To say there is no such thing as "altruistic" surrogacy?

[FannyCann]

To say there is no such thing as altruistic surrogacy and that this fiction is a massive state sponsored fraud?

The Law Commission has a Consultation to review surrogacy laws in the UK and you have til 11th October to respond.

There are 16 questions relating to payment, but they find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Admit women are paid for this “service” and recommend full commercial surrogacy puts the UK on a par with countries such as Uganda, the Ukraine and Russia. The UN Special Rapporteur links commercial surrogacy with the sale of babies. So of course we don’t do that in the UK. Oh no. We have “altruistic” surrogacy here. Surrogates are merely recompensed for expenses incurred as a result of the pregnancy, plus the odd “gift”.
So altruistic that from the Law Commioners own research into payments surrogates have been receiving, the median payment was £14,795.54 and 9.61% were paid more than £20,000.

Payments were claimed for things like takeaway meals and cleaners.

This is clearly State Sponsored Fraud. I challenge anyone to produce receipts to prove their pregnancy cost them £20,000

I also suggest that this puts surrogates in a tricky situation should HMRC or the benefits office ever take an interest in the origin of that £20k. It is very wrong for the law to encourage this fraud.

I ask you to look at the background and if you want to have a say into whether commercial surrogacy should be allowed in the UK please respond.

Here is a link to the Nordic Model Now template which you can download and use to respond in ten minutes.

https://nordicmodelnow.org/2019/08/30/how-to-respond-to-the-uk-surrogacy-consultation-in-10-easy-minutes//_

You can find moe background and discussion of the Consultation on this thread.

Building families through surrogacy: A new Law - Consultation
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3649812-building-families-through-surrogacy-a-new-law-consultation

BTW @LilyMumsnet I've been intrigued by the suggestion that the phrase used by @fannycann was racist and so I've been doing some googling and cannot find anything to support that assertion but multiple articles that undermine it.

Lola, but I think that we need to look at this holistically rather than based on anecdotal evidence. Yes, some women choose to do surrogacy based on altruistic reasons but many women may feel coerced etc...

But surrogates aren't the babies' "mothers" in the traditional sense of the word. They have no "motherly" intentions towards the baby from the off.

This to me is typical of the mental gymanstics you have to go through to justify surrogacy.

The "surrogate" gestates the baby for 9 months, creating every cell of its body from her body. She then pushes it out of that body, which will be ready to feed and sustain the baby.

She is the baby's mother. That baby would not and could not exist without her. Motherhood is not a state of mind. It's a biological reality, however much in denial surrogacy advocates may be in this regard.

Adoption cannot be helped at times but surrogacy is actively doing this on purpose.

This. Since we've had those supporting surrogacy stating that those without fertility problems shouldn't have a say, I'm wondering how many of you grew up without your mother? I did, lost her as a very young baby and it has left an ongoing wound that will never heal. Deliberately creating a child to be removed from it's mother as a tiny infant is barbaric IMO. Our society and our legal and social systems are geared towards keeping mothers and babies together with removal being the very last resort. Until we talk about surrogacy and then everything we know about what is best for children goes out the window. There are good reasons why very progressive European countries have outlawed this practice.

@AlsoHuman Controlling fertility means choosing how many children to have and when to have them. For me its pretty much the most fundamental part of women's rights. It means being able to choose to abstain, choose to use contraception and choose to have an abortion (though I agree with the current limits in the Uk). Without it women are at the mercy of potentially constant pregnancy leaving them unable to control their lives.

At no point does thisinvolve the right to get an embryo implanted into you, grow a baby and sell it for profit.

The contracts in the US seem to grossly undermine the bodily autonomy of the surrogate as well by restricting what she can and cant do during the pregnancy.

So, talking of mental gymnastics, if a woman has an ivf pregnancy with a donor egg, is she the mother?

@GlitchStitch, I’m very sorry you lost your mum, that’s awful but not comparable. A surrogate baby is handed over to its parents immediately, it has no experience of the woman in whose uterus it grows.

So, talking of mental gymnastics, if a woman has an ivf pregnancy with a donor egg, is she the mother?

According to many pro-surrogacy posters - including at least one on this thread - no she isn't, because they believe that if a woman gestates and gives birth to a child using someone else's egg, then she is not the 'biological' mother.

it has no experience of the woman in whose uterus it grows.

Other than growing inside her for 9 months, feeling her heartbeat and listening to her voice, no, no 'experience' at all.

Normally we consider it cruel to separate a tiny newborn from its mother at birth, and try to avoid it except in the most extreme circumstances. Yet with surrogacy, we're supposed to pretend it's all fine and dandy, so as not to hurt the feelings of adults.

