The Rumplestiltskin Law

[Barracker]

There is a consultation happening regarding surrogacy.

Here is a link to the Law Commission on the subject.

It's key aim is horrifying.
To sever all rights of a woman over the child she has created with her body, the moment she gives birth to it. Presumably, to sever her rights before she gives birth, in fact. To contractually grant someone else ownership of her body and the child within it.

"Creating a new surrogacy pathway that will allow, in many cases, the intended parents to be the legal parents of the child from the moment of birth."

I'm calling it what it is. The Rumplestiltskin Clause.

I'm taking your child, and there's nothing you can do about it. A deal is a deal. Your body is mine. Your human rights were forfeit when you signed the contract.

It's the stuff of nightmarish fairytales.
Rumplestiltskin was not the good guy.

#TheRumplestiltskinLaw

I'm interested in the theory behind liberal feminism, Anon992. I've never had the thinking behind it set out by a practitioner. Could you help me out please?

I'm a 2nd wave or radical feminist and I know the underpinnings of that, but liberal feminism is a mystery to me.

I feel I can hardly put into words how repugnant and distressing I find surrogacy and the dehumanising commodification of women and babies, so thank you to everyone else for expressing my views so eloquently

Classic liberal feminism was the idea that men and women should have the same rights and opportunities. Thus if women had the vote, access to the professions and employment, then it would level the field for men and women as they would have equality in law.

Choices choicey women exercising their agency sex positive commodifying women feminism is neoliberal feminism not liberal feminism in my opinion as it is market driven.

@KTara I was a liberal feminist until I had my babies and I realized it was totally and utterly unworkable for women's liberation because of our biological differences. Childbirth radicalized me.

I just remember being appalled at how undervalued and downplayed women's role in reproduction was and the only political home that made any sense to me was radical feminism

What is the collective responsibility towards alleviating an individual's sadness? Give them money? Call them she? Sell them a baby? Graft on bigger tits? I try to do the best by people but I don't feel in any way responsible for someone else's happiness.

Great post Flying two points I'd like to add to what you've written
1 - it's only SOME people for whom being really, really sad seems to be a reason for anything. The rich. People who literally do not have enough money to feed their children or pay for electricity are really, really sad and their benefits are being cut and the message seems to be tough shit.
2 - In any form of surrogacy the right of the commissioning parents to not feel really, really sad is being put above the right of the child not to feel really, really sad (and also compromises their right to human dignity and be treated as human rather than commodity - but here just talking about sadness). If the child grows up and is really, really sad that they were bought, and have lifelong depression / anxiety as a result, they're shit out of luck, because they simply can't change that. Why is one deemed more important than the other?

With regard to 1 I would think this is fairly problematic from a legal point of view. If a rich person being really sad is a reason for law change, where does it end....? Slavery, presumably. What if they're really, really sad and need to own human beings and have the power of life and death over them to make them feel better.

I also wanted to make something really clear. We've heard some stories where altruistic surrogacy seems to have worked, for the adults involved at least - it may not work out that way for the children of course.

What is being proposed through this consultation is about as far from that lovely situation as you can imagine. We are NOT talking about the situation where one sister carries a baby for another, or lifelong friends or ANY of that. Very, very far from it.

The consultation proposes a number of ways in which the commissioning parents (they use the words 'intended parents' - this is intentional, as is my rejection of this term) can in law retain virtually all of the power and all ownership of the baby. There are a number of different scenarios proposed and every one I've read in detail it's all about how the commissioning parents can be protected. The bits of the consultation I've read seem to rarely if ever consider the human rights or dignity of the surrogate mother or the baby, nor long term consequences, particularly to the baby.

There is some discussion about how currently a lot of people in the UK commission babies from overseas, exploiting women in developing countries. Their solution to this problem seems to be to make surrogacy easier in the UK they say Our primary aim, however, is that our proposed reforms will encourage those wishing to enter into surrogacy arrangements to do so in the UK rather than overseas. However, it will probably still be cheaper to buy babies overseas and if it's easier to subsequently register as parents here, I don't see how this is a disincentive.

There is an alternative.... make surrogacy illegal including buying babies from abroad. If they are brought here, prosecute those who have done it and make it more difficult for them to be registered as parents easily, and also a requirement that the surrogate is included as mother on the birth certificate so the child has the right to know their origins. Personally, I'd like to see surrogacy banned and for people infringing the law, very high fines applied. This would be a disincentive. Some of this money could then go in international aid (could be ring fenced) to help women at risk of exploitation in this way in developing countries.

How would state or employee benefits or insurance cover or whatever other financial assistance that UK surrogates might currently get that is connected with their maternity.... be affected if those women legally have signed away that they are not the parent of the baby that they have just given birth to?

