Janice Turner on Surrogacy

Simply that my donor-conceived child, who has no legal rights to know their biological maternal line, will now, most likely be able to get there due to DNA being available easily and cheaply to the general public. But the idea that my genetic material could have transferred to them is amazing. Wish I could remember the term. I always believed my duty to them and care of them was to ensure their environment was sound. As back then there was no belief that I could share my genetic material. Science moves on.

I’m not a family law expert, but a parental order is not possible with no genetic link, so it becomes adoption.

I suspect it comes back to what is in the best interests of the child. If the commissioning parent(s) are otherwise acceptable as parents then it would be hard to argue that adoption to a third set of strangers is a better outcome.

It’s not a criminal offence to pay commercially for surrogacy as an individual but it is a criminal offence for an agency to profit from arranging a surrogacy.

What would the authorities do if a couple had purchased a baby abroad who was not genetically linked to either of them? If it's illegal but there's no enforcement, then illegal activity is being enabled.

I understand the broader point you're making about poverty, vulnerability and whether a woman’s choice can ever be completely free when she has so few alternatives. But I think there is still a fairly significant leap between that and saying that economically empowered adoptive parents have a moral obligation not to “remove the babies of the poor or vulnerable”.

The adoptive parents didn't make you poor or vulnerable, and they didn't create the circumstances that led you to place your baby for adoption. Unless they coerced, pressured or otherwise exploited you, I'm not sure it follows that accepting a baby who needed a home makes them morally responsible for the inequalities surrounding your decision.

You can look back now and feel that you needed more support, or that adoption wasn't what you emotionally understood yourself to be doing at the time. Those feelings deserve to be taken seriously. But that doesn't necessarily mean the people who adopted your baby wronged you.

I also think there's a difference between saying “vulnerable women need better support and genuine alternatives” and saying “therefore people who adopt from vulnerable women are participating in exploitation.” The first doesn't automatically establish the second.

Ultimately, if your understanding of the pregnancy as “surrogacy” was a way of making sense of relinquishing your baby, I can understand why that framework felt meaningful to you. But it doesn't create obligations on the adoptive parents that they never agreed to and, presumably, didn't know existed.

What’s the alternative though?

Birth mother presumably doesn’t want the baby as otherwise she’d not be signing the parental order, particularly surrogate mothers in the far flung bits of former soviet territories.

Give baby up for adoption when there are 2 people who are genetically related to the baby, and otherwise sound as parents?

There isn’t really any outcome that’s in the best interests of the child, assuming there is a willing British individual who wants the child, to strike down a parental order due to expenses. The closest they’ve gotten (publicly) was the 70 something parents who commissioned a baby from the US.

I am, of course, ‘entitled’ to feel however I want and while I accept that the adoptive parents are not surrogates I find that situation -just like that of surrogacy- to have ‘obligations’ not to a legal definition of ‘genuine surrogacy’ but rather to a moral standard where economically empowered people do not seek to remove the babies of the poor or vulnerable.

In countries like the US where poverty bites harder than the UK and accommodations for mothers are fewer newborn adoption, rather like surrogacy is an industry which profits at the expense of the birth mothers.

But no parental order has ever been refused on the grounds of excessive "expenses". Even ignoring the fact that UK citizens are permitted to purchase babies abroad, commercial surrogacy is tolerated and effectively legalized here.

In the UK at least, you need to apply to the Family Court for a parental order if you have used a surrogate in order to have legal parenthood. The birth mother is recognised as the mother until this is granted.

I’m old fashioned in that I think the ideal is a heterosexual couple bringing up children. However for adoption, if it’s a choice between a child being brought up in a children’s home or being raised by a gay couple, obviously the latter would be preferable. My gay son agrees, before anyone leaps at me screaming homophobe.

Surrogacy should be banned for anyone.

It’s also not a decision that’s taken without the involvement of the courts both at initial removal and at the point the removal is made permanent. I don’t know what involvement courts have in surrogacy?

In these cases, removal at birth is the "least worst" option, and this decision will not have been made lightly, and the reasons will be documented by qualified professionals. Children adopted in the UK are now given full information about their birth parents and adoptive parents know this when signing up. Because it's acknowledged that lying to children about their background is harmful.

All in all, the complete opposite of surrogacy.

There's a current trope pushed by queer theorists and others who weaponise children in support of their own niche agendas that families don't matter and can easily be replaced.

Strong overtones of the days when babies were whisked away from 'unfit' mothers and children weren't always told that they were adopted.

It's not comparable though is it.

There will be specific reasons for the baby to be removed and they will be weighed against the harm done by removal.

Nobody is saying 'never mind, the baby won't know any different, we'll just pretend the mother never existed.'

So if a child has to be removed for their safety and wellbeing, you are acknowledging that it isn't always better for them to be with their birth parents. Not sure why you were disagreeing with me.

Do you mean has someone considered, and someone else funded research that might undermine the whole"surrogacy is awesome" argument? Ummm...

Long time ago I saw this online and to me it sums up attitudes to the woman carrying the baby:

This was in the news this week:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-27/qld-mother-births-biologically-unrelated-twins/107083918

Of course it's always better for children to remain with birth parents. Children in the care of the state do terribly on all life measures. However, sometimes it's necessary to remove a child for their own safety and wellbeing. There are always consequences for the child with national data showing that these children are immensely vulnerable for all sorts of reasons.

There's a current trope pushed by queer theorists and others who weaponise children in support of their own niche agendas that families don't matter and can easily be replaced. Our national data about outcomes for children shows that to be untrue.

But even then the baby and mother will see each other, under close supervision, a couple of times a week. This is specifically because of the view that it is damaging to babies to withhold their birth mother. I think about 6 months is the minimum period before an adoption order is made - up till then, mother and baby will be meeting regularly at contact centres unless the mother refuses to take part.

Totally disingenuous and I think you know it.

I didn't cite that practice in favour of surrogacy, just to be challenge that it is always in the best interests of the child to remain with its parents from birth.

That's safeguarding the baby where the mother is likely to be a risk and has actively harmed them by taking drugs through pregnancy - drugs that the baby is born addicted to.
Using drug addicted babies to justify wealthy people trading in babies for their own wishes only demonstrates that there are no good ethical arguments for surrogacy.

This practice is reasonably common for babies whose mothers are drug addicts.

I am sorry this happened to you, and thank you for telling us your story 😢