Alsohuman - are you really female? Because you appear to have a very poor understanding of how gestation works. The only thing that a newborn baby knows is it's mother's smell, her heartbeat, her voice, her taste. the gurgles her digestive system makes.

They don't come out with a factory reset

So, talking of mental gymnastics, if a woman has an ivf pregnancy with a donor egg, is she the mother?

Yes, that's what those who oppose surrogacy are saying- the woman who gives birth is the mother regardless of whose egg is used. It's pro surrogacy posters who are reducing the role of mother to gamete supply and suggesting pregnant women just carry a baby around for a few months like in a backpack before handing it over to it's rightful owners.

A surrogate baby is handed over to its parents immediately, it has no experience of the woman in whose uterus it grows.

the baby has 9 months intensely intimate experience of his or her birth mother.

the woman in whose uterus it grows

Usually reerred to as 'the mother'.

Thanks @IcedPurple. So all the arguments about growing every cell, pushing the baby out into the world are spurious. The owner of the egg is the mother, even though she may never have even been in the same room as the eventual parents. There doesn’t seem much logic to this.

Women should control their own fertility except if they want to be a surrogate.
Babies suffer separation trauma if parted from their mother except if she only donated the egg.
Women who use donated eggs for their pregnancy aren’t really mothers.

It’s all a bit complicated, isn’t it?

I’m very sorry you lost your mum, that’s awful but not comparable. A surrogate baby is handed over to its parents immediately, it has no experience of the woman in whose uterus it grows.

Why isn't it comparable? I wasn't much more than a newborn and have no memory of her or of being in the womb. Why is my loss awful but the one that occurs though surrogacy celebrated?

Alsohuman, wow what a way to demean pregnancy and childbirth. Are you deliberately ignoring the fact that women create the baby in utero - it's not a fully formed being put inside for safe keeping. The baby has no concept of the world outside of the mother it is inhumane to purposely rip the child from all that they have known in order to satisfy a need by the parents.

Thanks @IcedPurple. So all the arguments about growing every cell, pushing the baby out into the world are spurious. The owner of the egg is the mother, even though she may never have even been in the same room as the eventual parents. There doesn’t seem much logic to this.

Well not when you choose not to read people's posts. I was quoting the arguments made by pro-surrogacy folks. Or maybe you're being deliberately obtuse?

Women should control their own fertility except if they want to be a surrogate.

Surrogacy creates an innocent child with the purpose of removing him or her from their mother at birth. So it goes beyond a woman's right to control her own fertility.

Babies suffer separation trauma if parted from their mother except if she only donated the egg

You made that up right now.

Women who use donated eggs for their pregnancy aren’t really mothers.

According to the pro-surrogacy crowd, absolutely.

I’m really sorry that trying to sort these arguments into some kind of logical construct is demeaning.

I personally don’t have an issue with surrogates. That’s pretty obvious by now. I don’t have an issue with people disagreeing with me but there are a lot of posters tying themselves in knots here and I do have a fondness for logic.

@AlsoHuman I clearly explained the difference between women controlling their fertility and selling babies for profit.

Seems pretty logical to me.

What logic is that? Set it out for us in one post and we can answer for you.

But it doesn’t seem remotely logical to me. You haven’t even begun to convince me. Not that it matters anyway. I’m happy to agree to disagree.

Alsohuman but you have attributed to IcedPurple the complete opposite of what they said.

The other thing that occurs to me is that as a society we don't have enough respect for pregnancy and childbirth and its effects on women. The idea that it can be reduced to a commercial process doesn't sit right with me.

here is a link to the Law Commission rather than to other threads on mumsnet or websites telling you how to respond

s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/lawcom-prod-storage-11jsxou24uy7q/uploads/2019/06/Surrogacy-summary.pdf

In particular those who are, have been or might be involved in surrogacy are of particular interest to the Law Commission

I think people that may want/need to use a surrogate should have less say in the laws. They are bias and they're going to justify surrogacy at any means so their want for a child can be fulfilled.

At least woman who have children understand what it means to gestate and give birth to a child.

I can't imagine a mother (in the tradition sense) feeling a newborn has no connection to the woman who just carried it for 9 months, or to equate a mother's role to just providing genetic material.

Its true that a small percentage of people will want to gift a child to a friend or relative, but allowing that creates an environment where other woman can be coerced or pressured - either emotionally or financially to become surrogates. Surrogacy also ignores a newborns need to be with its birth mother. So in my opinion surrogacy shouldn't be allowed on any terms.