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/

Because the carrying person is a woman who has made a choice with her body to help another woman be a mother.

I would gladly help my friends or family members be mothers and fathers.

Not sure if it has been mentioned yet but the use of donor eggs leads to an increased risk both to mother and baby

Often it seems this is done in surrogacy purely to make sure there isn't a genetic connection between the surrogate mother and the baby.

https://evidence.nihr.ac.uk/alert/assisted-reproduction-using-donated-eggs-has-higher-risk-of-complications-for-mothers-and-babies/#:~:text=These%20risks%20include%20high%20blood,multiple%20pregnancies%20following%20donated%20eggs.

Yes, I agree. Not enough status is accorded to people unable to have children. However there is a lot that they can achieve in life which can be very fulfilling.

To answer your questions from my perspective: yes, yes, and yes.

to address other points:

• The surrogate mother is growing the baby. Using her own flesh and blood. It mightn’t be her egg (and in fact statistics show she’s at greater risk of complications from an implanted egg) but she still uses her own body to create this life.
• surrogates do it because they want to, but I’ve never met one who was even comfortably off financially.
• expenses are relatively easy to inflate and not be questioned in court. I know this because I work in that exact sector, although I no longer take on parental order work.
• Many other first world nations have banned surrogacy.

We can of course agree to disagree, on this though:

I currently know a surrogate on her journey and she has spoken about how it protects her and she welcomes the change. That is how my opinions are forged and I don’t see them changing.

Can you (or the woman you know) point me to the part of reforms that protect her if she changes her mind? People do, change their minds...

Oh, and just to add, the scrutiny of finances - such as it is - ends with the making of the Parental Order. There is literally no way to find out about any under the table or delayed payments.

I think your op is misleading. The surrogate has the same rights. The problem before was that only the surrogate could consent to medical treatment for the child. It causes delays for the child and no surrogate wants the responsibility or hassle of that. Hospitals can't continue to work with that set up indefinitely - it's fair to no one and is not going away unless you ban Surrogacy or do something like this. It also implicates ips from the moment of delivery, meaning they're unable to just float away (vanishingly rare occurrence) and are able to step up in the hospital (because the surrogate is keen to return to her own children and doesn't want to do care, ever - if she did, she would have had a baby for herself).

It protects her because she doesn’t want to keep the baby at the end of her journey. A baby that is not biologically hers and is nothing to do with her or her husband (currently he has a legal obligation over the child, more than the biological parents!)
This makes sure she will not be legally forced to. It gives her peace of mind.

They study bank statements pretty carefully in many instances. I suppose you could arrange a very delayed payment but it wouldn't happen in practice because what guarantee does the surrogate have that it would be paid into their account, a year to 18 months down the road? None.

This shady world is not representative of current surrogacy in the UK. A surrogate who was keen to do this type of deal would probably be clocked by other surrogates and but vouched for - it's quite a self regulating world at the moment.

not

Surrogates want protection for their minds as they are currently made up. They do not tend to change them but the current legislative mess does cause them grief

But yes if they change their mind they have the same rights for six weeks

YABU for assuming no-one reads or listens to the news.

Don’t gatekeep a beautiful experience from others by being ill informed and not doing your research. Have some shred of empathy.

Or how about, don't harm babies by being ill-informed about the readily available 70+ years of research showing the damage which removal from their birth mother can cause. Have some shred of empathy for the children.

The child should come first, but surrogacy is all about the wants of the adults involved. However wanted and cherished they are by the purchasing parents, however quickly they are removed from the birth mother, surrogacy deliberately inflicts a loss on the child (one which can have life long impacts, as I and others have posted) in order to give the adults what they want. That's not okay

I regularly donate blood that doesn’t means I have a claim on the person it goes into. The theory is the same...

I have met many surrogates who are comfortably well off, although all have been SAHM so I wonder if there’s potentially a bigger conversation about pregnancy and working women here at play that skews that data.

Of course they are easy to inflate, it doesn’t mean everyone does it, insinuating it happens is unfair to the majority who play by the rules. If they’re known to be inflated by those who work in that exact sector then it is their responsibility to highlight it to keep the bad eggs from taking advantage and ruining it for others.

Politics and religion play a big part, most more left based secular nations (especially in Europe but also including Canada and Aus) have a similar system to what is being adopted in these changes.

