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

I don’t see why other people think they get the right to tell other people what they can or can’t do with their reproductive organs.

I've pointed this out many times but am yet to get an answer from the pro-surrogacy crowd: Do you also think the laws forbidding the sale of organs (including reproductive ones) should be rescinded? After all, why do other people think they get the right to tell other people they can't make their internal organs available for purchase?

the surrogate is not the mother - but the surrogate offering to grow another couple's baby for them.

Sounds like a mother to me.

Who do you think the newborn baby considers its mother? The person who grew it out of her own body and shared its bloodstream and oxygen supply for 9 months? Or a woman who it knows nothing about whatsoever, even if she supplied the egg?

Haven't read the full thread but for that money I'd consider it. My wages are crap so that would help.

@CornishMaid1 by your reckoning, a woman who has had a baby via IVF using donor eggs is not her baby's mother.

I'm sure you'd argue that is wrong. So which is it? Because both can't be true.

I believe there should be a binding surrogacy contract so that the surrogate cannot change their mind and decide to keep someone else's child

Another advocate of ripping babies from their mothers arms. And in the UK the woman who gave birth to the child is quite rightly the mother legally.

I really wish posters would stop saying that this is about telling women what they can do with their bodies. This has nothing to do with women’s bodies and everything to do with what women should be allowed to do with the bodies of babies who it seems do not have the right to a say in who they are bought and sold by.

Let’s put it like this. If a man pays a woman for sex should that man have the right to do anything with that woman he wants? No? So how is it then that if a woman pays for a baby (and let’s be honest here, it is generally women who have this huge biological urge for children,) that baby isn’t entitled to any kind of autonomy until it becomes old enough to say exactly what it thinks of having been a commodity.

And it’s not the same as couples having children naturally. You want a baby as a couple, then you have sex and create one. If for some reason that is not possible, then you have to buy into the fertility process. Even the IVF one. The difference though is that with IVF you generally have the couple’s embryo it is just created outside the uterus but is still carried by the mother and is the couple’s child in every sense.

Once you start paying for someone to carry that child for you, and in some cases even be the biological parent of that child, you have turned that wish for a baby into a business transaction which is no longer about creating life, it’s about what you want.

And nobody answered my question about straight surrogacy. If the surrogate is the biological parent of the child what impact do you think it has on that child’s siblings when he/she is sold at birth?

If a woman can choose to use her own eggs to be a surrogate, does that also mean that a couple who fall pregnant can decide to be surrogates instead of keeping the baby and give some couple the chance of being parents? And if not, why not?

A couple who fall pregnant can give their baby away, its called adoption.

Yes they can Alsohuman. But they cannot give their baby to just anyone - they have to give their baby up to be cared for the by the state if kinship adoption is not possible. Babies are not possessions to be disposed of on a whim - they are humans with their own rights.

Incidentally, couples do not fall pregnant, women do. Your manhood is showing again.

Hardly the place for pedantry is it?

Thing is, if a woman decides to be a surrogate then she has a baby for a couple not for a woman

Therefore, if a woman falls pregnant it is still part of a couple. And if that woman decides to give that baby up for adoption the father also has to consent.

A couple who fall pregnant can give their baby away, its called adoption.

Couples 'fall pregnant' now, do they? Interesting.

Adoption happens when, for whatever reason, the mother (the one who 'falls pregnant') cannot or will not take care of her baby. This is usually because of extreme poverty or accidental pregnancy, neither of which are considered desirable situations. So adoption, under conditions strictly regulated by the state, is considered the least worst solution to an unfortunate situation.

Entirely different from a woman intentionally becoming pregnant and giving birth with the express purpose of giving the baby away at birth.

There is surrogacy without payment typically a mother giving birth for her daughter or a sister for a gay brother. It's the payments that are an issue, personally I'm very uncomfortable for any payments beyond parking for appointments, maternity clothes and loss of earnings for any maternity leave taken.

typically a mother giving birth for her daughter

"Typically"?

By the time her daughter is of child-bearing age, her mother would likely be in her 40s or 50s, so probably infertile or at least well past her peak fertile years. And in this 'typical' situation, would she use her daughter's egg for the pregnancy, thereby giving birth to her own grandchild?

Doesn't sound 'typical' at all.

Oh ffs, anyone who disagrees with you must be a man? Your misandry’s showing. And you’re wrong.

I believe there should be a binding surrogacy contract so that the surrogate cannot change their mind and decide to keep someone else's child.

If the Law Commissioners' recommendations are accepted that is exactly what will happen - in direct contravention to the recommendations of the United Nations Special Rapporteur.

The report presented by the Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children to the Human Rights Council noted the presence of abusive practices in both unregulated and regulated contexts and provided analysis and recommendations on implementing the prohibition of the sale of children as it relates to surrogacy.

Among key recommendations:

Create safeguards to prevent the sale of children in the context of commercial surrogacy....which ensures that the surrogate mother retains parentage and parental responsibility at birth.

Create safeguards to prevent the sale of children in the context of altruistic surrogacy, which should include, where altruistic surrogacy is permitted, proper regulation of altruistic surrogacy (e.g. to ensure that all reimbursements and payments to surrogate mothers and intermediaries are reasonable and itemized and are subject to oversight by a court or other competent authority, and that the surrogate mother retains parentage and parental responsibility at birth.

Ensure that in all parentage and parental responsibility decisions involving a surrogacy arrangement, a court or competent authority makes a post-birth best interests of the child determination, which should be the paramount consideration.

The Law Commissioners' recommendations if adopted will place Britain on a footing with countries such as the Ukraine (with whom the Law Commissioners chose to consult), Russia, South Africa and some states in the USA. Great Company to keep.

You keep saying that and it's not because you disagree with me that I think you're male

It's important that we use the right language. Women get pregnant. Women who give birth are mothers. Calling women who carry a child because they've been paid to do so surrogates makes them invisible.

Every child has a mother. We were all women born. Children born through surrogacy arrangements should not be denied that.

@OrchidInTheSun, you haven’t actually mentioned that you thought I was a man before so I don’t “keep saying it”. There’s nothing offensive about using the terminology these women use themselves. They call themselves surrogates.

Erm, I’m not male and I think that the recognised term is surrogate. Why does calling them women mean so much. Everyone knows that only women can carry babies do they not?

YABU it's up to women what they do with their bodies.

YABU it's up to women what they do with their bodies.
Is it up to women what they do with their babies? Sell them? Give them away? All okay with you?

Exactly, and those babies grow up...

Mother, not surrogate. The terminology is important because it (deliberately I suspect) dehumanises the child's mother.

YABU it's up to women what they do with their bodies.

OK I'm short of cash, can I sell my child on ebay?

The terminology can get very Handmaid's Tale when it comes to surrogacy and ethically dubious adoption.

What about if I can't be bothered to look after my child anymore, can I gift them to my childless friend.