So whereas now a surrogate could be getting maternity leave and maternity pay from her employers on the basis that she is having a baby then recovering and looking after it...- if we then change the law so she no longer recognised as the mother.. how will that affect her financially?

Thailand banned surrogacy after some western commissioning parents refused to take the baby because it had Downs Syndrome. Can you imagine?! Well done Thailand.
So they were really really really sad about not being able to have a baby , until they weren't.
because she didn't birth it herself she simply had no connection to it, that's the long and short of it.

So they were really really really sad about not being able to have a baby , until they weren't. because she didn't birth it herself she simply had no connection to it, that's the long and short of it.

Great post twice, and well done Thailand indeed.

Their really, really real sadness evaporated when it wasn't the RIGHT KIND OF BABY. So, so awful.

Excellent post Ineedacupoftea

I believe Britain should follow the example of other civilised countries and ban surrogacy in all circumstances.

There is a problem with those who buy babies abroad and bring them home - I understand this happens in countries like France and Switzerland, both countries that ban surrogacy. Faced with a fait accompli judges tend to take the view that the child's best interests are to remain with the "parents" who have been parenting it up to that point. So they get waved through. I agree with cupoftea, any person bringing a baby from abroad should be prosecuted for people trafficking. Even if, on the face of it, it seems best for the baby to stay with the only parents it has ever known. At least let them get a criminal conviction for people trafficking with a suspended sentence +/- a big fine. Nobody wants that on their record. It would be a real deterrent I believe.

I just can't imagine growing up and finding that my "parents" exploited an impoverished woman from abroad to buy me. Remember the earthquake in Nepal, when Israel sent a chartered flight to evacuate a group of surrogate babies leaving the mothers to their fate. How could one have any respect for people who had treated one's mother like that?

So what can we do to stop this?

Does anyone feel that we desperately need a group a bit like Stonewall but better to campaign for the rights of women in the UK?

We've got attempts to introduce commercial surrogacy, the Leeds area where women are being pimped out, the redefinition of women but what seems like every public body, women in NI still with no access to abortion and this crazy idea that you now apparently have to show you didn't consent to being murdered.

ineedacupoftea it is not only that people who don’t have enough money to feed their children are having their benefits cut, it is that should they get pregnant with a third child, they are not eligible for universal credit for that child and then are seeking abortion. The number of abortions have increased following this ruling, particularly amongst older women. The article I read directly made the connection. I am all for women’s choice over abortion, but financial pressures, government policy not to provide benefits for third children, and lack of support for poor families generally mean it is not a real choice in this circumstance. Personally, I find it barbaric that a woman should be in the position of having to ‘choose’ to have an abortion to be able to look after the children she has already got.

However, that is a different point and I do not want to derail the thread. My point is that the state actively discourages women from having more than two children, regardless of how sad they are, if they are not well off.

twicemummy I agree with you about women’s role in reproduction being undervalued. I would say however that many women who fought for the vote did so precisely because they wanted to have a voice in Parliament for ‘women’s issues’ such as maternal and infant welfare. Huge strides were made on this after the First World War, for example with family allowances, antenatal and postnatal care; and after the Second World War, family planning and access to abortion. There was a clear idea of what women needed as mothers, particularly those in straightened circumstances, and that this should be provided by the state - when the NHS started, they had to deal with a huge backlog of gynaecological cases for example.

I am not sure when this changed. Now we have this paradox that there is a huge industry around having a baby (not just motherhood) but no real support unless you can pay for it yourself. I want to say this is a result of neoliberalism but that is only part of it. I was brought up by a second wave feminist mother to believe that my career should absolutely come first and children would ruin my life. So somewhere along the lines there has been a devaluing or child-bearing and rearing in the name of gaining equality in the workplace and financially but I don’t think this was a result of liberal feminism (in its classical sense). I don’t know though and I appreciate this is way off topic.

Thailand banned surrogacy after some western commissioning parents refused to take the baby because it had Downs Syndrome. Can you imagine?! Well done Thailand.
Do the Thais generally go with a laissez-faire approach to medicine until a westerner decides to do something abhorrent then?
They banned genital reassignment surgery after Suzie Green had her son operated on for his 16th birthday didn't they?
Ineedacupofteadesperately of course sadness is not treated with equal reverence. Sad transwoman trumps sad natal woman, we've seen that. It just shows how ridiculous the idea of pandering to the squeakiest wheel is.

