Surrogacy laws to be overhauled under new reforms – benefitting the child, surrogate and intended parents - Law Commission proposals

Isn't it funny how different research props up different things according to the agenda instead of forming one coherent picture?

Someone who is against surrogacy posted one item from a study that supports their agenda and omitted to post other findings and the conclusion that went against their agenda. In fact courts can and do rule that children will be taken away from birth mothers and adopted before that child is even born. Of course the courts will do this as a last resort if the woman who gave birth to the child wants to raise the child. You are talking about the mental health effects on children having their connections severed with those who rejected the child or had them taken away against their will. That is not what happens with surrogacy and while I don't think a planned surrogacy with a woman who does not want to have contact with the child is at all good for that child, which is one of the reasons I don't support commercial surrogacy, it's simply ridiculous to suggest that courts would do everything they could to keep a child with a birth mother who does not actively want to be with the child and who has not nurtured the child from birth.

Surrogacy is mainly used by heterosexual couples. No need to make this about trans rights activists.

And the person paying is powerful, affluent and with political clout. And male. This has really gathered speed since it became about men's rights to children.

Then suddenly it's all about consumer rights and everything we know about child protection is suddenly all wrong, regressive and stupid.

My God this all reminds me of trans activism. Women are just walking resources, bodily autonomy is everything when it serves the needs of oh look, the same group of affluent, politically powerful male people, children can consent to absolutely everything an adult wants, and everything is oh so nicely dressed up and spun but in fact is using women and children's bodies to service men's wants.

It's utterly bizarre isn't it @nilsmousehammer. Courts will only remove children from their birth mother as a last resort. Unless someone else has paid for the baby

Yet courts give tremendous amount of value to contact with birth parents, even if the relationships are very much less than ideal, based on research about the problems of children with identity, mental health and growing up in general when these connections are severed.

Isn't it funny how different research props up different things according to the agenda instead of forming one coherent picture?

To be fair the 'inferred consent' point only relates to surrogacy arrangements on the proposed new pathway. If they are on this pathway the process is regulated and involves e.g. legal advice for all involved, health screening, counselling etc. This means that there should have been informed consent before the pregnancy starts. The Law Commission are suggesting that it should be possible to assume that consent is continuing unless the mother withdraws it.

I am not necessarily saying it's the right approach but they are not simply saying that the'll assume consent if there's not objection. They are inferring the continuation of consent from a previous informed and express agreement to consent.

Thus the findings of the present phase of the study add to the growing body of literature indicating that the quality of family relationships has a greater influence on children’s psychological wellbeing than the presence or absence of a biological connection between the mother and the child.

The unexpected finding of significantly lower levels of mutuality in both the surrogacy and the egg donation families than in the natural conception families suggests that the absence of a biological link between the mother and her child may be associated with less positive mother-child interaction at age 7.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3210890/

There are no studies that I can find that assess the outcomes beyond the age of 7.

There was a very small study last year of children between the ages of 8 to 17 who were either born to a surrogate mother (ie children who were raised by people other than their mother - only 7 of them) or who were children of a woman who had acted as a surrogate (17). Bizarrely, they asked them what they thought about the proposed regulatory changes.

Personally I don't set much store by what my kids think of the law. I certainly don't think they should be able to influence it.

Did anyone catch the item about surrogacy laws on itv local news? It’ll be on again on plus one and may be on the website catch up later this evening.

basically it was HUGELY biased. I was distracted while watching so may have missed it but it didn’t seem to include any argument against changing the laws/regulations.. if there was anything it would have been brief.

it was part of their “shared content” output so will have been shared across most local news.

I will be complaining about the lack of balance in views.

it’s considered cruel and inhumane to separate puppies and kittens from their mothers at birth, why are human babies worth less consideration?

This puppies and kittens things comes up every time and it bears no relation to human surrogacy. You don't take newborn animals away and give them to human families before they are ready to live independently amongst humans. If the animal mother rejects the litter or is physically unable to nurture them, they will still thrive with a surrogate animal mother. Human babies born through surrogacy and raised by another human from birth thrive too.

Personally, I think the real issues here are anonymous/absent donors and surrogates who don't want to maintain contact with the child and its family even (and it is not easy to find women who want to commit to lifelong involvement) and the exploitation of poor women for whom concepts like active consent and choice of lifelong involvement are pie in the sky.

If surrogacy is to be allowed at all (I don't think it should be), then if the mother withdraws consent in the weeks after birth she should automatically become the child's legal parent, with no conditions or penalty. The only circumstances in which a baby should be given to other parents against their mother's wishes are those in which the mother is unfit to raise a child, and those aren't dependent on whether the mother is a surrogate or not, and should follow the same procedures in both cases.

The article mentions financial pressures. I'd be tempted to propose that if you've made a surrogacy arrangement and the mother withdraws, you remain liable for child maintenance payments until the child reaches the age of 18. Nobody who truly cares about the welfare of the child they have caused to be born could object to that.

I think this surrogacy report also drives a coach and horses through our notions of consent.

I run clinical trials as part of my job. The process for obtaining informed consent, even for use of purely data driven, retrospective trials where we have no impact at all on patient care, is extremely high and reviewed on a case by case basis.

If new surrogacy laws state that there is inferred consent for an arduous, potentially life threatening, non altruistic, commercial purpose, I can make a strong argument for less strenuous measures around consent for much weaker interventions, can’t I?

It's being marketed with a lot of sentiment and spin to elicit 'aww bless' and 'her body her choice girlpowerz'.

A lot of consumer based, capitalist nastiness now comes with pretty shiny bows and a fuckton of sentiment to fool the naive.

The woman whose body grew, nurtured and birthed the child is its biological mother. Genetic material from others may be involved, but it's her biological child and always will be.

Women are not walking baby slot machines for rich people. Children should NOT be created and birthed with the intention of immediately separating them from their birth parent for good. Humans should not be trafficked.

The fact it's all been dressed up in pretty word salad, and involves rich consumers who want babies and none of the hassle of having to think too much about anyone's needs or feelings, particularly the child's and what they are doing to it for their experience of having a cute baby to snuggle, does not hide the very ugly reality.

This article was in my mailbox today. You may find fodder for thought in it.
https://www.thefp.com/p/motherloading-inside-the-surrogacy?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Buying humans is never ok

it was very clear from the get go what the outcome of this consultation would be

What about the rights of the child…. Or does property not have any rights?

Every women who gives birth to a child is that baby's mother.

That's an excellent article from Kirkup and I particularly appreciate his repeated use of the word mother. So many people seem intent on decoupling mothers from their babies.

in that case babies shouldn’t ever be separated from who birthed them and women should have to breastfeed. There are so many counter arguments to this. The surrogate is often not the biological mother.