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/

Agree with this. I also wonder how many women might agree to be a surrogate, only to change their mind during the pregnancy or after birth.

legal battle to get my baby -* *sorry, but to me that sounds so wrong somehow. A baby you’ve commissioned, you’ve bought.

MN likes to go nuts about surrogacy, but it is the only option for some people who don't want to adopt sometimes something just isn’t meant to be. As sad as it is, sometimes someone just isn’t able to have children, and the “nobody who hasn’t struggled to conceive can possibly understand” is a weak argument to shut down opinion.

Nobody has the right to have a child. Sometimes there are ways to make it happen, other times there aren’t. Just because something can be done,doesn’t mean that it should.

Never ceases to amaze me that no-one ever seems to think of the child in these situations, all they think about is their longing for a baby, which, while difficult for many, doesn’t take account of the bigger picture.

It’s interesting that you never see multiple posts from surrogate children talking about wonderful it is that they were conceived through surrogacy.

In fact if you look at donor conceived children there are huge issues there, hence why the law was recently changed in order for them to be able to track their heritage.

For whom? For it to be a right for men, this means having rights over women's bodies.

They're two totally different things. Well except for the fact that forced birthers don't give a shiny shit about the rights of the child once it's been born.

The woman whose egg was used would be the biological mother. The child’s DNA comes from the egg. If a woman uses a donor egg then that’s similar to adoption in my mind. The only difference is that you experience pregnancy and childbirth and young women are exploited. That’s why I am against egg donors (young women are exploited for money because older women need younger eggs).

I see a dystopian future with decreasing fertility and designer babies using engineered sperm and egg. Wealthy families will employ a woman to have their 1/2/3/however many children and be a live in nanny/nursing maid then bin her off after they’ve all got to school age. This will be a viable career choice for women from less well off background

You think people should have a right to be parents?

Should people have a right to sex? To marriage? What else? Sounds awfully like a right to enslave others to get what you want from their bodies and labour (mostly women), doesn’t it?

Meet the new patriarchy - same as the old patriarchy. As soon as women (and children) achieved any genuine rights to be considered human people, and not be thought of as owned support human meatsuits for providing sex, marriage, housework and the production of children, we brought all that right back again and convinced women it was all about “bodily autonomy” and “choice” 🤣

I see the same thing with guns.

Republicans want to save life in the uterus and shoot people.

Democrats want to save life and quit guns yet want to abort babies not just up to birth a year after which isn't abortion as far as I am concerned, it is killing an 11 month old baby.

There is no human dignity.

We can be bought and sold, puberty stopped, killed and used as props for transvestites just here on earth to call random men 'she' and be "gestators'.

Me too. It shows a disgusting disregard for the child. I'd rather see a complete ban and people sent to prison for buying a baby. It's no different to trafficking.

The legal default in the UK is for the woman who gives birth to a child to have automatic parental responsibility (and also her husband, if she has one).

Some clearly disagree with that law, but it has the great advantage of being child-centred. The unborn baby starts to bond with his/her mother before birth. After birth the baby doesn’t actually realise for quite some time that s/he and the mother are now separate people. The baby will have an instinctive urge to snuggle up to his/her mother and stay close to her. The mother may also bond with her baby, even if she doesn’t intend to.

I think changing the law would not be in the best interests of the child.

It certainly takes an exceptional altruist to be a surrogate and relinquish complete responsibility of a newborn. Not something that I would think comes naturally to the vast majority of women at the time of birth.

If I had to vote on it, I would support surrogacy only in exceptional circumstances, perhaps involving related individuals, like when a sibling donates an organ? I don't generally support a free-for-all business model of 'life conceived by any testube/uterus available for hire', for many reasons, including so we don't end up with situations like these where people have to sign away rights that go against natural instincts - if it wasn't a problem, there wouldn't be a need to sign away rights. Obviously, surrogates have been changing their minds and regreting their decisions... understandable.

Your post genuinely made me feel quite sick.

Why is parenthood not a right?

Why do people think it is a right?

Human life should not be a commodity to be traded for cash.

100% this.

Nothing that requires another person to agree should be a right. You should only have the right to pursue, not achieve.

This is the case with other things too, like sex. You don’t have a right to sex, but you do (as an adult) have a right to pursue a sex life. The right to pursue a sex life does not push on the government an obligation to develop a legal market for sex so that you can purchase it if you are unsuccessful at finding someone else who will have sex with you otherwise.

@twitterexile people who are against women making their own reproductive choices tend to be prone to dramatics and hyperbole. I'm not surprised you felt sick, not much else you can put when you can't think of anything shaming to say to a reasonable opinion is there? But you have to add your two cents 🙄

I know a woman who has quite happily offered to be a surrogate mother three times now.
It was her choice, she has a family of her own and wanted to help others. She has a good career, which she has since gone back to.
I think most of the women on here up in arms have no real life knowledge of women who have chosen to do this, they jump on the "they are all being exploited" bandwagon because that suits their own agenda. They cannot seem to grasp the fact some women are perfectly willing to do this for others.

Some people are daft and too soft, they would offer lots and only a really selfish person would take lots, anyone with any decency wouldn't exploit and wouldn't get involved in humans trafficking.

I don’t have a problem with surrogacy so long as it isn’t commercial (which I think our current set up is, in reality). And I think a lot of the legal reforms suggested in this paper look like they could be good providing it isn’t part of a commercial transaction. There are a few things I’m still a bit unclear on (have only skimmed, so far).

But I would like to see significantly less money changing hands so that those who do it are doing it altruistically.

I think that there are some women that genuinely care and want to help someone have a child.

Such idealism when the lives of many many babies, not traded for cash, are awful. I know of one family who have two kids born to a surrogate. At least they were wanted and are loved.

There is always someone ready to exploit them.

I was a surrogate baby. My parents actually did buy me from a young teenage girl who got pregnant by accident and couldn't keep the baby. They gave her enough money to go off an start a new life elsewhere.
Speaking as the surrogate child I have one mum and that is the one who put me to bed every night, gave me a wonderful childhood and all the love in the world. She was also the one who helped me in my darkest days with a newborn and PPD. I was never treated differently to my brothers and sisters who were her biological children and our bond is as strong and the one between her and them.
I grew up in a house of love and laughter and didn't find out until I was an adult that I was even a surrogate.
I have no interest in the body that grew me, other than to hope she has a good life. I do not know her name (my parents do) and I have no desire to see her (my mum does know where she is and knows she's done well with her life). She is irrelevant to me.

As someone who was adopted at birth and had a wonderful childhood and family I am concerned about this. I have fully forgiven my birth parents, I have never met them and don’t have a desire to meet them. I have an amazing family and don’t want added complications in my life. I am successful, married with children, am university educated and a professional (very successful career). I have no issues with identity either. I say all this to show I am at peace with my life.

However having read The Primal Wound I recognise I have some things I have issue with, which seem to affect many adoptees. Issues with loss and cutting people out of my life. I have no issue with rejection funnily.

These laws only benefit people who want to have children. I cannot see how separation at birth helps the child. They have bonded to the smells, voices, the woman.

Slightly separate note but why other people can ‘falsify’ their birth certificate yet I have had to produce a short one (and explain to employers that I am adopted) I do not understand and never will. The birth certificate should be a record of facts, not fiction that suits the story they wish to tell. Or adoptees should be able to change theirs too!

And that is before I address the issues a woman who decides to be a surrogate may face.