To make you aware that surrogacy is going to be liberalised

[VestaTilley]

Today, the Law Commission have published their final recommendations to Government, calling for reform of surrogacy laws in the U.K.

The proposed change would make commissioning parents legal parents at birth. That means that the birth mother would never be regarded as the legal parent, nor would she be listed on the birth certificate.

This has been privately lobbied for behind closed doors, away from women and maternity groups for years. The Law Commission consulted in 2019, but never published their responses or said who had fed in to their consultation.

Law firms and surrogacy agencies are rubbing their hands with glee today: I feel physically sick.

They would have you believe surrogacy in this country is “altruistic”. This is not the case. Women can receive upwards of £20,000 per pregnancy in “expenses” - which is a huge financial incentive to a woman if they are from a poor background.

Do we want to live in a society which creates a servant class of women? Which takes babies away from their mothers at birth?

When pregnant we are all advised to bond with our babies, breastfeed if we can and speak to our babies in utero. How does the NHS square this advice with making it legal for a child to never legally have a connection to its own mother?

If you are in anyway concerned about these proposals please, please contact your MP and raise all the noise you can to try and stop this before it is too late:

https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/surrogacy-laws-to-be-overhauled-under-new-reforms-benefitting-the-child-surrogate-and-intended-parents/

@2bazookas - I've not heard/seen men openly talking having chosen a specific woman to have a child with. Perhaps there are some men who actively sought out a seemingly fertile / appropriately gene'd /attractive / talll / slim / whatever woman but I'm not convinced it's anywhere near as common as the thousands of gay men driving through their desire to be parents is fuelling the surrogacy business.

When I was watching that video of the two gay guys they came across as incredibly entitled and misogynistic in the way they spoke about deciding on on a surrogate - like it was some sort of beauty parade with the prize being the opportunity for the lucky woman to be the one to hand over her baby to this particular pair of self-obsessed dimwits who have so little self-awareness that they'd likely be utterly unable to comprehend why anyone wouldn't think them the ideal parents.

Women are rapidly being silenced, pushed out of society and treated as embryo developers. Try criticising any of this and you get shut down, often by women

Utter rubbish. This is why proper psychological evaluation is needed to ensure everyone goes into it with their eyes open. You might as well say PMS causes women to become aggressive; women are not passive creatures being humbly led by hormones. We are autonomous and can make choices.

I don’t agree with adoptions from abroad as they are often very problematic ! Yes, it is a situation where the needs of the adults are taken into consideration, and I am aware (sadly through family experience) that not all adoptions work, but I think there are quite vigorous hurdles for potential adoptive parents to get through to try to mitigate future problems, and some support is available to both parents and children.

As far as I am aware the only criteria for surrogacy is the size of your wallet. This is not enough safeguarding, and yes, I am aware that no one monitors naturally conceiving parents with sometimes awful outcomes. But babies are not puppies or kittens , they are human beings and should not be in a market place.

We are autonomous and can make choices.

The baby can't.

It's not just allowing people with more money than intellect to treat human life as a product but it will create an industry to abuse women. I would even say in some ways it's worse than the sex industry as you're more likely to have health problems/die after giving birth than after having sex.

Hear, hear.

So going from that argument, you would be fine with people selling their own organs? With proper psychological evaluation.

Surrogacy is cruel and abusive. Ripping a baby away from its mother at birth is traumatising.

If you can't have kids I'm sorry, but buying a baby is not the answer.

Indeed - and how many surrogates will have any idea of the risks they are being exposed to?

Surrogates have died, eaving their own children motherless.

Children with disabilities have been abandoned by commissioning parents.

Children have been "bought" by paedophiles.

The CHILD is the one at greatest risk. Everything about the legislation should be abut what is best for the baby. But it seems that it is about what is best for the people who commission the child.

I expect it correlates closely with availability of contraception and abortion. Choices for women.

It IS gross.

It reduces a woman to an incubator and a baby to a product.

It is a vile and disgusting trade.

@Indoorcatmum You might get to that position regarding the rights of the birth mother and the commissioning parents (terms are controversial but used here for clarity not to endorse), but what about the rights of the baby?

"The only option". No, the don't have a right to a child. The only remaining option is to not have a child

I wonder why this is though. Is it made difficult for mothers who decide during pregnancy that they do not want to raise the child themselves?

When they have a viable alternative, very few women who don't want a baby choose adoption. They choose abortion, or they raise the child themself because there is the financial safety net to do so, and no strong negative societal consequences against it. Women 'choose' to relinquish babies for adoption when it's not really a choice, either because abortion is not possible, raising the baby themself is not financially possible, or it's socially not possible. It's not made difficult, it is entirely possible to relinquish a baby in the UK, but I think it pretty telling that that choice is rarely freely made when other choices exist.

Surrogacy is pure selfishness. It’s all about what people with money want rather than what is best for a baby, child or the mothers carrying them. It needs to be banned, not made easier.

No-one has a "right" to a child.

Children are not commodities to be bought and sold.

Poor women's wombs are not commodities to be rented

Yes - I am sure that the pain of infertility is horrendous - but we all go through pain in our lives. Buying a baby, renting a woman's body, is not the answer. Sometimes we just have to accept that we cannot have the thing we want more than anything in the world.

And for those who claim that it is an altruistic act, to relieve the pain of the childless - the day I see a wealthy white woman bear a child for a poor black one is the day I will believe that,

Wow I had no idea people were so against women using surrogates for infertility. I think it’s an amazing thing to do for someone. Please the women that are reading this who hope to use a surrogate in the future because of infertility, please know that not all women think like this.

There’s several people on this thread with infertility who have said they’re against surrogacy, because it’s not just about them and their feelings. I am another one. My close friend offered to carry a baby for me, I loved her for offering, but I said no.

The Law Commission were not asked to consider whether surrogacy should be legal, they were asked to propose ways in which surrogacy can be brought up to date. The proposed reforms include regulation of surrogacy agencies, a surrogacy register so that all those born through surrogacy can access information about their origins, and a process (involving appropriate safeguards and consents) to allocate parental responsibility to the intended parents (and caregivers) from birth (which is in the best interest of the child, IPs and surrogate). Even if you believe surrogacy is inherently wrong, these developments are all steps in a positive direction from the current unregulated situation - where children born through surrogacy have no ability to access the story of their birth origins and surrogates are vulnerable to the whim of IPs who could change their mind about accepting responsibility for their child.

It is only comparable if the man had chosen his partner through trafficking rather than someone he’d fallen in love with. You don’t choose your child’s mother from a catalogue.

For all those people who are shocked that a lot of MNers are vehemently anti-surrogacy, all forms of surrogacy are banned in:
France
Spain
Italy
Belgium
Switzerland
Austria
Iceland
Norway
Finland
Turkey
China
Malaysia
Serbia

And several US states.

It's not an 'out there' opinion.

Even the word 'via' is horrible.

Kind of like having a baby delivered 'via' a courier or 'via' Amazon.

The whole thing is so dehumanising and I am opposed to it in all circumstances, even 'altruistic'.

Wow I had no idea people were so against women using surrogates for infertility. I think it’s an amazing thing to do for someone. Please the women that are reading this who hope to use a surrogate in the future because of infertility, please know that not all women think like this everything is about your wants.

Fixed it for you .

The child does not consent to this.

In adoption, the chouce is between being living in care or being adopted.... in this case the child still suffers trauma but the decisions to adopt improves the outcomes.

In surrogacy... the decision is made before conception to cause harm to the child to meet the wants of the adults.