Germaine Greer doesn't agree with David Furnish being named as 'mother' on birth certificate

[Athenaviolet]

And neither do I!

www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/germaine-greer-slams-elton-john-5758530?ICID=FB_mirror_main

Is the word 'mother' just meaningless now?

I didn't even realise this was legally possible.

I don't actually think it's possible to have a sensible discussion about birth mothers' needs and rights in this context without reference to the needs and rights of children and non-biological mothers, but there you go.

Reproductive technology means that we are now capable of using women's bodies more extensively and intensively than ever before, while pretending this liberates women from gender.

Hundreds of men have procured eggs from whiter mothers (itself an invasive process) and had then implanted in Indian women, collected the babies and left the mothers in a foreign country far from their loved ones including their other children, ina disaster zone.

The rights of motherhood have been eroded but the need for mothers to make babies is as strong as ever.

In this context the mother who carried the child has no rights, as I understand it, as she was a surrogate and that was the arrangement.

I have read about 4 articles about the situation in Nepal and at least 2 of them talked about how scared the fathers were, how there was no communications, water, power etc, and how they were really worried about the babies, and then they got the babies and were able to get them back to Israel, and the whole thing without mentioning the woman who had just given birth once. Who is going to be left there, and is recovering from birth, or a CS etc, in that situation. It's like they don't exist. I find that mind-boggling.

Devora, I agree, but the rights of birthmothers seems to be a large part of the source of dissent over birth certificates.

It all reminds me of the attitude of anti-abortion people as well. They completely overlook the fact that pregnancy and childbirth are not just nothing,. They carry risk, take a physical and sometimes mental toll, and even with the best pregnancy and birth very very few women go back to how they were before. Each birth takes a further toll on the body. The way the anti-abortion people and what I've read just now about the surrogacy seems to very much not mention / ignore / minimise / pretend that the woman growing the baby is somehow distant to the process and comes out of it entirely unaltered and unscathed. I mean it's a load of rubbish.

Mide7

The 3rd component of DNA is that within the mitochondria. Just think of them as bacteria that just so happened to have hitched a ride with cells - way way back in the midst of time when our ancestors were unicellular organisms. Their DNA don't contribute to our characteristics as such - its just that needed to set up the biochemical respiration, splitting up sugar molecules to produce energy.

Sometimes the Mitochondria in question have defects in them - caused presumably by mutated Mt DNA. If people get concerned about 3 persons contributing the overall DNA, maybe a method could be developed to use the birth father's mitochondria.

mists not midst

Yeasayer - I wouldn't want to be "Parent 2"!

Atm, as a mother, I think I am generally regarded as "Parent 1". Mothers generally are, which is why they get a harder time from the press etc when something goes wrong.

WhirlpoolGalaxyM51 - I think it's only in recent years (OK, in the last 100) that abortion is actually safer than childbirth. I think it will take time for the church etc some to catch up.

Were probably not that far off from artificial wombs or 'ectogenesis' as it is known in some circles. In the mid 1990s, in Japan they were able to maintain goat foetuses for weeks in a machine containingartificial amniotic fluid. The artificial amniotic fluid environment is developing fast.

And with all the advancements in neonatal care the minimum gestational age with which human foetuses can be kept alive is somewhere under 22 weeks.

It's only a matter of time before this is accomplished whether this will be a blessing or a curse is up to individuals to decide.

Thank you cadno

"at least Elton and David's kids have two" I object to the insinuation here that 2 parents are better than one

I was the original poster that said at least Elton and David's kids have two I can see how it sounds like I was being dismissive of single parents. I'm sorry about that and it most certainly wasn't my intention.

I used the phrase in response to the many posters who were objecting to the fact that the birth certificate was inaccurate when there are lots of birth certificates with only one parent on. It wasn't a judgement on single parents but more a comment about the fact that lots of birth certificates are not biologically 'accurate' so why does it matter if Elton and David's children's birth certificate is not. I wasn't criticising 'mothers' who don't or can't give the details of the 'father' on the birth certificate as I know there can be good reasons to withhold the information.

Holo - you're rather exaggerating the current state of medicine. A very few babies survive at 22 weeks, almost always with profound disabilities as a result, and the percentage has not really changed much in several decades. (The "babies are surviving earlier and in greater numbers" line tends to be peddled by anti-abortion campaigners, but it isn't borne out by medical statistics).

The disconnect of the word "mother" from anything to do with the female biological process that produces children is problematical. In a similar way that the removal of the word "woman" from anything to do with the female biological systems is problematical.

This. It feels like we're back in that territory that says it's transphobic to talk about birth, breastfeeding, FGM etc - issues specific to women's physiology - as 'women's issues'.

