‘Our Baby: A Modern Miracle’ C4 10pm tonight

And OMG, if the law ever changes to allow mothers not to be named on the birth certificate...what a sad and terrifying day that would be. I resent the Freddy McConnells of this world for trying to fight for that.

This is so messed up. All this lying and deception of the child's rights to know it's own information about itself and all to prop up a legal fiction.

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive", etc.

I think the main issue with Freddy McConnell is that he wanted the child to be left motherless. Which is impossible.

This baby will have the true mother on their birth certificate.
I'm not sure what is issued after the parental order, is it another birth certificate or some sort of add on. But either way they baby will always have a legal mother in the surrogate.

I guess Freddy McConnell could get round the issue if he adopted his own child with a woman and then had the birth certificate re-issued with him as the father and the woman as the mother.

I'm not sure but I think the main thing is the baby has to have a mother. Father can be unknown so doesn't have to be included on the birth certificate.

I'm very curious (and quite worried) about the birth certificate situation here.

I know Freddy McConnell was unsuccessful in trying to have themself recorded as the father, despite giving birth to the child themself, but this is surely different.

Would this not be more like an adoption order, rather than a birth certificate? The baby's legal mother is Laura and that would go on the original birth certificate. Then Jake and Hannah apply for a parental order, bit surely they apply as their legal identities, and since they both have a GRC they are applying as Jake the man, this father, and Hannah the woman, so mother, if it's more like an adoption than a transman giving birth to their own child?

Might this enable a loophole for trans people to get around the Freddy McConnell ruling?

@Alabamawhirly1

"I wonder how many trans people grew up in households with very strict gender stereotypes and how many grew up with no emphasis on gender roles.

It would be a really interesting study. The same with looking at mysogany in the home.

It seems from what people have said that Hannah has a real dysphoria, where as jake seems to believe that they can't be tough and manly and do what they want to do and be a woman, he also seems to have a real hatred for women. That seems to be more learnt rather than inherent inner feeling"

Stephen Whittle, transman, said that in his childhood his parents played very strict gender roles. His mother wasn't allowed to wear trousers and his father was very much top dog. Not hard to imagine how a girl brought up in this atmosphere, especially if they were same sex attracted, might decide that being a man was a better number.

I also grew up with parents playing very strict gender roles. My mother did not know how much my father earned nor had access to the bank account. All decisions had to be referred to my father and my mother was certain that women could not exist in the world independently of men. She was disapproving of the new female GP at the surgery (who would want to go and see her!) and Mrs Thatcher was greeted with "I wonder what her husband thinks about it all". I went to a girls schools that encouraged girls to succeed and I was determined that I would not live like my mother, and I haven't. I loved her dearly but although rejecting her version of womanhood, I did not reject womanhood itself.

It would be really interesting to see some research on this.

The earlier posts re who is mother/father on the birth certificate - what an absolute headfuck. That poor child.

I haven't watched it as much as I'm intrigued to some degree but I do t want to give it the ratings and it would probably just make me cross!

I agree we treat animals better than humans.

but surely this is what happens to all babies when they're born or am I missing something?

Most babies stay with their mother who they grew in. So they know her voice, her heartbeat, her rhythms/movements. That's what your missing.

*world

NHS cash to fund surrogates? Good grief- if you're in agony waiting for a new hip, trying to get new cancer treatment, better get in the queue mate.
People wanting greater access to wombs???
What the hell?
I feel like we're in an Aldous Huxley novel

Seconding thanks to those who watched the programme so that I didn't have to. I've got my blood pressure to consider

Thanks Clymene and Wolf I missed the deleted thread. Maybe we could try again at some point, there is lots to talk about. Sorry that the thread went south.

Fertility treatment should not be paid for by the NHS.

I agree Dido, the case if that woman getting NHS compensation, above and beyond the original payment, to fund Surrogacies in the US, all paid for from the NHS pocket is quite beyond anything you would expect to be rational and reasonable. But here we are. 'Fertility' treatment for fertile men, babies to be bought by NHS an women in poverty to be hired as walking wombs. Welcome to 2020 folks. Is it time to reboot yet?

No one has a right to children. If you're lucky enough to have them then great. But you shouldn't be able to have them at the expense of others. Egg harvesting and surrogacy need to be banned

I'm fed up of reading and hearing complaints that the NHS is underfunded and that the Conservatives want to scrap the NHS.

Planned spending for the Department of Health and Social Care in England is £140.4 billion in 2019/20. You need then to add Scotland, Wales and N.I on to that.

The NHS is not underfunded. There is not a bottomless money jar. Fertility treatment should not be paid for by the NHS.

I really don't believe in Frankenstein-type science where reproduction is concerned

I said that as an 19 year old way back when the first "test tube baby" was trumpeted as a miracle. I oppose all forms of artificial conception.

Whenever you breed animals, the babies are kept with their mother for a period of time which it's acknowledged is best for the offspring (and possibly the mother). Someone mentioned calves earlier in the thread but we do the same with cats and dogs.

