*I believe we must always default to the woman who carries the pregnancy. Her body, her child. She may choose not to see it that way, but the ethics of the situation must default to that position and allow her to willingly relinquish her child. Because in the case of a woman who can't or won't give up her child I don't want a law that can rip a child and the mother who created her apart because: contract.
The law in the US horrifies me.*
The law in the UK does default to the woman who carries the pregnancy. That's precisely how it works.
The law doesn't differentiate between:
A pregnancy where the baby is genetically the birth mother's
A pregnancy where the baby has been conceived via donor egg and carried by the birth mother
A pregnancy where the birth mother is a traditional surrogate and the baby is genetically theirs
A pregnancy where the birth mother is a gestational surrogate and the baby has been conceived via donor egg
A pregnancy where the birth mother is a gestational surrogate and the baby is genetically the intended mother's child
In all cases the birth mother is considered the legal mother
The rights of the surrogate must be protected
However most surrogates don'tbelieve the current legal framework does protect them as they would wish
Most surrogates almost universally don't want UK law changed to permit commercial surrogacy but do want the law changed to permit pre birth orders if that's what the surrogate wants
@mustbemad17 is a surrogate and has strongly advocated for pre birth orders, she has argued that this would offer surrogates significantly more legal protection if they had access to them. current framework for parental orders means surros have no protection if IPs were to hypothetically change their mind.
bananafish you've said yourself this friend is someone you've met through the the surrogacy community. its about disingenuous to pretend you would have been friends if you'd not gone down this route.
Absolutely agreed. And I don't pretend otherwise. We wouldnt have become friends if we were not starting to explore this route. DH and I haven't yet decided if we will pursue surrogacy at all. Much less whether we would proceed with this particular match. We have become friends through these circumstances and I am happy to have got to know her, regardless of how things pan out
*The woman who wants to do this for you, her dream to grow, nurture, sustain and birth a child for another person - that is not a normal dream to have. I find it quite strange and would be uneasy around someone so keen to do this that if you don't allow them to do it for you, they'll keep going until find someone who will. If she was your sister or lifelong friend it would read a little differently - but in this case it is frankly troubling. I would wonder about her motive, her mental health, her attachment to the state of pregnancy that she is so keen to do it another 4 times for complete strangers.
I can understand that you are so desperate for your own dream to be realised that you are prepared not to dig too deeply. I genuinely do understand that.*
I actually share your view. I do still find it strange that a woman would want to do this. I cannot imagine wanting to do this. It's not something I would be able to do. That's one of the reasons I've valued chatting to so many different surrogates. Because I am trying to get my head around why a woman would choose this path. You've suggested I don't want to dig too deeply. I actually do very much want to dig deeply! It's not a normal dream to want to carry someone else's child. I entirely agree. But the women who choose to be altruistic surrogates do feel this way. I wanted (and still want) to better understand why. We haven't yet decided if we will proceed with exploring a match precisely for this reason. The woman in question has undergone extensive implications counselling to explore her motivation for wanting to surro. If we were to consider exploring the possibility of proceeding with a match, I would want us to undergo counselling together. I cannot speak for her, I can only take her at her word that she feels her children are the centre of her world, and cannot imagine not having a family of her own, and that because she has had such easy pregnancies she would love to be able to make someone else's family complete. I cannot make the mental leap between the first and the second.
The only comparison I can make is that I would have loved to have been able to be an egg donor. I have lots of eggs and make great embryos. I would have loved to have been able to help another couple to have a much wanted and loved child. I am not eligible to donate eggs because of a family medical history, and now I'm too old anyway. But I appreciate others wouldn't understand this drive - so that's about as close as I can get to even having a vague comprehension of her motivation
I know you think that I am brushing this under the carpet to pursue a selfish desire to have a family, but that genuinely isn't the case. I don't know if we will proceed for that very reason, and out of a deep concern for any surrogate's physical and emotional wellbeing.