I object to the insinuation here that 2 parents are better than one
Isn't 2 good people who love you automatically better than one? That isn't any kind of value judgement on single parents (I was raised by one and have been one) and one good parent is far better than 2 poor ones etc etc.

The disconnect of the word "mother" from anything to do with the female biological process that produces children is problematical.

Yes, but what about the disconnect between the production of children and the parenting of children, which is sometimes a neccesity?

Two parents isn't the same as two people. Plenty of children are raised by single parents but have more than one person who loves them.

As someone with genetic medical conditions in my family I don't think the significance of a DCs genetic history should be ignored to spare the feelings of adoptive parents.

I'm sorry but I can't get past this statement.

Thats so fucking offensive to adoptive parents. That we are such wilting flowers and the system is geared towards sparing the feeling of the adoptive parents

Yeah thats our aim - sod what our children need to know to make sense of their life, as long as we are protected. Most of us even pretend to have given birth to our (adoptive) children and keep them in the dark all their lives so we feel better. And we hide all that oodles of information about medical and genetic history that we get about our children so we can feel better .

No fucking idea, OP. None at all.

FWIW the surrogate mother will always be treated as the legal mother at birth, gay couples who conceived their child using surrogacy will have gone to court to get a parental order to put both men on the birth certificate. Surrogate mothers have to consent to this. I suspect that the original birth certificate will always exist, I also highly doubt the form actually describes David Furnish as "mother"

Are you worried that DF's boys might think he actually gave birth to them?

The time to object to this was in 2008 when the law was changed.

Two parents are two people. Two of a good thing is better than one of a good thing, and I've never met a single parent who would disagree.

Original birth certificates are not about the process of social parenting when it comes to naming the birth mother.

They are about recording the factors involved in a birth. That's why they are called birth certificates. They're not called conception certificates or parenting certificates. The primary purpose of them is not to record social mothering or genetic parents.

Birth always involves a woman who gives birth. Recording who gave birth is really, really important for protecting human rights.

Birth always involves a woman who gives birth. Recording who gave birth is really, really important for protecting human rights
And we already do that, so what is the problem? One original cert with the birth details, one later cert with the parents details. All important details recorded.

Two parents are two people. Two of a good thing is better than one of a good thing, and I've never met a single parent who would disagree.

I disagree. With the sentiment and with your wooly logic.

Parents aren't necessarily 'a good thing'. They vary hugely.

Even where parents are 'good', a sufficiency is a sufficiency.

Kewcumber, the surrogacy process took place in the US, not the UK, in the case you're talking about. Rights are different there.

Tents, I know plenty of single parents who would disagree. Lots of people globally raise children in set ups that are not about two parents.

And there isn't any evidence, according to UNICEF, that there are benefits to being in a two parent household, if the income of the households is the same. UNICEF has pointed out that in some places social, economic, health, and educational outcomes are improved in families where there are multiple adults who are all women but that doesn't mean all of those adults are parents. And that is an issue of social roles and how people are socialised, a bit like the idea that two parents are better at raising children than one parent and other adults.

Tents, I don't think there is a problem with birth certificates in this country.

The surrogacy situations on this thread are happening abroad, some of them in countries like the US which are not signed up to CEDAW and mothers lack basic rights - high maternal mortality rate, mothers having babies taken from them for moving state while pregnant, mothers being made to give birth in chains, mothers being denied medical treatment, mothers being forced to have treatments for no good reason and so on.

Apparently, it's estimated that in the UK 50,000 birth certificates a year ( info from Telegraph article 2012 ) omit the 'fathers' details.

I'm agreeing with Kew: the idea that anything is done to spare the feelings of adoptive parents is pretty laughable. Nothing about the adoption system prioritises the feelings of adoptive parents, so far as I can see (and rightly so).

And, again, children do get a birth certificate that records the facts of their birth. Because this document is also used as primary identity documentation, and so has a dual purpose, when children are adopted they are issued with a new certificate with their new name. This is about the rights and the needs of the child which, at this point, are more important than the rights and needs of either birth or adoptive parents. But the original birth certificate doesn't cease to exist as a legal document. My daughter still has her original birth certificate, there is a legal paper trail showing how she came to have the identity she has now. I cannot see the problem.

I think this thread is quite confusing to follow because it is blending a number of different strands: the rights of mothers, the rights of birth mothers, the appropriation of reproduction into male control... Serious issues. I don't know that birth certificates, or David Furnish, are helpful in understanding them better.

winter I used to be a single parent and I disagree with that statement.

My DC didn't miss out on anything for not having a 'second parent'.

A couple of posters have referred to mothers 'putting or not putting' fathers details on bc. This is inaccurate. Unmarried mothers don't have the power to put a mans name on a bc. An unmarried father has to be there to register a DC. The power is all his but it seems it's the mothers who get the blame. Mother privilege?