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

Strong words, twice.....and I tend to agree with them. I can’t recall if the thread has covered gay men in the debate. The social norm is to celebrate and support the entitlement of gay men to surrogacy - and I feel uncomfortable about it, not because they’re gay, but because of the commodification of the human, female body that is inevitable...basically the exact same reason as when it’s a hetero couple, and my objection to creating a baby for the sole purpose of removing it from its mother.
Gay men may long for a child/children and to have a family life. It’s understandable. Children are great! But you know.....they’re men. Biology is not their friend in this. Rich men hiring a poor woman’s uterus and then demanding no further connection - not right.

@tiktok this is where women's rights strongly clash with the gay men who are really really really really sad

Although I agree that some women find themselves infertile as a result of “leaving it too late” (although there’s more than a whiff of victim blaming about that, tbh) I’m not sure twicemummy1 is correct in saying there’s a drop in fertility after 30. I know you have said you chose to have children in your 20s, but fertility doesn’t fall off a cliff after 30, or even 35.

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.

While I tend to agree with most of what has been said on this thread:

• There are people who are younger and can't get pregnant for a variety of reasons.
• There are people who are younger and for whom having a child out of a stable relationship would never be a choice they would make. Your suggestion that people "just have babies while they are young" seems to also suggest that women should make babies for the good of society (I imagine that Iceland's policy is in response to low fertility rates) and we all know who is left holding the baby when one is born into an unstable relationship.
• Finishing university or going back to work with childcare is not the only thing that is needed to equalise younger mums' salaries/participation in the workplace and I bet there is no way to legislate for all dads to do 50/50 housework, childcare, early finishes for after school care, school plays etc. etc.

• The answer to women having repeated (or even, any) pregnancies while in an abusive relationship that their children cannot live in and/or having children when not in a fit mental state to care for them (two of the main causes of children being removed) is not to support them financially but to make sure they have spent their younger lives in a society and in relationships where being mentally healthy and not dependent on an abusive man is the norm.

• A baby is, indeed, not a right, but for a child, a stable family life is a right. Sometimes that CANNOT take place in their birth family, sometimes it can but not with their birth parents, and the support given to kinship carers is probably the most shocking (i.e. nothing).

• Maybe we also need to boost the image of both strong childless women (not making them look extra sad) and of families who have adopted older children (by actually giving them some support too) so that there are genuinely fulfilling publicly lauded alternatives to having a baybee.

. It's not homophobic to be against gay men adopting and hiring surrogates. If it were a homophobic argument we would be against lesbians having babies and we're not

@drspouse yes I made a whole post specifically acknowledging that younger women can be infertile

I'd also say here that the images I see of gay male couples with older adopted children are generally extremely positive - the exceptions are those who seem to have had an unrealistic idea of having a lovely baybee - but they are not very public.

The images of women who decided to remain childless and happy after failing to conceive or to carry a pregnancy are nonexistent.

"You are born and you have a father and a mother. Or at least it should be like this, that's why I am not convinced by chemical children, synthetic babies, wombs for rent," Dolce said.
NAGM Not All Gay Men
It's telling that all those slebs fell over themselves to condemn him.

It's not homophobic to be against gay men adopting
I'd say it is specifically homophobic to be against gay men adopting.

Some children cannot actually be adopted by a couple with a woman owing to their difficulty with women stemming from early life trauman.

Most gay adopters are very positive about their child's birth mother in a way that adoptive mothers I often see are not - how dare she think she's still my DC's mother - she gave up the right etc. etc.

@drspouse
I
The only reason women stay in abusive relationships is because they can't make it on their own financially. It's got nothing to do with Stockholm syndrome or any of the other reasons I've heard social workers on here talk about. Before expecting a mother to leave her abusive partner, ask her "have you got a place to go?" " Can you afford the rent alone ?" "Can you afford childcare?" "Does your income cover the expenses you need to raise a child?" The answer will be no. So they stay.
Financial pressures are often related to mental health problems. For example if a woman is a prostitute , because that's the only way she can earn enough, then she will have trauma and PTSD from doing that. Or simply financial pressures alone can cause mental health problems.
It absolutely has everything to do with women not having the economic resources they need to raise their children alone and with dignity

I'd also say here that the images I see of gay male couples with older adopted children are generally extremely positive Yes and are designed to be.

The images of women who decided to remain childless and happy after failing to conceive or to carry a pregnancy are nonexistent.
Likewise.

the support given to kinship carers is probably the most shocking (i.e. nothing)
I've seen this. It makes me wonder if the fact the carer is related means the local authority just sees an opportunity to save money?

Babies are lifestyle statements now. Whether taken from their father and sold to a celebrity, grown in a rented womb and sold to a gay male celebrity, or grown in a rented womb to suit the commissioning mother's busy schedule, there's zero focus on the child.

@drspouse I'm against older heterosexual women adopting too, not just gay men. You need reading comprehension lessons

This graphic is how I understood the decline of female fertility after 30 - it starts to decline but it’s a fairly slow decline. And declines faster after 35. To say a woman trying and failing at 35 is just over the hill is incorrect and I think your disdain is projection, twice

Anyway, back on topic...

