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/

Are you suggesting UK citizens haven't acquired surrogacy services in India, and all over the world?
Are you suggesting surrogacy is completely different depending on what country it is in?
Are you suggesting that in the global 21st century any one country can be taken in isolation and the rest of the world ignored?
Are you suggesting that looking at countries who have really strengthened laws against surrogacy might not be useful when your country is trying to liberalise them?

Did you read the link? Either you didn't, and you should learn...or you did, and your only comment was about yourself feeling patronised.
I'm not sure which is worse.

Yet AGAIN no mention of the child just people getting to do what they want. Tells me a lot...

It's not just about 'what women do with their bodies'.

What second question? Someone else said this was open to abuse and you said that wasn’t what happened in the case I linked?! You’re clearly disingenuous, I made clear I was recalling a memory of a story and then I posted a link to that story to give the full picture - what’s your issue with that exactly?

You keep trying to redirect the conversation to force me to answer your claims of what you’ve decided I believe, rather than address your original comments to me.

Seeing as I’m happy to actually answer questions and defend my position though, here’s your answer: I would ban surrogacy completely.

I don't know about you, but I can (and do) focus on women getting more opportunites and equality AND not being used as baby growers for others.

It's actually very easy to do both at once. In fact its the same thing.,

It is - particularly love the umlauts!

Exactly it’s all ‘I want it so I should be able to have it’

The third one disappeared - not sure why 😆

Right oh, more opportunities to meet men's wishes? Women's bodies being used as commodities to incubate babies and to provide men with sex.

But in so far as me thinking I know better, I do recall it was you who were calling women concerned about the impact of surrogacy on the mother and the child bad feminists - this is what you said - . It takes all kinds of women and everyone has the right to an opinion. You're not the kind of feminist we want if that's not your attitude.

So get off your high horse.

If it's all kind of women then you shouldn't be telling women we are wrong for being concerned about women being controlled for money.

Perhaps Autocarrot fears a surfeit of umlauts? 🤔

God knows. it's temperamental enough. 🙄

I had to look up the word umlaut then 😊

This thread has taught me many things:

• gestating a baby and giving birth to it has as little significance as a hen sitting on an egg laid by another hen - you're just keeping it warm

• commissioning parents can cuddle away the deep wound caused by being torn from your biological mother at birth - no big deal because you just love them THAT much

• babies born from donor eggs don't actually belong to the woman who gave birth to them - should someone tell all those women who got pregnant with IVF using donor eggs?

• nobody would ever create a child for the purposes of abusing them - preposterous

Can I sell you my five-year-old because I'm a woman and all my 'choices' are valid? Oh and children are commodities.

God forbid" your child isn't LGBTQ+ or infertile

Does being those things give you the right to buy other humans then? Are there other perks 'LGBTQ+ or infertile' people are entitled to which I don't know about?

There must be an evolutionary advantage to mother and baby bonding IN THE WOMB.

If not the mother would do nothing in pregnancy to protect the development of the baby.

Ditto to the idea of evolution making mother and child chemically bonded after the birth. Otherwise mother would drop and run I presume.

if those processes are not there the human race would die out as the young/babies would have no hope of survival.

To therefore minimize that to advance a practice that may well harm the baby, and the mother seems gaslightly at the very least.

the discussion around surrogacy has a whiff of “affirmation “ only. Very bad way to discuss anything.

Even when you sell puppies you legally have to leave them with their mother for 8 weeks. Until we have genuine fairness and equality then there are too many risks with surrogacy, the biggest is that the surrogate mothers are trafficked into surrogacy, or forced in by poverty.

Your last sentence is key. I realise that you want to ban it. However you're not going to achieve that (even if you were there is an argument for making it as safe and legislated as possible until you had) and this is a way to safeguard children now. Trying to prevent legislation that will safeguard children now is counter productive because this is real life, not a projection of your ideology. So in the circumstances we have (rather than the imaginary world in your head) children are already at risk and this legislation would make them safer. But you don't want that. Why? Is your ideology more important than making real children safer in real time? This is something I don't understand. You reference a notorious and rare instance but reject the very legislation that would have stopped him and is available on the pretext that you'd prefer a method of stopping him that isn't available. If this isn't about you, why aren't you reaching for what will be effective and available?

While the vast majority of children born through surrogacy are much wanted and well looked after (shown by the fact that almost all PO applications are successful), there is still an aspect of their care which your resistance to this legislation jeopardises. These children exist and are not able to access health care without the doctor jumping through hurdles getting the surrogate on the phone. She is generally busy and doesn't want the intrusion or the responsibility. So the legislation would help them majority of children and surrogates are overwhelmingly in favour of it because they don't want to parent these children - they want to help someone else be a parent. Same as before, would you like the existing babies and all those to come, who cannot disappear and will definitely be brought into existence, to wait needlessly while a doctor tries to contact a person who doesn't care for them to ask their permission to give an injection? Children are paying for your principles. We legislate for the world as it is currently, not our ideal.

