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/

I do wish people would read the linked article. Two things jump out:

1. These are simply recommendations by the Law Commission(s), not policy.
2. The recommendations actually tighten up on what has been some fairly slack loopholes in the law since the 1980s, especially as regards the woman carrying the child. They’re actually proposing giving more rights to surrogate mothers and the resulting children.

If you don’t agree with surrogacy at all then this probably isn’t going to change your mind. But presenting it as some kind of free-market rent-a-womb proposal is highly misleading.

You’ve put what I was trying to say more eloquently than I did.

Plenty of people including myself who have been through infertility are against surrogacy.

Thanks for highlighting this OP.

Agreed that it is grotesque. All about the needs of adults instead of the rights of children.

I agree some of the proposals are problematic but some seem positive, eg the DBS/medical checks and surrogacy register.

Surrogates "freely choose" much in the same way that the women and boys on the kerb in your local red light district freely choose.

They needed the money.

Rich people don't sell themselves like this do they?

Absolutely agree. Infertility is a horrible thing, obviously, but equally so is the practice of paying potentially venerable women to go through pregnancy. Surrogacy is all about exploitation.

I doubt that the baby who has developed for 9 months inside the body of the woman who gives birth to it, to then be removed from her and handed off to someone else, cares whose egg was used at conception.

It's not about the baby's needs at all. It's morally repugnant. To create a child with the intention to remove it from the woman who carried and birthed it should be illegal. I don't care how much someone has struggled with infertility. To do this to a baby is wrong. And that's before we even touch on the exploitation of women.

No thoughts of the child...... no I didn’t think so. 😏

Surrogacy is f*cking disgusting. It's people trafficking. It's buying babies. It's abusive to both poor and vulnerable women and their babies that are taken from the only mother they know.

Well, how can you guarantee there is no exploitation? What does freely choosing it actually mean? There's a reason that wider spread commercial surrogacy is carried out by poorer women.

This puts it perfectly.

Wholeheartedly agree with this.

I don't really understand the idea that you would automatically think the birth mother was your mother. If the birth mother was using the eggs of the woman who raised me then I would view the woman who raised me as my mother 100%. I could imagine being adopted, then I might consider my birth mother my "bio mother" as I came from her eggs. But I just don't get the whole "well you were grown inside or her so she is your mother". Legally that might be the case at the moment, but I wouldn't view it that way.

If you don’t think you could be a surrogate, then don’t be one. Other than that, keep your hands off the bodies of other women who have the right and the capacity to make their own decisions. Don’t come at me with “think of the baby” trope either- that’s lifted from the anti-abortion playbook verbatim.

I have been infertile (am infertile - cannot conceive) and I’m against surrogacy.

I struggle with the mental gymnastics of who is/isn’t the mother. Quite rightly, when a woman/couple uses donor gametes because her own eggs are too poor, we say she is the mother when she births and keeps the baby.

Exactly the same thing happens in surrogacy but somehow the surrogate is no longer the mother. You can’t have it both ways.

I have been through the pain of infertility and ended up childless. It still hurts sometimes.

I am 100% against surrogacy or artificial wombs.

Because it's not about someone who wants to be a parent.

It's about the babies who do not deserve to be fucked up with attachment disorders from birth.

I think surrogacy should be banned if the surrogate mother and the couple wanting a baby are from different countries. Also, no money should be given to the surrogate. This opens up too many opportunities to exploit women from poor backgrounds who are desperate for money. Also, surrogates should only use the other woman’s egg, not her own egg or a donor egg.

I also don’t agree with egg ‘donation’. It’s usually young women desperate for money.

Desperation doesn't excuse almost anything. This isn't about surrogacy but it's reminiscent of it for me.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/23/nigerian-politician-wife-doctor-guilty-organ-trafficking-uk-ike-ekweremadu

I've no doubt that the parents were in extreme distress, considering how ill their daughter is and how desperately they understandably wanted to find a kidney for her but it still doesn't excuse their actions and neither do fertility issues excuse using a surrogate.

@Nalupa I agree 100%

I have small children. It is raising them, and potentially my genetic link, that makes me their Mum.

The time in utero was really not the part that I see as being particularly important- especially from the perspective of the child.

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

Inaccurate misrepresentation. If you want a serious conversation, I suggest you start with factual information.

Please email your MP and tell them what you think - do it today.

A child’s needs must come first. And to those saying the surrogate isn’t related to the baby: you’re wrong. Her blood feeds and nourishes it, her body grows it, her body is deprived of nutrients while the baby takes them.

While I have every sympathy for those who can’t have their own children, we must never underestimate the impact of pregnancy and birth on women’s bodies and brains, and the importance of the mother and baby bond.

These are monstrous proposals.

I also don’t agree with egg ‘donation’. It’s usually young women desperate for money.

I agree. There is a dark exploitative side to egg donation especially overseas where young women are targeted by clinics. Also egg sharing schemes in this country where women are offered cheaper IVF in return for sharing their eggs.

“It's about the babies who do not deserve to be fucked up with attachment disorders from birth.”

Do you have any evidence for this sweeping generalisation @lifter?

I used to feel very uncomfortable with the whole notion of surrogacy, but my lovely neighbours, after years of heartbreak and fertility treatment, had a baby via a surrogate a few months ago.

They are so happy, their baby is delightful and much loved, and most days I see how very happy the 3 of them are. I have really changed my views about it.