Law Commission consulting on paid surrogacy in the UK

[PimmsnLemonade]

Sorry, I've no share token:

www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/surrogate-mothers-could-be-allowed-to-charge-cash-gfktl290j

From one of the links - extract from a USA agreement:

"If the surrogate is in her second or third trimester of pregnancy and in the event that medical life support equipment is required to preserve and maintain the life of the Surrogate and if requested by the Intended Parents, the Surrogate and her husband agree that the Surrogate’s life will be sustained with life support equipment for a period to achieve viability of the fetus taking into account the best interests and well-being of the fetus . . . The Intended Parents will make the decision with regard to how long the life support should be continued prior to the birth of the Child taking into account the obstetrician or perinatologist’s recommendation and the desires of the family of the Surrogate. The Surrogate’s husband, or her next of kin, is solely responsible for determining the time at which life support treatment will be discontinued following the birth of the Child."

This makes it clear that until the baby is born, the people who ordered the baby essentailly own her body.
There is no consideration of the feelings or opnions or impact in this situaiton of any spouse, existing children, parents etc.

It reminds me a lot of this case in ireland: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ireland/11313747/Life-support-of-woman-being-kept-alive-because-she-was-pregnant-can-be-switched-off.html lots of other info on google some of it v distressing. She was essentially starting to decay and still they kept the machines switched on againstt the wishes of her family and the distress it was causing her children.

This is what happens when women dont' have autonomy, or the people who if she has died she would want to be allowed to make the decision. In the first case her body is owned by the people who have contract, in the second the state. Both cases it's becasue she's pregnant.

This is all very not good.

Yikes re the life sustaining treatment part.

As I said before, with the new woke politics taking over, I doubt that surrogacy will be outlawed. On balance, I don’t think they will remove the mother’s right to change her mind though. The principle of child welfare is so deeply ingrained in the law that I cannot see how they can do that. Obviously there are exceptions where you wonder what the judge was thinking eg the gay surrogacy case...

There will probably be a recommendation to open it up to single people rather than just to couples, to mirror adoption.

It is a disconcerting area of law- that is for sure. I hope that whatever is recommended that it is done on the basis of research-based evidence.

Oh sorry it does say this

"The Intended Parents will make the decision with regard to how long the life support should be continued prior to the birth of the Child taking into account the obstetrician or perinatologist’s recommendation and the desires of the family of the Surrogate"

But they can do what they want, in the end.
Poeple will sign - of course the chance of it happening is so low, people will say couldn't happen to them.
Wouldl lead to cases such as the Ireland one. 2nd trimester is very early. In the Ireland case, even on the machines, her body had started to decompose. It's a really ghoulish idea. And at the whim of people who are very far removed from her and her family, her existing kids.

Also, what happens if the woman dies or is seriously permanently disbaled by the pregnancy or birth? What are the arrangements? Might google.

Google has nothing.

A woman in USA did die and there was agofundme for her funeral although it's not confirmed it was actually hers -
Which would suggest that she was liable.

I'd have thought it would all be insured but maybe as theer are increased risks with surrogacy (that are apparently not always made clear to the surrogates) around multiple embryos etc the insurers aren't interested.

Barracker that 2015 case was dreadful.

Caroline Farrow wrote some good pieces on it.

www.conservativewoman.co.uk/caroline-farrow-this-baby-should-never-have-been-torn-from-her-mothers-breast/

carolinefarrow.com/2015/05/07/more-notes-on-a-scandal/

I got so much grief for my 'homophobia' on the thread about Tom Daley that I'm reluctant to go into all this again. But I will be keeping a close watch out for the consultation. I work with the HFEA in reviewing their website and contributing to the discussion on the legalities around donor conception. I really thought that the removal of anonymity for donors was the beginning of a more child-focused approach in supporting parents who cannot conceive naturally. This feels like a hugely retrogressive step

This is another one where religous right and feminists have same view but for very different reasons.

My googling led me to an article that was saying about a woman dying how terrible and then drew attention to the fact that a woman's body is the property of her husband (and vice versa) so surrogacy is adultery...

Feminists believe womens bodies should be our own property and that we should be protected by the constant drive to exploit our bodies which is directly related to our sexed bodies.

Orchid yes

The stuff about teh earthquake (some kind of disaster) in india and all the men from isreal flying out and taking the babies away to safety and leaving the women and presumably not doing anythign to help was a bit of an eye opener

time.com/3838319/israel-nepal-surrogates/

It's just misoghyny >>> women as non people that you can use to grow babies in.

