To worry Labour might liberalise domestic surrogacy law?

[HeyThereDelila]

Have you heard about the Law Commission proposals to relax domestic surrogacy law?

Plans include allowing open advertising for surrogate mothers, getting rid of Family Court oversight and involvement of judges, reducing a woman’s time to change her mind, and taking away a woman’s legal rights to the child at birth; just like in commercial surrogacy abroad.

It's dystopian and chilling, frankly. Janice Turner wrote a brilliant piece about it in The Times on Saturday. I don’t like the direction this is moving in and think it could be so risky for working class women. And why is nobody thinking about the child in this? They bond in utero with their mothers and want them at birth, not anybody else; why do we forget that when it’s a case of surrogacy? I read recently that gestational surrogacy is 3x higher risk for severe pregnancy complications. Are we honestly ok with this?

Surrogacy Concern have a letter on their website for sending to MPs; if you’re worried about this you can send it from here: https://surrogacyconcern.uk/take-action-send-a-letter-to-your-mp-on-surrogacy-and-law-commission-proposals/

AIBU?

I’ve emailed my MP too using the draft letter from Surrogacy Concern.

I’d be worried about this too, personally.

You are NOT being unreasonable. Surrogacy is just another form of prostitution. Another area Labour will ‘liberalise’.
The international surrogacy market is akin to brothels, only desperate poverty stricken and vulnerable women end up in it.
Currently the largest sector for buying babies is Gay couples. Once again Labour are putting the desires of men ahead of the safety and dignity of women

Labour have always pretended to be the Party of women, but at their heart they are misogynistic.

I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that when the Children Act was passed many years ago it was groundbreaking because it enshrined in law that the child's interests have to be put first. So in adoption the potential parents have to be screened and carefully matched to a child who is already vulnerable because of the separation from her family. It's not the case that anyone can demand a child. In a contentious divorce the child's views are taken into account if she is considered old enough to make a decision who she wants to live with. Surely applying these principles surrogacy should be banned, because it can never be right to create a child to order for an unscreened couple or individual with the intention of separating the child from the birth mother immediately after the birth?

YANBU surrogacy should be completely banned. Poor women around the world have been trafficked into it, and even in the most altruistic of circumstances it's wrong.

Women and children are not commodities.

Thank you all; it just strikes me as really dangerous, at odds with adoption policy and a real risk to women and babies. Why are we only seeing this from the perspective of the people who want to buy children?