Mark Feehily wants surrogacy to be cheaper and accessible for everyone

[Wouldloveanother]

www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-11141771/Westlifes-Mark-Feehily-discusses-privileged-expensive-surrogacy-journey-welcome-daughter.html

Why are men so entitled?

Mark from Westlife, not Shane

m.sundayworld.com/showbiz/irish-showbiz/westlifes-mark-feehily-wins-british-diversity-award-for-surrogacy-laws-work/41432609.html

Utter bastard. Surrogacy is human trafficking.

Man wins diversity award for campaigning for women to rent out their wombs more and cheaper. The mind boggles.

So is he suggesting “intended parents” have parental rights from birth?

@EmeraldShamrock1 Thank you. Obviously I don't agree with full term abortion without a medical reason either! Surrogacy is more difficult. I can only say I find it irritating that many feminists present an argument around women's choice that is inconsistent to me. It seems ridiculous to me to be concerned about infants but quite happy to kill full term foetuses. I am afraid I probably will decide I'm against surrogacy, not for any of the feminist arguments, but probably because I have boundaries around late term abortions and value the rights of foetuses and infants, if that makes any sense. Rather sad I am not a feminist any more, apparently!

@ThickCutSteakChips what I'm saying is that it's all things that are considered & covered as much as any other unforeseen circumstance can be

@Whowhatwherewhenwhynow I'm just pointing out that you are saying you would support any funding to help resolve that issue, which could, for instance be the cost of ivf in the same way that it is for childless couples who can carry a child. It currently isn't like that.

No one "has the right to the use" of another's body but yes women do have the right "to choose" to be a surrogate and that's what @gnilliwdog is also suggesting

Ladies, if you’re not renting out your womb at an affordable price then you are just money grabbing and selfish!

What an entitled and deluded prick!

@Minster2012 Sorry, I am still on the fence! But I think it could be argued women have a right to choose, if we are going with that as trumping any other considerations.

As I posted up thread, recently also being posited by Aled Jones (again, not that one) Radio 1 head, and sympathetically listened to by a member of the HOL. This will be pushed and pushed now.

I agree his comments are somewhat distasteful.. but I’m somewhat on the fence about surrogacy. Are there any articles out there by now adult children born to surrogates? Or research on what happens to them and / or their birth mothers? Or even posts by the mothers several years down the line? I think those are the perspectives I’d be interested in hearing.

Agree. Surrogacy is awful. Just another entitled man thinking womens wombs and children are commodities.

I don’t think this data is collected in any meaningful way. And surrogacy hasn’t been around THAT long, so it’s probably too early to get a good view as to the overall quality of life of a surrogate gestated baby.

@MrsRinaDecker there aren't many, maybe in the future something to consider. What kind of things would you want to know?

@ParvuliThankYouDebbie the surrogacy laws here in the UK have been under review for at least 4 years now, including when to determine parental rights, no reason it will get pushed more now

@gnilliwdog yes sorry that's what i meant. feminist arguments often contradict each other I guess or are only used in certain scenarios

I mean this photo sums it up for me really. Babies in Kyiv waiting to be collected by their foreign ‘parents’. Not being cuddled or loved, just having their essential care done by a person in plastic gloves and a mask. I’m quite disturbed by it.

I think the UK may be in more danger than Ireland of opening the door to commercial surrogacy. Although UK law prohibits it now, it's easier to change the law now that the UK is no longer constrained by Article 3 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which prohibits paid surrogacy. Campaigning is well under way.

Scotland is already funding surrogacy, meaning the NHS pays the full cost for the end users.

I think most of this thread is a hatred of gay men or a child not having a mother and father. I'm sure it wasn't your intention, Minister2012, but this comment is homophobic. Gay men, MLM, and same sex male couples are as able to understand the complex issues presented by surrogacy and the alarming global context as well as anyone else, and many will have the same concerns and reactions you see here. Treating gay men as if they all have some kind of hive mind/groupthink and suggesting that gay men are inherently unable to see or care about women's rights and well-being is reductive and othering; it's essentially the flip side of the "argument" that heterosexual women can't "really" be feminists. No one should be shamed or limited because of their sexual orientation.

