And so it came to pass: Mail on Sunday - gay male couple offered fertility treatment including surrogacy

[Needmoresleep]

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6636419/Gay-male-couple-offered-IVF-treatment-NHS-time-Britain.html

Oh ffs, think of the women.

I imagine that if you're going to be pregnant for nine months, knowing that you're pregnant with your own baby would be pretty heart breaking when it was time to give it up.

You can’t be paid to be a surrogate in the uk, so presumably a female friend or relative has offered to carry the baby for them, but they are using a donor egg and ivf. Is that a problem - not sure it is, unless you object to all surrogacy.

One could perhaps argue its unfair what the state will fund. Older women, women who have other children (even if it is an adult stepchild or their child has died) have been known to be ineligible.

You can’t be paid to be a surrogate in the uk, so presumably a female friend or relative has offered to carry the baby for them, but they are using a donor egg and ivf.

IVF should only be used if the surrogate can't get pregnant naturally, surely? Have they tried?

You can’t be paid to be a surrogate in the uk

Not at the moment, which chimes with a most of Europe, some other EU countries outlaw it altogether.

My concern is that Brexit combined with some heavy duty behind the scenes lobbying using the same tactics that was pushing the GRA through under the radar will position mens right to a child (via surrogacy) as a civil rights issue.

There was a thread a year or two ago where Amnesty brought out guidance that framed it in a similar way.

I predict it's going to be the next hot button topic via Twitterati and the woke left. As well as SWERFs and TERFs anyone who disagrees will be a SERF or whatever slur they come up with.

My assumption, at least in the US, was that is was about genes. You pay a bright college educated female to donate the egg, and someone poor and desperate to carry the baby.

But obviously could be wrong.

I imagine that if you're going to be pregnant for nine months, knowing that you're pregnant with your own baby would be pretty heart breaking when it was time to give it up.

Obviously everyone has different views on this but genetics or no, I think it is the surrogates baby. It is her blood that has grown and nourished it. Regardless of genetics it is still flesh of her flesh, IMO.

The men are healthy and fertile.
The surrogate mother will be healthy and fertile.
The egg donor will be healthy and fertile.

It is obscene that the NHS is involved in a scenario where it is purposefully causing significant health risk to two separate healthy women, entirely and solely for the benefit of two healthy men.

And that's even before you consider the moral implications of creating a child with the express purpose of removing it from its mother at birth.

Is the surrogate legally the mother at birth, if the egg came from someone else?
If not, that could be a reason for doing it that way - no chance of the woman deciding to keep her baby.

Can't help feeling this is all part of 2nd wave Eugenics. It's not just at the genetic level but also the surgical adjustments of cosmetic surgery.

It is obscene that the NHS is involved in a scenario where it is purposefully causing significant health risk to two separate healthy women, entirely and solely for the benefit of two healthy men.

I would add to this, two healthy men who will face no health risk to themselves at all. Otherwise spot on.

Under UK law, when a baby is born, the woman who gives birth is the legal mother – whether or not she is biologically related to the child – and if she’s married, her partner is the legal other parent. After a surrogate mother has given birth, the intended parents must make an application to the family court to become the baby’s legal parents. In the eyes of the law, any written agreements between the intended parents and the surrogate are not enforceable.

The woman who gives birth is the legal mother irrespective of genetic link. She remains the legal mother until the court grants the Parental Order

That'll be the plan then, to make those agreements difficult to impossible to back out of.

Yet again men pay women for the use of their bodies, only this time the NHS collude. How long til they are buying kidneys or making blood donation a condition of using the service?

Everything can be bought at a price. Do they get to keep the receipt and return the baby if it isn't what was expected?

There are many children waiting to be fostered or adopted, that system involves greater analysis of the child's wellbeing and support for all involved. There is no reason for gay men not to be considered as suitable parents, this is a path to parenthood that does not involve renting a human's body at great risk.

Pregnancy and giving birth are the closest most healthy women come to staring death in the face. It is not to be treated as a business transaction or taken lightly. The physical costs can be immense and the whole chapter will always be life changing because that is how we are designed. Making a business of surrogacy is unethical.

Mothers matter. Women matter. The law needs to reflect this.

So the NHS is paying, presumably, for a man, one of the intended parents, to have a wank. Then, presumably one woman, not the intended parent, to go through IVF, which I understand to be pretty grim. Then another healthy woman, not the intended parent, to carry the foetus for 9 months, at significant risk to herself.

So the NHS are paying to put two healthy women at significant risk to their health, and life in the case of pregnancy, just so a healthy, fertile man and his male partner can have a baby? I’m pretty sure that endangering two healthy people with no benefit to themselves is not what the NHS is for, especially when people are suffering and dying because the NHS can’t afford to provide the treatment they need.

Presumably the justification is "equality".

Men can't carry babies. Is this unequal or simply human?

In the same way as men can't really become women.

Babyfarming. So much for human dignity.

It’s don’t care.

Women aren’t really people, after all.

What if the child is disabled and neither the surrogate nor the father/s want this 'faulty product', what then? What happens to the child?

I've always been uncomfortable with the whole concept of surrogacy and even more so now. It's the commodification of babies and women.

So grim. But it already happens when people pay for it.

The human rights for individuals argument has gone too far.

This is not about the HR of the gay men to have a family life.

This is unethical, and costly to the NHS and society and women.

As a tax payer, I don’t want to be funding this.

My opinion on this is very emotionally driven by my own experience.

At 21 I became infertile because of cancer treatment. I was told I would be entitled to ivf (donor egg) should I need it in the future. They tried to preserve my fertility using zoladex which is a rather unpleasant implant. I was given it monthly not 3 monthly because it was cheaper and they wanted to keep costs down despite me needing at least 3 months worth. Presumably if the cancer killed me in month one they'd have wasted £600 or so.

Several years later I started bleeding again- it's confirmed that I have no egg stock. But I have to try for 2 years before being entitled to ivf because I'm having some form of cycle.

Men can't have children. They don't have wombs. It's just a biological fact.

Why is the nhs spending money on undertaking the impossible? Infertile women have medical reasons for not conceiving.

So, men now have more entitlement to ivf than I do.

I'm not homophobic, I don't care who loves who. But we have an nhs which is on it's knees - I was given a gynae appointment in October there for December 2019 as it was the first available. We don't have the money for this.

Having a child is not a human right.

It's fucking abhorrent. No one has a right to a child, especially at such an enormous cost to another woman.

I am implacably opposed to surrogacy. The law commission is looking to bring the laws "up to date". That means to make the process easier - or "safer" in the words of Dustin Lance Black, ie a a watertight contract to protect commissioning parents from surrogate mothers who change their minds.
It also means lots more £££ to be made for agencies and lawyers such as Natalie Gamble who already has an agency just raring to expand.

I recommend listening to these podcasts by Dustin for more information. They are well made and interesting and have some moments such as the one woman baby factory who has had 13 babies, ten pregnancies counting twins and triplets. But make no mistake. It is all smoothing the way for more commercial surrogacy for men who want to buy babies.

As an aside it was news to me that sometimes in the USA both the egg and the sperm are donated so the commissioning parents have no genetic connection. If someone could explain how that differs from buying a random newborn I'd like to know how.

Radio 5 iplayer radio.

Cambodian women at the sharp end of the international trade.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001bpp