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

Good, so if she wants to call you mum when she's older that's fine?
Because quite a lot of adopted children do - often both sets of parents but sometimes only birth parents.

Excellent article by a gay man.
www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/06/52715/
It is clearly akin to selling organs. Just because it works for certain individuals doesn't mean it should be a social norm.

@drspouse - believe me when I say that, as far as I am aware, that has never happened. I think people should ensure that they are fully clued up on surrogacy before they think negatively of it. A lot of the time when people have something bad to say about it, they've never experienced infertility before. I know that I will be a surrogate again; I'd be pregnant right now if I could! We are lucky that, in the UK, women have full control over what we do with our bodies. It's a shame that some people, like yourself, can still look at it all so negatively, yet what it is is creating life for a couple who would never have been able to feel the love they have for their child, who thought that this day would ever come for them. Personally that's all I can say on the matter; all the surrogates I know are bloody amazing women. And all the IPs I know have gone through hell and back to get to the point of surrogacy. I sincerely hope that yourself, or anyone you know, be it friend or family, do not need a surrogate in future. Good night :)

It is clearly akin to selling organs.

IMO it's much worse, as it involves the creation of an entirely new person who didn't ask for any of it.

@IcedPurple there is good research by the university of Cambridge that the outcomes for children born through surrogacy are good - above average.

I sincerely hope that yourself, or anyone you know, be it friend or family, do not need a surrogate in future.

Nobody needs a surrogate. I'm sure infertility can be traumatic, but that doesn't give you the right to use another woman as an incubator. Having a baby is not a right, and perhaps we'd be better off trying to build a society where having your 'own' child weren't seen as such an essential part of adulthood.

We are lucky that, in the UK, women have full control over what we do with our bodies.

Well, not entirely. We can't sell our ogans. We can't use certain drugs. We can't walk around naked in public. And so on. Neither can men, of course. But the fact is that society and law place restrictions on what we can do 'with our bodies' so it's a bit inane to say surrogacy is great because it's our 'right' to make ourselves into human incubators if we 'choose'.

@IcedPurple there is good research by the university of Cambridge that the outcomes for children born through surrogacy are good - above average.

"Outcomes" in what? And since generally speaking, rich women don't volunteer to gestate babies for poor women, it's very likely that those using the 'services' of surrogates are of above average income, even in the UK, where commercial surogacy is banned. And this will of course have an influence on 'outcomes'.

And do you have a link to the research? Surrogacy is a pretty new phenonemon, so I'm not sure any clear conclusions could be drawn as of yet.

@icedpurple Isn’t any form of pregnancy being a human incubator? I agree that if there’s any sniff of duress, a woman isn’t making an informed choice. And if it’s commercial, I personally have an issue with that. But if she is making her own choice, who is being hurt or offended?

Just leaving this here, www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/06/52715/

@icedpurple
Here is a paper from ages ago, when the participants were ten years old. academic.oup.com/humrep/article/27/10/3008/750058

I know there is more recent stuff, but I think the rules have changed about accessibility of academic research. I wish this was twitter so I could tag one of the researchers!

@icedpurple Isn’t any form of pregnancy being a human incubator?

No. In surrogacy the woman is considered a mere vessel to 'host' a baby which is considered to 'belong' to those who have 'commissioned' the baby. We've had people on this very thread insisting that the woman who creates that child out of a microscopic speck of genetic material, growing it in her body for 9 months and then undergoing the huge physical stress of pushing it out of that body, is somehow not the mother of that child. That is obscene to me.

But if she is making her own choice, who is being hurt or offended?

Well, potentially the baby who is being ripped away from the person who has been their whole world for 9 months.

But like I said above, there are lots of things we're not allowed to 'choose' to do even if nobody is directly 'hurt or offended'. I take it you believe people should be allowed to donate kidneys or other organs (possibly for cash) if it's their 'choice'?

Here is a paper from ages ago, when the participants were ten years old.

That's not about 'outcomes'. It's about the child's relationship with their birth mother. Plus, 10 is a pretty young age to be drawing conclusions from.

Okay I have looked at the consultation document and it is very detailed. Can someone write a guide to completing the form?

"in the UK, women have full control over what we do with our bodies"

This law seeks to undermine that.

In any case, the "it's my body" argument displays a fundamental lack of understanding of the transaction which is outlawed.
It is not the kidney donor who would be prosecuted - it is the buyer.
It should not be the prostituted woman who is prosecuted, it should be the person who rented her body.
It is not the woman who gave her child up for adoption who is in the wrong, but it is the person who sought to buy a child.
We have the right to get pregnant - but it does not follow that we each have the right to give our children away to anyone we want. We can give them away by abdicating our rights, but into the care of a regulated state system. Because children have rights too.
And the decision to relinquish our rights must always be free, uncoerced, and present. We cannot set aside those rights in advance, because we must and do retain the right to reassert those rights at any moment by changing our minds.

We would recoil in horror if a person who had agreed to euthanasia changed their mind at the last minute but had a prior contract waved in their face with a 'too late, you already signed up for this, no changing your mind now'.

