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/

So adoptive/fostered children, where do they fit in your "every child needs a relationship with their biological parent"?

Adoption and fostering are absolute last resorts for children, when there is no other way to ensure their safety precisely because we recognise the trauma and harm to children removed from their birth parents at any stage of life. Basically children should have a relationship with their biological/birth parent unless it places them at significant harm and even then there are extensive attempts to keep the family together.

Adopted children need considerable support to process their experiences including being separated from their birth parents.

Very different to “I want a child at any and all cost”.

Do people who think surrogacy is OK also support people's rights to sell a kidney? It seems to me to be very close ethically and both be obviously wrong.

I agree

As a UK based surrogate (I carried a child as a gestational surrogate a few years ago) I think the proposed reforms are overwhelmingly positive. They propose regulation of surrogacy agencies, a register so that those born through surrogacy can access information about their origins, and automatic parental orders which allocate parental responsibility to the intended parents (and caregivers) from birth - which is in the best interest of the child.

Adoption and fostering are absolute last resorts for children

@Jellycatspyjamas

Wow. So I was a last resort. Good to know.

I sort of see what you’re trying to say here but you’ve chosen a staggeringly insensitive way of wording it.

This with bells on

@midsomermurderess they’ve apparently published them today - four years later. By their own admission, the majority of respondents were against surrogacy: but they’re ploughing on ahead anyway.

The only law they should be changing is to make surrogacy illegal.

Puppies & Kittens are expected to stay with the mother for min of 8 weeks. In the circumstances of surrogacy babies will be taken with immediate effect. It’s properly f!caked up. Women are a sub class to be used in our increasingly disgusting society. So very very sad.

Lots of comments about no one thinking about the child.

Couples who have a baby do not do so ‘for the child’. They do it for themselves.

A baby’s parent is the parent that they know.

@Paella2022 100%

*Wow. So I was a last resort. Good to know.

I sort of see what you’re trying to say here but you’ve chosen a staggeringly insensitive way of wording it.*

What on Earth? No, the decision to remove a child from their birth parents is a last resort - the law requires that authorities evidence there is no other way to provide safe care within the birth family. That doesn’t speak to the value of a child who is adopted at all.

Both my children are adopted, their removal from their birth family was a decision of last resort, when all other options had been exhausted. They aren’t remotely my last resort, they are loved and treasured beyond measure.

Generally I think women should have bodily autonomy even when other people don’t like it. No payment should be allowed. I would consider it for a close family member.

So in the case of 2 male parents, the mother never even existed (even if she provided her own eggs!)… nice

Couples who have a baby do not do so ‘for the child’. They do it for themselves.

And most parents then prioritise the welfare of that child. They protect them in pregnancy, take pre-natal vitamins, avoid harmful substances, make adjustments to ensure that child has every opportunity to thrive. They don’t start from a place of “let’s remove the child from the woman and the environment they’re familiar with in uterine at the first opportunity”, they don’t willingly introduce uncertainty around their conception and birth, they don’t plan to introduce separation trauma.

The decision to have a child may be made for selfish reasons, but bringing a child into the world demands sacrifice for the child’s well-being.

Agree completely. No one is entitled to a child & certainly no one should be using a women for her body.

@Jellycatspyjamas

so basically you wanted a baby at any cost so you adopted them….

some children come into this world loved and some children come into this world not loved.

If a woman wants to help someone to bring a “loved” child into this world why shouldn’t she.

What if a woman prefers to make £20,000 (“expenses”) by carrying a surrogate pregnancy than by going to work?

A million times this.

@Paella2022

because the expenses have to be justified to the pregnancy.
-maternity clothes
-vitamins
-appointments

the families don’t just hand £20,000 over 🙄

so basically you wanted a baby at any cost so you adopted them….

No, at any cost would have meant IVF, egg donation or surrogacy. I wanted children, I wasn’t prepared to buy a child or to create one through artificial means.

Ah, the fashionable kind of feminism in which women turning their bodies into commodities on the market is all about “choice” and “empowerment”.

Surrogacy, in various forms, has existed since antiquity. Why do you think it’s being liberalised and commodified now? It’s not just about the reproductive technology. It’s about men wanting the right to buy babies. This is seen as progressive, and “reproductive equality” for all.

You fondly imagine it’s about women’s “choices”. It’s not. It’s about men’s choices to buy bodies and own people.

This is the same daft contrarian logic that young women use to imagine that “sex work” is empowering to women. You’re being duped. None of it is about women’s choices. It’s about being able to buy women and their bodies and what their bodies do. So that women are just vessels for commercial transactions and ownership. Anyone who goes along with the “but women’s choices!” is a credulous fool who doesn’t really get it, and is going to get a shock when it turns out that the new progressive era of “choices” turns out not to arrive, but instead means living in a world where women are just commodities to buy and sell, and anyone who isn’t rich or male has no real personhood aside from whatever someone else will pay for them.

I've never thought about from this angle but wow - so true!!

Ah it makes me feel sick that this ‘rent a womb/buy a baby’ shit even happens!? If you’re rich enough you can put anyone through anything basically, it’s awful and once again women are subjected to it - specifically poor women and i’m sick of it, it should be illegal not passed through to be made easier.

As an adopted person this is where I fall too. However Ive been told before that my feelings are wrong, Im actually very damaged, and that I dont know what Im talking about.