OMG. That is absolutely horrific Nothing. Women being treated as incubators. It's foul

I had forgotten about the Nepalese earthquake babies. It's sickening. And for the babies, imagine growing up and finding out your father did this to your mother to buy you? Discovering your father is a spoilt, heartless, exploitative bastard?
I look forward to the research on children of surrogacy.

A website for personal stories of third party reproduction.

anonymousus.org/stories/page/5/

It' funny.

When I was younger I was quite dismissive of mother/baby bond /special relationship etc

I think this came out of a desire of women / feminists to get equality at work > to say there's no issue with dad / GPs / nursery etc as ling as they are loved that's all fine.
And while I still beleive this to a point, it has opened the door for a complete revision of the view of mothers and babies, which is shared by both the religious right, anti abortion types and the "prgressive" pro commercial surrogacy crowd as a baby even when in the womb as totally independent of the woman it is housed in, she is a mere incubator and nothing really to do with it.

Yet again sometihng that women fought for / the arguments we used have been used against us >> see our battles for more open-ness around sex and womens bodies which was meant to reduce madonna/whore ideas and lead to better sex for women, and has been used instead to jusitfy an explosion in abusive porn and objectification and mainstreaming all sorts of abusive stuff under the headline "kink" etc I could go on.

I am not linger dismissive of mother baby bond idea and do tihnk there is something particular about it.

We grow them inside us + we are animals, of course there may be a stronger link than to others who did not grow them. We don't know.

It suits "progressive" male desires to say this is definitely not a thing.

Conversely the "bond" is used by regressive groups to say that women's place is in the home and we should have lots of babies as that is what we are or and then stay at home and look after them.

This is why our arguments are so hard > we are stuffed whichever way we turn. And why when we find one it seems to work for a bit but then gets taken from us and used to damage us.

Its so depsressing.

It's just misoghyny >>> women as non people that you can use to grow babies in.

I occasionally wonder why this wasn't a dimension in The Matrix . People as batteries, women as battery hatchers.

Whilst there are a surplus of kids for adoption I can’t get behind this. But I don’t think fertility treatment should be allowed either.

Asdf12345 Why don't you think fertility treatment should be allowed?

Surrogacy is the buying and selling of women and children. The buying of the woman's womb and body, the selling of the babies to wealthier people.
Surrogates in other countries are almost always women in poverty or financial crisis and the new parents are almost always wealthy couples.

How can having a child that is biologically yours be more important than giving a home to a child without one?

We are animals,
Desire to reproduce own offspring is a fundamental impreative
Bolstered by old ideas about carrying on "lines" (patriarchy)

We can think oursleves out of it but it's a pretty big thing to quash and I think dismissing out of hand the idea of people wanting their own kids as selfish is similar to dismissing ideas that mother/baby (where the mother has grown the baby) relationship might have an additional dimension. And is related probably as well.

We are animals is the bottom line no matter how much we trump ourselves up as super-objective brainy ones detahced from such cocncerns.

But I don’t think fertility treatment should be allowed either.

Can I ask why?

As above, why is having a child that is biologically yours more important than providing a home for a child without one?

As above, why is having a child that is biologically yours more important than providing a home for a child without one?

I don't think it's that simple. Adopting a child almost always involves a child with a traumatic history of some kind, even if that "just" means removal from biological mother at birth (which we have seen upthread is damaging to the child). I can understand why someone would prefer having IVF for their own, biological child rather than adopting a child already emotionally damaged.

Not that those children don't deserve a loving home, but only people who feel able to take responsibility for these potential issues should adopt.

I think IVF is not at all like surrogacy as the child remains with its biological mother after birth.

Following this thread with interest. I have some friends who are pursuing surrogacy. They are quite involved in one of the uk surrogacy networks and go to various events. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to bite my lip when they talk about their surrogacy plans.

Apparently Tom Daley was at one of their events a couple of weeks ago because he is doing a tv show on surrogacy. I don't know if I can bear to watch it.

There is a certain element of hypocrisy though in telling gay couples to deal with the fact that they cannot have children naturally when many heterosexual couples would never accept this for themselves and would have IVF, often paid for by the state. It’s certainly hard to blame some couples for doing everything they can to become parents.

How do people feel about sperm donation and a child growing up not knowing the donor parent? Just interested.