If a bitch dies in labour and pups have to be hand reared, it's acknowledged that it's difficult, some pups may not survive and those that do may struggle to thrive as well as those who were fed and raised by mum until they were 8 weeks or so.

Where is the respect for human babies' need to be with their mothers?

In years to come, this will be another scandal, when we will scratch our heads at a world where the 4th trimester is recognised as crucial to a child's development, where early trauma has a profound impact on future wellbeing, and yet people bought newborns from their mothers.

*broaching

It is just unthinkable to me that anybody willingly creates a situation whereby a newborn baby is ripped from its birth mother, the only person it has ever known, and the only person who can breastfeed them. You have to be an incredibly cold, vain and selfish person to do that, which does not make for a good parent.

I resent the fact society has so little say over situations like this; politicians wont touch it with a barge pole for fear of looking homophobic/transphobic, and nobody else with a platform can say anything without being cancelled. As I said my thread got deleted yesterday for merely breaching the topic.

Tbh I can't see it actually happening in reality. The nhs are pretty tight with money. They're not going to offer up 15k plus to surrogates. They would probably work out what actual reasonable expenses are, ie few bits of maternity clothes, hospital parking, bit of extra food allowece, vitamin allowance, travel to appointments. That would equate to hundreds rather than 1000s. They would then offer 1 round of ivf to the surrogate as per what everyone else gets.

The standard of living is pretty high in the UK. Not many people are going to be a surrogate for nothing and I assume the nhs will want actual receipts for expenses too. And the success rate if you can only have one round of ivf is pretty low.

So nothing would really change. The rich will continue to have private surrogate arrangements where they pay £15k for "expenses".
Some people will have true altruistic surrogacy (or family pressure) through the nhs or a combo of NHS and private funding, and some unscrupulous people with a bit of extra cash will go abroad to exploit a poor Eastern European.

We would do well to remember that same sex males couples mentioned in articles and in general aren't actually infertile.

They lack two critical elements due to their biology - but they are not infertile or they would also require sperm donors as well as the egg donor and the rented womb.

This is why there is a push to get surrogacy fully paid for on the NHS.

Fucks sake. Where does it end. I could kinda see the rational if say a sister was a surrogate and they wanted the 1 or two rounds of ivf on the nhs that everyone else gets. But paying expenses, they'll want the nhs to have an army of breeding sows sorry surrogates on staff next.

Also the argument for ivf on the nhs is infertility is a medical condition - ivf is helping the body to do what it was designed to do. Being in a same sex couple is not a medical condition and the men are not infertile, so what right do they have to medical treatment under the NHS.

There is a disturbing push, not to say conspiracy to get this fully funded by the NHS.

It seems the Law Commission had a planning document for the consultation regarding new surrogacy law which listed SurrogacyUK as a "key influencer".

SurrogacyUK produced a document

"Further evidence for reform
Second Report of the Surrogacy UK Working Group on Surrogacy Law Reform
December 2018"

(Sorry, I can't give the link, it is a pdf and doesn't work, but copy and paste and search for it in your search engine and it will turn up).

which included a stated aim for full funding for surrogacy.

"Public funding should be made available for surrogacy-related fertility treatment in the UK and to pay UK surrogate expenses, in line with the principles that apply to non- surrogacy fertility treatments."

This neatly feeds into the "fertility equality" narrative by making it equally available for rich and poor.

Of course, what you WON'T find is equality with respect to the women offering to provide the service. The women choosing to do this invariably do so because they need the money. I have yet to see a wealthy woman choosing to go through pregnancy and childbirth on behalf of a poor prospective parent.

Today I was chatting to a female doctor at work. She didn't know a lot about surrogacy although she had seen reports about Baby Grammy, and babies born during the coronavirus awaiting collection by parents stranded, unable to travel, all of which she was concerned about.
She was a bit non plussed by my barely controlled rant that erupted.
I told her about Scotland fully funding surrogacy, and the push to get it on the NHS throughout the UK. She simply didn't believe me!

That video

But wealth is an exclusion. Surrogacy is only for the rich.

This is why there is a push to get surrogacy fully paid for on the NHS.

The Scottish couple referenced above have had all their costs including the surrogate mothers fee/expenses paid in full by the NHS.

I await with interest the answer to this FOI that I noticed the other day, it seems someone else is looking into these expenses.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/fundingforrbuildingfamiliessth

Have just been having a look. Kim Kardashian's surrogate was a black woman. She featured on Keeping Up with the Kardashian but her face was blurred out.

She was reportedly 'only' paid $45,000 because apparently any more than that would attract women to it 'for the wrong reasons' ie. They would only be doing it for the money. Yeah, because $45,000 is peanuts

I wonder how many other black women in America are surrogates?

It's a good point King - I think I remember a surrogate mother called Toni discussing this with Jennifer Lahl on her you tube channel

The point being that it was almost promoted as a money earning venture for women living in poverty when the Bill in NYC was proposed or passed.

Toni also mentions the racism element as the commissioning parents weren't black.