Well I didn't specify older heterosexual . I include older lesbian women in that too, although it is really heterosexual couples who expect a baby to be provided for them if they're passed 30 and can't conceive

@Haworthia Women need a better heads up. It's likely an 18 year old is more fertile than a 27 year old. But because of graphs like that women think, oh well I'll wait until 30

I’m not against gay couples adopting. I’m not against lesbians having babies. It’s the hiring of surrogates I am against. As for the fertility thing and the possible victim blaming of women in their thirties who discover fertility problems - we should not be blaming individual women for their attempts to negotiate the way society is, but looking at ways to enable women to have their babies younger without it having any impact on other life choices. We need to make structural changes so that women are better able to have their babies when it is easiest, physiologically, and make it just as easy, socially and economically.
I think it is desperately sad when a woman reaches her late thirties and forties and then oops, babies are difficult to conceive, difficult to carry and difficult to birth. There is a whole (profitable) industry, sometimes with questionable ethics, ready to take a whole load of dosh from these often higher earning women, and we all know women who spend years of their lives shelling out and putting their entire lives on hold while the often unpleasant fertility procedures are gone through.
We don’t, or shouldn’t, blame them. But we should somehow think of ways the world can change to make all this less likely.

It's not homophobic to be against gay men adopting

I'd say it is specifically homophobic to be against gay men adopting.

I'd say you're right, but I'd also say it is specifically homophobic to refuse to discuss the difficulties of adoption and how gay men face them. Not saying you're refusing, but this idea that ta-dah! you're gay fathers now! with no follow-up and no realism about how hard it is to raise children, and how demanding they can be, and how your social life, your finances and your mental health can take a dive - I think the inability of society to address this and to raise questions about how difficult it is to do is pretty homophobic.
How often do you think Elton John changed a nappy? It's a lifestyle statement. Farm a womb, farm the kids out to a nanny, etc. There's no way he takes his kids to football practice on a rainy Saturday morning is there?
Not all gay men are rich, Will and Grace wasn't a documentary, and I think there's a pressure to look wealthier and more fabulous than you really are. Not to mention gay men have a greater incidence of MH problems, and drink and drug use. Not because they are somehow morally inferior, but it's there. It needs to be acknowledged. Gay men adopting probably need more support and more lessons in parenting. Is that homophobic, or is just leaving them to it homophobic? What's best for the child?

tiktok good post

@tiktok Totally . That's why I gave the Iceland example of how women there are helped to have babies younger, should they want to. But that's what I mean by the whole structure of society being against women's role in reproduction. You do lose out on a good career if you have babies young. It's just the way it's set up.

Women need a better heads up. It's likely an 18 year old is more fertile than a 27 year old. But because of graphs like that women think, oh well I'll wait until 30

Women don’t wait until after 30 because a graph tells them it’s OK, but because society tells women to pursue education and careers and travel and freedom before settling down (I’m aware that this doesn’t apply to all socioeconomic groups). And, now I’m 38 with two kids, I still think that’s overwhelmingly good life advice

Women can’t have it all. I’m not sure we should be encouraging women to throw a spanner into their careers at 25 or younger.

I’m not sure we should be encouraging women to throw a spanner into their careers at 25 or younger.
I think the point is that it shouldn't be a spanner. It should have as much impact on a woman's career as a man's.

@Haworthia Well yes that's it, women can't have it all.
The advice is don't waste your education, get a good career first, and I'm just wondering, looking at the women who seem to think surrogacy is a reasonable thing to expect of another women, whether this is good advice. I just don't believe it's okay to pursue a career safe in the knowledge that you can always acquire a baby somehow later on.
But I certainly don't want women to waste their education opportunities either.
I don't have answers, I just know that things are not working for women.
If I had to choose between defending a middle class woman's right to a good career and a poor woman's right not to be a surrogate, well it's a no brainer

And it's not even the time out of work - I've known men to take a year off sick with cancer and it doesn't impact their career. I've known women who have their childcare sewn up so tight they never ever take time off work for the kids and they are still patronised, offered fluffy crap instead of meaty roles and suggestions of flexible working doing some admin.
But that's off topic, I guess.

I'd say you're right, but I'd also say it is specifically homophobic to refuse to discuss the difficulties of adoption and how gay men face them.

They are. The gay adopters I know talk about how hard it is and how different it is to parent an adopted child, how to help a child to still know about their birth family, and a whole host of other things.

There are, of course, bad adopters who are gay and straight, and as I say one of the failings of adoptive mums (and, I would warrant, mums through surrogacy) is to minimise the role of birth mum.

I just don't believe it's okay to pursue a career safe in the knowledge that you can always acquire a baby somehow later on.

I didn't pursue a career knowing I could acquire a baby later on - I didn't have someone to acquire a baby with - then found we couldn't have birth children for unrelated reasons.

The only reason women stay in abusive relationships is because they can't make it on their own financially. It's got nothing to do with Stockholm syndrome or any of the other reasons I've heard social workers on here talk about.
I think the social workers might know what they are talking about, and I've seen financially independent women who are nonetheless emotionally dependent on a specific abusive man, or abusive relationships in general. Thankfully none of the ones I've known have had children affected but it definitely happens.