I think the "can I sell you a 5 year old comment" is really getting to the heart of it. Commercial surrogacy is not doing something with your own body, it's selling some else's.

Oh and I should have said your second comment to me, not second question. It was your first question.

there is still an aspect of their care which your resistance to this legislation jeopardises. These children exist and are not able to access health care without the doctor jumping through hurdles getting the surrogate on the phone

This is the third time I've asked this on this thread. Is there any evidence at all of this being true? If a child needs emergency medical treatment,doctors can legally give it without parental consent. If a child needs medical treatment and the parents for whatever reason won't consent, a hospital can wake up a judge and get a court order to override them. So how are children born via surrogacy unable to access healthcare? When my adopted DC were placed with me but the adoption order hadn't yet been granted, I had paperwork from the local authority (which was the legal holder of parental responsibility for them at that time) to allow me to make any medical decisions. I can't see how users of surrogacy wouldn't or couldn't have the same thing, and instead doctors are having to chase up surrogates to give consent. I just don't believe that is happening.

There is no evidence of it being true, as it is not true. No Dr has to get the surrogate on the phone to give treatment to a child born from surrogacy....only one parents consent is needed for it....

It's about the babies being trafficked.

LakieLady
I am sure your neighbours are very happy, they have what they paid for, a living breathing human being. In the 50s , 60s and 70s we had hundreds of thousands of babies taken away from their real unmarried mothers and given to childless people. Like your neighbours they got a delightful child to love and make them happy. The real mother (I will never use the words birth mother as this was a term thought up by social workers so as not to cause any upset to the adoptive mother ) The real mothers role was purely as a vessel to grow the child for a more deserving person who was married and respectable, they couldnt use the words real mother, because this would make the adoptive mother the unreal mother wouldnt it? The real mother was left to grieve for that child for the rest of their life. I know surragacy is different but the child is a commodity exactly the same as the child of the 50s, 60s and 70s adoptions. I am not against adoption as I know there are lots of children who need a loving home. I know there are thousands of loving adoptive parents out there doing a wonderful job caring for and loving these children. What I am against is purposely creating a baby to satisfy another human beings needs. We can't always have what we want can we ? I expect to get lots of flack for what I have just written.
I speak from my own experience as one of the mothers who's babies were stolen from us. We have just received an apology from the Government for the barbaric forced adoptions from the 50s,60s and 70s . Maybe in another 60 years the Government will be apologizing for the mistakes they are making over Surrogacy.

They do luckily have the perk of being open minded which can't be said for everyone.

If you are a parent you will realise the life upheaval pre and obviously post baby arrival, it's a life changing choice that particularly for people unable to conceive naturally have done nothing but consider for the entirety of their adult lives. Women and men from the moment they are sexually active have to make decisions based on when they want to have children.
To then get to an age, a life stage or financial stability and be told it's never going to happen for you, has been devastating for them and as I have previously stated people have lost their lives from this.

This thread is full of angry women who chose to only see surrogacy as exploitive rich white people.

Women who choose to be surrogates should be able to choose this and be supported by her fellow woman and not be judged because you wouldn't make the same choices. where is the feminism here? I'm sure we all live and have lived very different lives but when people use language like this thread towards this situation you cannot expect to be met with anything other than an argument.
I'm willing to listen to this as a discussion but I am not here to tell any woman they are wrong for their choices with their bodies. As I have already said if you do not agree with surrogacy then do not make it a choice for you. If you don't agree with it's reform then that is also obviously fine there's parts of surrogacy that need procedures in place this I agree with i.e financial incentives but to call surrogacy "abhorrent" "vile" "Petri dish" not quoting you just from this thread, is in short fucking disgusting and is missing the point of the post itself.
Surrogacy on the majority is humans helping other humans, with every evolving scenerio there are people who exploit the only way to overcome this is to review, reform and protect constantly, which is what is happening.

This comment was to someone who is clearly a goader and a troll.

I'm so sorry @bringitonnow the wrongs done to you and the women like you are horrific. I was pleased to hear of the government apology even though it does very little (I imagine) to repair the damage caused.

Reading your last sentence reminds me of this blog I read which makes the same point you do.

stopsurrogacynowuk.org/2023/03/20/what-about-the-children-guest-post-from-alan-neale-canfordheather-short-read/

I'm so sorry you went through that. I can't imagine how horrific it must have been for you. I hope it doesn't take 60 years for people to realise that surrogacy is human trafficking.

You are factually incorrect on numerous levels. You do not understand what you are talking about, at all.