@KTara No it's a good discussion to be had , I don't think it's a derail. I've had a lot of experience online of all kinds of people even academics defining feminism as being all sorts of crap. I just wanted to make sure people here were in agreement that surrogacy is a feminist issue.
Of course I admire and respect the women who got us the vote but as I understand it after that happened the women's movement ran out of steam because it took so much for us to get the damn vote. And what we won was the right to vote for men. Now look what we have today, all major political parties don't even think women exist. That's such a coup.
So trying to fit women into the political and economic structures that exist is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. They were designed by and for men and they do not work for us

@KTara My mother was similar to yours in that she taught me to establish a career first before even thinking about having children. But I knew that my fertility would decline so I had my first baby at 25 just after finishing my master's degree, my second baby at 27. My career went down the pan of course.
I think a lot of "infertility" cases are women simply leaving it too late. Well sorry, you've missed the boat and you don't get to feed off the energies and babies of young women. And in this group include middle class women who "never met the right man" going around saying "well if I can't conceive I can always adopt". No, no you can't. I am suspicious of the reasons a lot of babies are removed from young and poor women and I'm certain that with the right state support these so called unfit mothers could absolutely keep their babies.

Unless by 'success' you mean the commissioning parents get the end product they wanted

How dare you. You are just trying to make us look evil. In my post I clearly outlined my concern for my friend as a potential birthmum and the concerns we had for the baby. Of course "success' would mean that all parties are happy and thriving. I wish to have a baby, I do not wish to have one at the expense of my friend or the baby. Most people do not enter into surrogacy lightly.

Most people do not enter into surrogacy lightly.
You can't back that statement up. You personally might not take it lightly. You can't speak for all commissioning parents.

You are just trying to make us look evil.
And telling women off for "being mean" is really boring. Contribute to the debate and leave your hyperbolic nonsense behind please.

Of course "success' would mean that all parties are happy and thriving

But how can you know this?

Like I said, surrogacy is quite new. There have - to my knowledge - been no real studies done on the effect of surrogacy on the 'surrobubs'. Or, indeed, on their siblings. How might they feel to find out that their mother became pregnant and gave birth to a baby in exactly the same way she did with them, but gave that baby away?

These are valid questions. Your attempts at indignation and emotional blackmail aren't going to work, just as they haven't for the other posters who tried them.

Of course "success' would mean that all parties are happy and thriving

Agree with Iced. The fact is that you cannot know the impact of being a surrogate baby on the baby until they're an adult. There is enough evidence from adopted children (where usually - but not always - there was little option other than adoption) and sperm donor children, and some accounts of surrogate babies (although obviously not so many of these yet) that a significant number of adults have significant issues.

In addition, many countries who ban surrogacy consider the human right to dignity as a barrier to surrogacy (e.g. in France). It is very clear that in any surrogate arrangement you CANNOT KNOW how a child will feel during childhood or in adulthood. You are imposing an entirely avoidable adverse circumstance upon them at birth.

I really don't think it's ok. You're essentially saying 'well we'll do our best to make sure they're fine' but what if they're not? I wonder if surrogate children will have the right to sue their parents (all of them) in the future.

And to those saying infertility is really awful. It is, I was there for 7 long years and told I would never have a child. So is cancer, I know people who've died very young from cancer and never had children.

There is a very, very BIG difference between problems which are caused by biology (the luck of the draw) and problems which are imposed on you by another person (particularly one who is supposed to love you), especially in the case when that person could have chosen quite easily not to have gone down that path.

What is the definition of infertile? Because if you're over 30 and finding it hard to conceive then you're probably not infertile, you've just had a drop in fertility because of your age. Women also need to understand that while they may not be able to conceive with their husband they might be able to conceive with someone else who is a more compatible biological match. So the social structure of marriage can be the root cause of infertility in some cases.

Regarding the demand for surrogacy, it comes from middle class women leaving it too late. Women delay having a baby for social or maybe economic reasons and when they miss the fertility boat they expect to rely on adoption, or surrogacy.

Icelandic women are supported to have babies while they're young, they get a lot of state support if they fall pregnant while at university to make sure they finish their degree.
So I think we need to educate women about their declining fertility. You're most fertile before 25 and then fertility drops again after 30. A woman trying and failing to get pregnant at 35 is just over the hill. This is why the liberal feminist model doesn't work because our career paths can't progress like men's do, if we have babies when we're most fertile.

Blood flows up. Older parents are seen by the state as being able to provide more stability to a baby than the actual birth mother , but these babies are coming from down and out women who can't get rid of their abusive boyfriends ( because they're financially dependent), or who might be prostituting themselves, or who simply can't afford a place to live. If surrogacy is seen as socially acceptable we already know which type, age and social group of women the babies will come from, because that's exactly where the babies are coming from right now.

There needs to be a complete feminist overhaul of government support for mothers- real financial support so they can live comfortably alone with their child. It's not acceptable to have a society where teenage girls are essentially acting as unpaid surrogates for parents who "can provide more stability". And it will be even more horrifying if our young women are becoming commercial surrogates for the old fossils in society.

Sorry my last post made it sound like women couldn't be genuinely infertile. Of course they can be!
But what I'm saying is that women over 30 who can't conceive should know it's probably because of their age.