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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Mermaids 'power couple' Hannah & Jake Graf say surrogacy laws must be changed to force women to hand over babies

246 replies

QuietContraryMary · 01/02/2019 12:18

Jake & Hannah have joined a surrogacy agency and want to rent a womb. Hannah says, however, the law should be changed to compel the rented woman to hand over the baby at birth.

www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/transgender-couple-ready-start-family-call-uk-surrogacy-law-141118630.html

OP posts:
Calvinsmam · 01/02/2019 12:46

That was a link to a heartbreaking article about surrogates forced to give up their babies in India.

JellySlice · 01/02/2019 12:46

Commercial surrogacy is a flagrant abuse of human rights.

The only type of surrogacy that could ever be acceptable is voluntary altruistic surrogacy.

BettyDuMonde · 01/02/2019 12:48

Imagine being in a position where a pregnancy was putting your life at risk, but you couldn’t terminate because the baby was someone else’s legal property? And all your family could do would be to watch you die and then try and sue the parents, for financial compensation for your own children losing their mother?

It’s proper dystopian.

Knicknackpaddyflak · 01/02/2019 12:49

the obligations of both parties need to reflect the arrangement from the point of conception.

Except we're not talking about a house, or a business transaction, but a woman carrying a baby inside her for nine months, with no knowledge of what may happen in those nine months or how she may feel when she reaches the point of giving birth. It's hard to think of a less personally involved, emotional situation, or a more awful thing than removing a newborn from its mother at birth when she is unwilling and distraught.

Her body, her risk, her choice.

FaithFrank · 01/02/2019 12:49

Commercial surrogacy is a flagrant abuse of human rights.

To me it is a form of trafficking in human beings. A child is not a commodity.

Iused2BanOptimist · 01/02/2019 12:49

I listened to all Dustin Lance Black's blog on surrogacy which you can find on iplayer radio 5

He talked a lot about keeping parents (commissioning) and surrogates "Safe". Meaning he thinks UK law should change to something similar to the law in California where a watertight contract is drawn up before the birth, ensuring commissioning parents are guaranteed ownership of the baby from birth.

I posted this on another thread, sorry for copying it over. I'm lazy. Grin

Basically when he and Tom Daley had their baby in California the law allowed them to draw up contracts, they took the paperwork to hospital with them, they left the hospital with a baby with their names on the birth certificate. He praises how everyone knew where they stood. The surrogate mother (and her husband), the nurses, Tom and Dustin. The surrogate was protected from them making a last minute decision they didn't want the baby for whatever reason. They were protected from the surrogate making a last minute decision to keep the baby.

He was appalled, arriving in the UK with the baby to have to go through the British court system to officially get a parental responsibility order. (Sorry, I can't remember precisely what it is called). And that someone would visit their home to check everything was in order, with the implication the baby could be taken from them if certain standards or conditions were not met. That it could all take several months during which time they weren't the official parents of their baby.
In some ways I had a certain sympathy with him as presumably the baby is an American citizen, American parent, born in USA, but Tom is British and they want to raise the baby here, and presumably want it also to have British citizenship, so they have to satisfy the British courts.

Which is all a bit of a side issue. But in the UK the children's act protects children. So babies born through surrogacy have some protection which presumably doesn't exist in USA/California in that the surrogate mother, whether or not she is the biological mother, is assumed to be the mother and has parental rights until such time as the commissioning parents have applied for and acquired a parental responsibility order.

I'm not sure how long it takes regular commissioning parents in the UK to get those Parental Responsibility orders in the UK or how stringent any enquiries are (relative to what adoptive parents can expect) but this is what certain people want to do away with. One can but hope that child protection will win.

I recommend listening to his blogs if you want to understand more. They are interesting and informative wherever you stand on surrogacy.

Mermaids 'power couple' Hannah & Jake Graf say surrogacy laws must be changed to force women to hand over babies
Bittermints · 01/02/2019 12:52

The only type of surrogacy that could ever be acceptable is voluntary altruistic surrogacy.

Totally agree. The lack of respect for pregnancy and birth this shows is really worrying, if not that surprising. All of a piece with the airy 'in ten years I'll be able to have a womb transplant and get pregnant!' statements we get from some trans women. No grasp at all of what it does to a woman's body. Baby as commodity.

silentcrow · 01/02/2019 12:52

Or when the mother gives birth to a child with a congenital problem, the people who commissioned her can demand a penalty for damaged goods, or even reject the damaged goods?

Abandonment of "imperfect" surrogate babies is already a thing (this is quite an upsetting article, apologies, the situation was even worse than I remembered. Don't know the current status).

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/baby-gammy-australian-father-who-abandoned-down-syndrome-surrogate-child-now-tries-to-access-funds-10261916.html

LizzieSiddal · 01/02/2019 12:56

I don’t think this is a trans thing. I can’t remember the specific programme but it was recently on Radio 4, a couple (who’d got a child via suragcy) were campaigning for this very change in the law.

