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?

oh I see what you mean. Well of course making surrogacy illegal wouldn’t mean that people didn’t break the law and carry on with a surrogacy anyway (same with any other law). However it would make it much much less likely.

And what happens when it does happen?

Criminal prosecution? Prison sentences?

It is actually very difficult to relinquish parental responsibility in the UK.
That doesn't mean that a parent couldn't walk away without much consequence of course.

It may be hard to ascertain what they're up to, but maybe by birth certificate information, by learning information at pre natal appointments if the woman states she is giving it up to the father, check out his relationship status, if it's an infertile woman who is getting custody, check out the situation, fine/jail the person when it becomes obvious that it's a surrogacy. First sign of surrogacy, have the baby removed/put in foster care so neither set of parents can have it. I realise that might be extreme but there needs to be very severe punishments for child trafficking which is essentially what surrogacy is. Harsh jail terms, like 25 years. Really harsh punishments to deter it. And also make sure the traffickers can't have custody of any child ever again. No punishment is harsh enough for this. 😡I feel so strongly about it.

Yes, and make the terms as long and as harsh as possible.

Yep, for anyone organising, paying for , advertising surrogacy. Not for the surrogate.

to relinquish a child in this country you have to wait until 6 weeks after birth, have social care involved, have CAFCaSS involvement to sign the relinquishment. Then social care would be involved in the alternative care for the baby (or at least this is what it used to involve).

any how - looking at countries where surrogacy is common and less common. It’s clearly less common in countries where it is illegal. Making surrogacy illegal won’t guarantee no one ever breaks the law, it will make sure it is rare and that organisation can’t make money from what is effectively selling babies- like they do in the US .

What was he earning per year when he was at his prime, as he is using a women at her prime for a year (as it is at least a full year out of the surrogates life once you take in to account IVF and post partum recovery), surely he should be prepared to pay equal to his worth for using someone elses body for something he is incapable of achieving himself. But alas, I doubt it was even close to that, but still to expensive apparently. Womens lives are cheap in his view.

What an utterly abhorrent man and abhorrent trade, and more and more concerning as we head into turbulant economic times, with more and more women living in poverty.

That surrogacy is even around in 2022, for us to be having this discussion, shows just how far we still have to go for womens/childrens rights. It's absolutely disgraceful it's even a thing still in 2022. Gestational slavery and a violation of the rights of the child is what it is.

What a pathetic, entitled little man. Surrogacy shouldn't be cheaper, it should be illegal, and everyone caught trying to buy a human being should be locked up.

LOL.

So those concerned with the rights and interests of a child and their connection with biological parents want a solution that imprisons their biological parents and puts the child in foster care.

You lot have jumped the shark!

Actually I said I didn’t think the surrogate should go to prison/be criminalised.

Are you just totally ignoring the fact that countries where surrogacy is illegal have very low levels of surrogacy and where it’s legal there is a massive industry around it.

I actually think the law we have in the Uk already is a good one. If people really want to make arrangements without payment they can, but surrogacy isn’t paid or able to be overly commercialised like in places like Ukraine and US.

On the contrary! If a parent is selling children, then they aren't capable of being a parent.

That is where removing the child comes from. That is what happens today if a parent is caught selling their child. They are already removing the child from the parent, and the parent is jailed. It already happens.

Perhaps try and put a little bit of thought into it before you post your responses.

From the in brief UK site: A person guilty of an offence under s 1 faces up to 12 months’ prison and/ or a fine on summary conviction; on conviction on indictment, the maximum sentence is life imprisonment.

Maybe someone should tell them they've 'jumped the shark' for imprisoning human traffickers.

As I said, they already do this, so no reason why they can't extend it to child trafficking/baby-selling.

How would we know what the actual surrogacy rates are in countries where it’s criminalised? Surely if it’s criminalised anyone who engages in it is not going to admit it and as we’ve established it’s not realistic for the state to identify it without an admission.

