Janice Turner on Surrogacy

@Paybill You are entitled to feel, with hindsight, that you needed more support; but that doesn't necessarily mean the adoptive parents were responsible for providing it, or that they did something morally wrong by accepting the child. Your decision to conceptualise the pregnancy as “surrogacy” seems to have been a coping mechanism, but you can't impose the obligations of a genuine surrogacy arrangement onto people who weren't actually in one.

Good question. But definitely need to look at the reasons why women are carrying babies they are not related to. Mine was early menopause. I was flooding in my mid-20s. Cosmo is discussing how to have a great sex life, not how to look out for early menopause. It was not discussed anywhere. By the time I met a guy and married him I was 35 and my egg count was NIL. So a consequence for me is osteoporosis. My GPs missed totally early menopause, I haven't ever been on HRT. But there has never been follow up or academic interest in the impact of carrying a non-related child. A good research project.

Interesting. Very strong statements. I am the mother of a donated-egg conceived child, now an adult. It is only in very recent years that there has been public discussion that not only did I provide the environment for the baby, but that some of my genetic material might have been transferred. I wasnt a surrogate, but provided the safe, secure environment, for the foetus, then baby. Sorry can't remember the technical term. I keep meaning to research more. Anyway, the general availability of DNA now makes much of the decision making 20-30 years ago superfluous.

I've just done so.

Taking a newborn baby away from its mother forever immediately after birth is most definitely “not focusing on the needs and rights of the child”. Even kittens and puppies get a few weeks with their mothers after birth.

I wrote to my MP some time ago about this. Eventually I got a copy and paste waffly response back along "be kind" lines plus "how could anyone possibly object when some people can't get a baby any other way" kind of thing.

I doubt he even read my letter as he's the idlest MP, and it was probably one of his acolytes replying. So he'll vote for it without the slightest consideration of the issues.

I do admire Janice Turner and the way she digs deep into an issue and then manages to express it so well in just a few column inches. Obviously I admire her particular stance on this.

In years to come,the prevalence of DNA testing will be such that no one will be able to avoid the, sometimes, uncomfortable truths about a child's genetic origins. The child will grow up and may ask awkward questions.

The child barely gets a mention in surrogacy agreements, other than as whose ownership it becomes.

The whole process is designed to meet the needs of the adults - the donors, the surrogates, the agencies, the prospective parents.

If the process centered the child, the adults would find egg donors who match their characteristics, not choose super models and elite athletes.

They would be allowed to know who their egg donor is - their biological mother. In most cases this info is withheld.

They would be allowed to bond with their surrogate and be slowly weaned off her, both physically and emotionally. She would be around for the first few months. But atm there are hospitals where they deliver the baby in one room and rush it through to the prospective parents in the next room, never to be seen again. In some countries and US states the prospective parents' names are on the birth certificate, so the child never gets to know who birthed them.

These children will be brought up to accept all this as normal. No one will be interested in their confusion or sadness over their loss. They will be expected to be grateful.

Avoid fuelling the gestating unit with alcohol, soft cheese and sushi, and limit caffeine intake as these can negatively impact on the product.

The 'care for the baby' programme is installed in gestating units as a factory setting. Override instructions are included, but we do not take responsibility for user error.

Yeah. it is a ridiculous statement.

As if a human can be constructed in a factory without every single growth element of that human being the product of the gestating unit.....

It is not necessary for a surrogate to have a genetic link to the fetus

'It is not necessary for a birthing unit to have a genetic link to the consumer product'

'Anyone can buy a baby if they want!'

It's been written on here plenty!

Do explain how saying how the parents have and discharge their responsibilities to the child is not focusing on the needs and rights of the child.

The change in UK law in 2005 away from egg sharing arrangements was a massive mistake. Although the couples never met, each couple helped the other. But have you ever spoken to donor conceived children? Very different views to those adopted in the 50s and 60s under a shame shadow.

I recommend Alev Scott's book Cash Cow to anyone who is interested in this. She stops short of condemning surrogacy, probably because she has personal friends who have purchased babies through it, but it is a really eye-opening piece of investigative journalism, mostly on the fertility industry in North Cyprus.

One of the quotes from the book that really sticks with me is from an older Cypriot woman who says “I am a mother. If I carry a baby inside me, it has my blood. It is made with my blood. Is it not?”
The author somewhat brushes it off, as she does with some other evidence of the harms, but even when she's a bit dismissive she still includes the evidence.

I have never heard anyone mention the child’s needs. The baby is a commodity to be bought and sold.

So simple and so true. Thank you for saying it.

I agree with most of the article, but I don't think it's helpful to describe motherhood as 'sacred'. I know some people think it is, but it makes it sound a bit woo, and as though the only objections are religious.

There are real practical consequences to attempting to retcon mothers out of the picture and treating them as more disposable than a breeding bitch.

I think surrogacy is akin to the trade in organs. We ban payment for very very good reason and even so there is well recognised potential for coercian in altruistic donation. How often do you hear of someone’s “employee and long term” friend donating a kidney to a very wealthy individual?

I say this as someone who has had far more experience with IVF than anyone ever should. It still didn’t change my mind on surrogacy and I am strongly against anonymous sperm and egg donation.

And yet the surrogate will always have a genetic link to the child. Cells from foetuses remain within the mother for her life through out different parts of her body.

And it was her body components that were directly used to build the foetus. For instance, Calcium from her bones built the skeleton of that child.

There will always be a link between those two people.

There's something very cold about this post

Is there an organised lobby or letter writing campaign?

On September 7, MPs will debate abolishing the last vestige of humanity accorded these women by the UK: the right to change their mind. After appearing on This Morning, fashion entrepreneur Adam Frisby and his partner Jamie Corbett, who had a daughter via an American surrogate, raised over 100,000 signatures for a government petition calling for a surrogate mother’s rights to be removed at birth.

Currently, whether a baby is bought abroad or born after an altruistic surrogacy arrangement in Britain, commissioning parents must apply for a parental order to ensure the surrogate genuinely consented and to allot a social worker to assess the child’s welfare. Checks are far less rigorous than for adoption: these orders are almost always granted. Even so the surrogate’s name appears on the original birth certificate as “mother” and she can assert her rights to the baby for six months after it is born.

We have the late moral philosopher Mary Warnock to thank for preventing surrogates here from being reduced to Handmaid’s Tale vessels. As author of the landmark 1984 report on reproductive ethics, which established the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), she wrote: “Perhaps what I am saying, is motherhood is somehow sacred, as other aspects of nature may be; and if babies become commodities, we shall have lost something irreplaceable.”

What a brilliant article. Quite sobering.

Odd how the needs of the child rarely feature when surrogacy advocates talk.

You are focusing on the adults, not on the child's rights or needs