It made me feel utterly sick.

LizzieSiddal · 01/02/2019 12:57

And yes I agree with you Calvin

A straight couple who have voluntarily made themselves sterile think it’s theor right to use a woman’s womb to give them a child and that that woman shouldn’t have the right to change her mind?

Smellyrat4456 · 01/02/2019 12:59

"When you simply accept that TRANS MEN ARE MEN and TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN you realise there is nothing to fear."

Well that's a phrase similar to one from any scary dystopia you care to mention.

Bluestitch · 01/02/2019 13:02

It's funny how for all the TWAW mantra everybody knows who is really a woman when they need them for their body parts.

Juells · 01/02/2019 13:02

BettyDuMonde
So that women who miscarry can be sued by the ‘parents’?

...or forced to keep getting pregnant until they've provided the baby?

MillytantForceit · 01/02/2019 13:04

UN Covention on the Rights of the Child, Article 21:

en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child#Article_21

('Parents' here and throughout the Convention means biological parents. Adoptive non-biological parents(s) are 'Legal Guardians.')

Calvinsmam · 01/02/2019 13:04

You can also be forced to abort the baby if they find it has a disability.
And if you don’t abort they can sue you for damages.

Imagine that. You’re pregnant with a baby and the people who are going to bring it up decide they want to abort so you have to or face financial penalties that you can’t afford (because let’s face it there’s not going to be many rich women lining up to be a commercial surrogate.)

And there’s this very rare but true case of someone made to give up their biological child and have to fight to get it back.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/surrogate-mother-pregnant-twins-own-baby-jessica-allen-omega-family-global-san-diego-a8034901.html%3famp

Knicknackpaddyflak · 01/02/2019 13:04

This is an LGBT issue, as this is where the whole political 'reproductive justice' is coming from, with all the support and funding behind certain sections of the lobby and their very useful high pressure narratives. It is becoming increasingly framed as a political 'right' to have a child, as part of equality and inclusion, regardless of the choices an individual has made over their body and reproductive capacity.

This narrative is the same one pushing down safeguarding and women. (Although oddly, no one yet seems to be struggling to accept surrogates as biologically female. That may be a word women are allowed to keep.)

It needs establishing now, in law, that children are not a right, not an entitlement, not a necessary accessory to a chosen identity.

Barracker · 01/02/2019 13:06

Dear menstruators
Here is a contract giving us rights over you, your body, your uterus and it's contents, which are all our property.
Look, you signed it.
We own you and we own what is inside you.
Sincerely
Your masters.

We should call it "the human property" law.
Or just "slavery 2.0"

Popchyk · 01/02/2019 13:07

From the Independent article linked above.

The article describes a convicted paedophile in Australia who used a surrogate in Thailand. After the birth of twins, he rejected one child because of Down's Syndrome and took the other child back to Australia with him.

The surrogate mother was happy to raise the remaining child and a crowdfunder was launched for donations to help to raise this child in Thailand.

The convicted paedophile was trying to get his hands on the money raised by the crowdfunder.

But it never happens, right?

Beamur · 01/02/2019 13:07

We shouldn't even try to legislate for this.
The repercussions morally should be too uncomfortable to contemplate.
It reduces human life to being a commodity that can be bought and paid for, enforced in court, sued over and it's all up for grabs if you have enough money.

2ndWaveFeminist · 01/02/2019 13:08

FaithFrank trafficking is the right word here.

I'd support a law change to ban commercial surrogacy

Bittermints · 01/02/2019 13:10

It needs establishing now, in law, that children are not a right, not an entitlement, not a necessary accessory to a chosen identity.

Yes. And this is yet another reason why it is so ethically dubious for very young people to take puberty blockers and then go on to cross-hormones, losing their fertility in the process. How can they know what they are giving up? How can they predict at the age of 10 or 16 or even 22 how they will feel about this at 39? Plenty of people with no hangups about gender don't decided until well into adult life that they want to have a child.

JellySlice · 01/02/2019 13:14

ensuring commissioning parents are guaranteed ownership of the baby from birth.

Disgusting.

We do not 'own' our children.

Angry
7Days · 01/02/2019 13:15

Popchyk that s fucking horrendous.

We look back at Magdalene homes, and are disgusted at the way babies were taken from poor desperate women. But it was ok as they knew when they had premarital sex what they were getting into, their own fault.

This is the same thing.

Iused2BanOptimist · 01/02/2019 13:16

To paraphrase : we're going to need^^ a lot more surrogates.

Mermaids 'power couple' Hannah & Jake Graf say surrogacy laws must be changed to force women to hand over babies
zanahoria · 01/02/2019 13:20

Lurked here for a while but so disgusted with that I have to say this

A surrogate mother is not a commodity, nor a chattel, nor a slave - she is a mother.

Anyone who cannot see how precious that is should not be raising children