Your saying it's a rare thing just shows how little you know about Surrogacy in the UK. It's not a rare thing at all - it's not what always happens but contact continues more often than not because there are so many IPs that surrogates are able to choose the people they want to be friends with. They have a getting to know you period lasting a number of months - fake friendships are hard to keep up with that kind of contact and commitment. Sometimes things break down at that stage but that's no bad thing as the relationship needs to be resilient. If you were part of a surrogacy organisation you would know these things.

It is utterly grim and nothing will convince me otherwise.

My DH is Irish and I see significant support for surrogacy there. It makes us despair. It’s not so long since children were being forcibly removed from their mothers for adoption, never to know them. I am so surprised at the appetite there is to repeat history. Little has changed it seems.

Have you been under a rock for the last twenty years? These issues are intensively discussed! By no one more than surrogates who are exceptionally clued up on potential worst case scenarios and discuss the various possibilities regularly.

I work with children and I have a ed psych degree - trust me children are at the heart of every professional decision I make. It is backed with research and experience.

I would really like to see the research you and others keep referencing please point me in the direction of the accredited journals where the research clearly shows the detrimental effect surrogacy has on the child’s development and wellbeing…

Trauma is most often created through associated loss, if a child has loving parents and family they have not lost that developmental support plus surrogates often stay in the child’s life. The babies have their needs met by loving parents and family who care for them.

I work with lots of children who are not loved or cared for and I can assure you they have trauma and I wish that people would throw their energies into fight battles to help make sure children who need support get it. Stop arguing about how loving family units are wanting to raise healthy loved children and please all write to your MPs to shout about how underfunded CAMHS is, or how stretched social services are, how early intervention is non-existent in many authorities, how schools cannot afford counsellors etc. if you all cared about damaged children this is your battleground!

Yes that is so true. The damaged children are those needing early intervention therapy because the family unit is fragile, or on a waiting list for eating disorder help, bullying help, SEN support. If this is about the children, why is there not more energy and passion for these greater needs? Because there is no bank of research articles or psychiatric waiting list of surrogacy kids.

THIS!! All of THIS!!

I'm sorry but I find it horrid that rich celebs, many times because they don't want to destroy their figure, use surrogates. Or have a baby natural and then keep adding to their family via surrogacy. You never hear of a rich celeb being a surrogate for Joe and Jane Johnson, for free, because they want to help.

🙂

Not read through this thread but where is the child perspective in this case?

I thought part of the attachment process starts in the third trimester already or is this incorrect?

But yes if they change their mind they have the same rights for six weeks.

No she doesn't, she loses rights at the birth. She would have to apply for a parental order within 6 weeks. Those aren't rights you have they are right you want back.

But six whole weeks to change her mind? I'm just thinking this through...

Recovering from a possible birth injury or c section, blood loss and replacement, adjusting to post-birth hormones and milk production (and prevention if a pill is given) and a post birth body, returning to family routine or maybe work, hoping the hormones settle soon.

Struggling with the emotion and regret and convincing herself, as others might, that it's just the hormones and not the wrong decision after all. Having conversations with a partner who is proud of her great achievement but who definitely doesn't want her to change her mind and bring a newborn as a family member in who isn't quite part of the family. How would their kids feel? How can they afford another child?

Realising the loss is not baby blues and concluding that she does want to keep the baby that she has no legal rights to parent, finding legal representation that will take on her case, finding the money to secure that legal representation, thinking, writing and submitting a petition to the family court and a parental order application.

All in six weeks (4 in Scotland).

How might a judge view this when the baby is not in her care, she is not on the birth certificate. The baby is loved and cared for and getting into a routine with the commissioning parents. She is just a surrogate, after all, not a mother.

My friend is looking to be a surrogate - not for money in any way, she lives a very comfortable life and just wants to help couples with infertility. So there's your scenario 'that doesn't happen'. My cousin has a child with his husband via surrogacy and he is the most loved little boy you could imagine, I know the surrogate and she couldn't be happier. Lots of assumptions going on in this thread. Lots of people 'shaking'.

It's not all bad. NGA Law and other pro surrogacy law firms are annoyed, the proposals certainly don't give the pro surrogacy lobby everything they had hoped for.

Apparently some surrogacy agreements involve payment of rather more than "expenses" includes an element of benefit or compensation. Who knew! 🤷‍♀️
And with expenses payments strictly regulated not so many women will be keen to do this so there will continue to be "a chronic shortage" of women keen to do this wonderful altruistic thing for very little money. How surprising.

www.ngalaw.co.uk/law-commission-final-report-surrogacy-law-reform-key-takeaways-response/