Oh look what we have here? A mother who tried to sell her 11 month old baby FINED AND JAILED! And, child removed from her care! Oh my gosh! Tell the UK govt according to MRA TeaKlaxon that the government has 'jumped the shark'! 😬🤐

Mother jailed for trying to sell baby for £35,000
This article is more than 11 years old
Two found guilty on child cruelty and slavery charges after newspaper sting at east London hotel
Shiv Malik
@shivmalik
Sat 28 May 2011 05.45
A mother has been jailed for seven years for attempting to sell her baby for £35,000.
The 29-year-old woman believed she was selling her 11-month-old baby girl to a childless couple at a meeting in a hotel in east London last September. But the couple turned out to be undercover reporters from the News of the World who alerted police.
After the exchange, the police, who were listening in an adjoining room, swooped in to arrest the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
In April, she was found guilty at Inner London crown court of conspiracy to commit child cruelty and holding another person in slavery.

www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/may/27/baby-for-sale-mother-jailed

As Whowhatwherewhenwhynow and myself said, it's pretty hard to keep it a secret, basically almost impossible.

the same way we’d know about rates for any other crime I assume.

You can’t seriously think that surrogacy rates will be anywhere near the same in countries where it is illegal as it is in countries where it is legal, easy and commercialised?

you’re grasping a bit now

Stats aren’t based on gossipy neighbours knowing how a family was formed. They’re based on official figures of registrations or declarations etc.

Surrogacy is essentially only prosecutable if the parties admit that is what they did. Otherwise they’re just two people who conceived a child where one of them decided they did not want parental responsibility and allowed the other parent to exercise sole parental responsibility. It is simply not possible to prosecute that unless those people shout out ‘hey we did surrogacy’.

So of course they’re not going to say that is what they’ve done! And of course official stats will not reflect their situation.

Well no - enforceable crimes generally demand either a victim to report it, or an action so incontrovertibly unlawful as to make a prosecution possible even without an obvious victim.

In a surrogacy arrangement there is no observable difference that can be made between John and Mary who have a one night stand resulting in an accidental pregnancy where Mary decides she wants John to have sole parental responsibility ; or Jim and Liz who plan to conceive with the intention that Liz hands over sole parental responsibility to Jim.

There is simply no mechanism to identify between the two situations.

Exactly, such as birth certificates where a father or mother isn't named or where something arouses governmental suspicion. Custody papers would have to be filed, and if custody shows the father having sole custody being in a relationship with another male, that's a giveaway. As I already said, prenatal appointments, health visitors, arrangements like that, it simply cannot be hidden. It's impossible to hide that it's a surrogacy.

There’s really so much wrong with this. We can understand why they’re not comparable when you think for even a second about WHY the case you references is a crime.

What harm is it trying to remedy? It’s obvious that providing a child to someone who is not their parent without a formal, legal process to assign them parental rights is fraught with risks for the child. There is no vetting process to ensure they are suitable parents for the child and no record of where the child lives for safeguarding.

That doesn’t apply when it comes to a child being brought up by their biological parent. And if their partner wants to obtain parental responsibility then they need to engage in a formal process to do so.

Thats why if a woman decided to divorce her husband and childrens father - she wouldn’t be criminalised if she gave him sole custody and parental responsibility in return for a larger financial settlement, for example. Because you cannot ‘sell’ a child to their parent!

None of that amounts to evidence.

Do you know how often births are registered without a fathers name? That is not evidence of surrogacy.

The fact that the father is in a relationship with another man? Also proves nothing. People have one night stands while in relationships. Absolutely no way to prove it was premeditated rather than a fumble that resulted in accidental pregnancy.

Ante natal checks etc - I’m not sure what you think that would give away? The couple just rock up and say ‘yeah unplanned pregnancy - we’re not together and the dad has a partner. The mum doesn’t want the child so she’s going to give parental responsibility to the dad’. How on earth do you prove that she’s lying?

What I am saying is that it can be based on this law.

A gay man is not likely to have a ONS with a woman.....

Residential status would show this. If a woman gives sole custody (and applies to terminate her parental rights) then a reason has to be given, paperwork needs to be filed, and a woman giving up Parental Rights to give sole custody to a man in a gay relationship is a dead giveaway. It's really quite simple.

It's not something that can be hidden, no matter how much you stretch to make it so.

I don't know, but I do know gay people who had some straight sex/relationships before coming out as gay. Some people are straight for a long time before living as bi.