition. What you're actually doing is making those women more vulnerable. They don't want parental rights or anything like it. They do not see themselves as mothers and are usually not even related to the child they've carried. Their partners and husbands usually don't want to know this child (fair enough) and the marriage would probably be under great strain if they were to be left holding a baby they never planned and don't want. In no possible world is it in their best interests or the baby's for these unrelated people to be shoehorned into a family dynamic to suit someone else's views of what makes a family. It's coercive.

You're not talking about parental rights being signed over at birth, you're talking about using a term to describe a woman that she personally would dislike and forcing her to look after a child when she's in a very vulnerable state. That's good for no one. Pivoting into pointing the finger at someone else doesn't change that. If you don't like surrogacy, attack the legal system that has all but rubber stamped commercial surrogacy in this country. Don't go looking for ways to penalise the women and babies who have got wrapped up in it. Collateral damage like this is not ok.

Why would this be an issue? If a same sex couple suffer from fertility problems why shouldn’t they receive the same help as a heterosexual couple? Likewise with donor insemination, if a heterosexual couple are provided with this on the nhs for whatever reason, why shouldn’t a lesbian couple be provided with the same service if they require it?

The thing is donor insemination simply requires a man to wank for half a minute.

For a male same sex couple a woman is required to inject herself with fertility hormones to overstimulate her ovaries and subsequently have multiple needle stabs to extract as many eggs as have been produced (40 eggs = 40 stabs).
Another woman is required to gestate a baby or two for nine months and go through labour and birth at considerable risk to herself (as previously mentioned, donor oocyte pregnancies are at increased risk for a range of pregnancy complications) and then give the baby away.

It's not exactly the same help is it?

I wonder how many men would volunteer to be sperm donors if they had to inject themselves with hormones that affected their health and moods, have repeated trans urethral scans to inspect the inner workings of sperm production, their testicles to become the size of two grapefruits (this is how big an overstimulated ovary becomes) and then have a needle passed up their urethra to wherever the sperm might be hanging out up to forty times?

And yet they talk of reproductive equality.

You seem to think other people are entitled and irresponsible if they don't hold your views but I find the sentiments here and disinterest in self reflection enormously selfish, arrogant and frankly vindictive.

You see I think it is rather entitled and irresponsible to go around impregnating 51 year olds with twins.
Or indeed younger women, given that a twin pregnancy carries significantly more risk for the mother.

Not only am I very concerned for the health and welfare of women and their babies, I am also extremely concerned about the financial implications for the NHS which will impact ALL WOMEN when services are cut to make financial savings.

@OhHolyJesus, that sounds like the same case. Although, I think the SM spoke English, but was illiterate.

So don't you care that surrogates don't like the word mother to be used.

As you can see from this case from 2016 the judge uses the term surrogate mother. Because she is, in law, the mother. Which actually was the whole point of the case. The Commissioning Parents, having thought it was a good idea to impregnate a 51year old woman with twins were then unconcerned about her health leading to a breakdown in the relationship between the two parties.
The surrogate mother then refused to agree to the parental order as she did not want her ill treatment to be dismissed and forgotten.
If the CPs had honoured her as a mother maybe the relationship wouldn't have broken down.
Any woman who thinks it is a good idea to be thought of as just a carrier or whatever really hasn't thought through the issues.

https://www.familylaw.co.uk/docs/rtf-files/ReABSurrogacyyConsent2016EWHCC2643Famm_.rtf

And btw I'm serious about that. The NHS can't fund everything everyone wants. No one dies because they can't have a baby. The world isn't running out of people.

Why would this be an issue? If a same sex couple suffer from fertility problems why shouldn’t they receive the same help as a heterosexual couple? Likewise with donor insemination, if a heterosexual couple are provided with this on the nhs for whatever reason, why shouldn’t a lesbian couple be provided with the same service if they require it?

Or alternatively stop spending NHS money on any infertility issues.

Thanks for that case Cat, was that the one where the SM signed the US online contract, printed off the internet, in a service station without a translator? That one was horrific.

So far California it appears that those influencing UK law are mostly those who profit from it; family law firms who get paid to draw up those unenforceable contracts or draft the wills of the woman who might die, the 'match-making' agencies who are advertised as non-profit on the HFEA website (COTS, Brilliant Beginnings) and gay men (British Surrogacy is run by the Drewitt-Barlows, Two Dads say on their website that they are involved, Lance Black was the poster boy for the media plan with his series on surrogacy on the radio)….oh and Stonewall.

There are also surrogate mothers, I believe they consulted formally with two and one child of surrogacy who is now an adult. There was also a therapist. I don't know why there was a US firm involved....or maybe I do, I have my suspicions at least.

This was all on the FOI response that I've seen, it was posted early on during the threads on the public consultation.

www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/public_consultation_on_proposed#outgoing-1021358

I was please to read that Penney Lewis was appointed Commissioner last year as previously I think it was mostly men. 11 men, 7 women at the time.

www.gov.uk/government/news/two-law-commissioners-appointed-to-the-law-commission

Human trafficking on the public dime? Criminy!

Ov9, I understand why you’re sticking up for your friends. And yes, sometimes surrogate mothers are content with their role and feel fine about handing the baby over.

But some do change their minds during the process, because they may have bonded with the baby, or grown to dislike the commissioning parents, or both. If you read the article by Jennifer Lahl I linked earlier in the thread, you might understand why some people, including me, are horrified by the proposal to relax surrogacy laws in the UK.

Here is a UK case of a surrogate mother changing her mind. It was supposedly “altruistic surrogacy”, but in reality it was anything but.

The surrogate mother (known as V in the judgement) had learning difficulties and limited financial means. She didn’t understand the arrangement she had agreed to, and had doubts early on in the process, but was afraid to tell the commissioning parents.

www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed161502

The applicants, A and B, were the commissioning parents. They already had twins, who had been born to a surrogate mother, V. Russell J was extremely critical of the couple's behaviour towards V. She described them as being "dismissive" of V, "wholly uninterested in her" and as seeing "her primarily as a service provider to whom they had paid £12,500" [35]. A, said Russell J, had "no understanding…that he was dealing with another human being whose own expectations and feelings needed to be taken into account".

I rather suspect the babies themselves are somewhat less delighted to be handed over to strangers.

I don't know how any human can think it right and ok to take a newborn from it mother(unless the baby is in danger). Psychos all of them.

I find it very strange that women, who are so kind and giving that they would want to grow and birth a baby for another person, often a stranger, just out of the kindness of their heart - just want to give birth to the baby and then never see it again. They care so little for their child that as soon as it's out of their body they want no more to do with it. They won't even care for it for 24 hours after giving birth.

I can understand doing that if you were putting your baby up for adoption. It might be easier to just have the baby taken away asap. But you've chosen to be a surrogate. (I realise some women chose adoption but it's a choice made post conception). If you can't handle giving it away, so much so that you can't bare to care for the baby for a day or so, then why surrogate. It just doesn't fit the "most wonderful gift" "we're so lovely and altutistic" mantra we're told. It fits a narrative of women who don't really want to give their baby away and are doing it for other reasons, or women that don't give a shit and are doing it for other reasons.

In regards to changes in the laws, gay men should be the last people to have a say in it. They are bias and thinking of themselves. The only people that should be asked are relevant medical professionals (not ones with stakes in the ivf or egg farming business), mothers, women and the children of surrogates.

But I actually think a first step should be to ban egg farming. Its unethical and dangerous. That would also stop alot of surrogacy in its tracks.

What happened Minecraft? As in which bit in this thread happened to you too?

Happened in Worcester with me when I had my two surrobabies.

No drama.