How can there be equality between a heterosexual couple who are biologically capable of reproducing and a same sex couple who aren’t? How can you campaign the government to make it so that a gay couple has as much rights to have a baby as a straight couple? How are they supposed to provide that exactly?
It doesn’t even make sense. Equally can’t be achieved in that situation.
The current laws are not there to deprive anyone of rights and for the most part it is the opposite. They are there to protect women and children.
He is campaigning for something that makes no sense and getting an award for it.

@Minster2012 I guess I’d be interested in whether surrogate babies / children have attachment issues at significantly higher rates than the general population or (for eg) higher incidence of mental health issues.
In terms of the mothers, do they have regrets? Do more or less look back and see it as the right thing if they were commercial vs altruistic surrogates?
I think you can only really judge with hindsight, but of course hindsight is way too late if the damage has been done.

It was definitely not my intention @wackamole I was trying to wade through most of the comments.

@MrsRinaDecker yes it would be interesting. In the uk all surrogacy is "altruistic" though, and I'm trying to ascertain if ppl think "just having the expenses" covered is not enough when actually there is no limit on what those expenses can be.

@Whowhatwherewhenwhynow hasn't answered as to what funding you would help with then if I were in that scenario? What about changing our rules to be like Scotland's?

Part of the "rights for the child" is also going to a family that love them as opposed to staying with a mother who doesn't and laws that protect both families are needed which is why the parental rights time frame is a tough one on both sides

Jesus Titty Christ, there is some wilful ignoring of feminist history on this thread. With apologies to adoptive parents on here who are only doing their best and loving their children, adoption is the least bad choice for children. We know this and

OF COURSE FEMINISTS ARE AGAINST ADOPTION
Do you think feminists were protesting or cheering when the Magdalens were finally shut down? Do you think feminists love the idea of rich women 'making donations' to the church and walking out of there with poor women's babies? Do you think feminists think the act of getting pregnant out of wedlock meant women should be separated from their families in shame, or forced into marriage in shame (I'm the product of that by the way so come at me if you think it's a good idea...)

OF COURSE FEMINISTS ARE AGAINST ADOPTION
Do you think feminists want a world where women are left in desperate circumstances, with violent men, addicted and abused, with no state support stepping up to help them, set up to fail their children and themselves, resulting in traumatised children in awful family circumstances having to then be removed in a protracted and dehumanising process, handed off to wonderful adopting parents who cannot, no matter how hard they try, heal those wounds?

OF COURSE FEMINISTS ARE AGAINST ADOPTION
Was it plane loads of feminists swarming into Haiti to or China to pay thousands to fixers and corrupt governments to 'adopt' children with families?

This adoption is the same as surrogacy argument is spurious. Surrogacy is the deliberate creation of a child for sale. And may the lord fucking open.

Part of the "rights for the child" is also going to a family that love them as opposed to staying with a mother who doesn't and laws that protect both families are needed which is why the parental rights time frame is a tough one on both sides

but that ultimatum wouldn’t exist if people didn’t commission babies would it? So how much do these ‘commissioning parents’ love the baby, knowing they’re creating it to be put in that position?

There ARE no good surrogacy models. Altruistic surrogacy is quite often emotional blackmail. I can very well imagine a sister, cousin, friend etc offering to be a surrogate on a spur-of-the-moment type thing, then feeling utterly unable to go back on that after seeing how happy that makes their sister/cousin/friend. I can imagine somebody feeling they’re ‘doing their bit for diversity’ or ‘doing it because they love being pregnant’ but then, once more complicated waters are entered later on, wishing they hadn’t done it.

But @gnilliwdog who is happy terminating full term pregnancies? Late term abortions are incredibly rare in the UK, the stats were on another thread and I cba to look them up as I'm not your personal google, but I'm sure it was something like under 5% of all terminations in the UK and all were termination for medical reasons. Women aren't doing this and actually they aren't campaigning for it either so maybe stop with the straw person arguments?

@MaChienEstUnDick I am glad the UK law does not allow full term abortions for any reason. In fact, I don't think any country offers it in practice, though it isn't always illegal. But it is the prevailing feminist stance - abortion, on demand, for any reason. I was addressing any feminists on this thread who hold that view, and only one person denied it. So, I would think many feminists on this thread must support this policy.