It's equally horrific to seek to do the same to a woman regarding the baby she created inside her body.

And this argument? 'I found it inconvenient to have to formally renounce my parental responsibilities after birth, so I support the removal of rights prior to birth from all women to their children if they signed a contract in advance. Because inconvenient post birth paperwork was such a faff for me.'
That's one of the most compelling reasons I've ever heard for NOT extrapolating from one happy surrogate experience onto all women.
Choosing not to exercise your own parental rights should NEVER be extrapolated into the forfeiting of rights for other women.

Genetics does not determine a parent. Hmmm like the children removed from dissidents in Argentina to be given to military families. Like light skinned aborigines children taken from families to be raised as white children. Their genetic parents were deemed irrelevant.
When making these kind of laws it's imperative that the worst possible consequences are given due weight. Having children is not a human right.

@icedpurple
In my first hand experience of surrogacy, there was no ‘vessel’ - I have a thoughtful and very generous lifelong friend. My kids ‘belong’ to themselves but are very clear and happy about who their parents are. I hate the word ‘commissioned’ in this context - it’s inappropriate and I would never use it.

In terms of the birth, all babies are ripped away at that point - it must be a profoundly shocking experience and I was the one to hold my kids and comfort them through their arrival in the outside world. I know there is a school of thought that says your birth experience guides your psychological well-being for ever, but I don’t believe in that personally.

I’ve got to go to bed now - school run in the morning.

Hope you are able to reflect and think about informing yourself about the reality of altruistic surrogacy

In terms of the birth, all babies are ripped away at that point

Eh? I've never had a baby but I know that this is simply not the case in modern childbirth. Unless there's a very good reason to do otherwise, the child is given to the mother to hold immediately after birth, and he/she will bond with her over the coming days and weeks. Entirely different from tearing a tiny newborn away from the woman whose voice, smell and heartbeat are comforting to him or her.

In my first hand experience of surrogacy, there was no ‘vessel’ - I have a thoughtful and very generous lifelong friend. My kids ‘belong’ to themselves but are very clear and happy about who their parents are. I hate the word ‘commissioned’ in this context - it’s inappropriate and I would never use it.

You may hate the expression but you refer to you and your husband as the child's 'parents' and say that you held 'your' kids as their mother pushed them out of her body. So yes, however much the individual words may offend you, you are reducing the birth mother to a vessel. That is what surrogacy, however 'altruistic' does. And that is why I am opposed to it.

@IcedPurple
I just snagged the first link to their research I could find, so must have got the wrong one. They have been at it for decades and I have seen Susan Golombok’s team present it many times over the years. Feel free to research it - it’s there. Night night.

Hello all

I just wanted to add my experience as I am a mum to my beautiful daughter Olivia through surrogacy.

From the moment of my diagonisis my best friend was there to pick me up and keep me going. Then one day totally without prompt she offered to be a surrogate for us.

We had to really fight a long and hard battle through counselling, NHS specialists, social workers, CAFCASS and the courts to bring Olivia into this world.

Olivia was wanted more than I could ever explain. I only know motherhood through surrogacy and it was beautiful and to me natural.

There was totally nothing commercial or transactional about it.

My best friend had six weeks to reconsider her decision after Olivia was born, and six months until I was granted parental responsibility over Liv.

Surrogacy made me a mamma and I never got to breast feed or have contractions but I got to travel a totally different path, an extraordinary one. Livs surromum is her aunty and we have the best relationship together - were a team!

I just wanted to explain this last bit, as this is what will hopefully change.

When Liv was born, I couldn’t take her home and we had to do the handover bit in the rain in the hospital car park. What will change is that all parties will have parental responsibility but the surromum will still have the same window of time to change her mind should she decide to.

Please also remember that nobody in the surrogacy community wants commercial surrogacy. Honestly not one single person I have ever encountered in the surro world.

It’s a long journey but one worth taking but not taken lightly.

Please also remember surrobubs (kiddos born through surrogacy) May read your comments one day including my beautiful little girl and I would never want her to feel a negative way about her arrival into this world x

P.s Olivia becomes a big sister in August when our son will be born xx

Ugh

If everyone has parental responsibility, how will the surrogate mother be able to change her mind without the same expensive and protracted court case that anyone in dispute over their child’s residence or contact arrangements has to go through? She would not.

I have been reading the consultation document and am struck by the provision about compensation in case of the surrogate dying in the process of bearing the child. What other contract does one enter into where this is a risk?

Plus, no surprise to see that greater consistency and transparency is needed in the Scottish courts reporting system - unrelated to surrogacy, the way this operates is a complete disgrace so it is not surprising to see the issues of inconsistency and costs raised here.

Overall, beyond the many other questions this document raises, it seems that the new arrangements like all areas of family law will make a lot of money for lawyers. Funny that

It really does strike me that to parents through surrogacy the birth mum is just not given the same status as a birth mum in adoption. Yet they are the same.

@gemmacandrews That’s beautiful. Congratulations on your sibling xx

Altruistic surrogacy is the wedge. Altruistic surrogacy still doesn’t take into account the best needs of the baby.

Of course babies are resilient and adopted children can thrive but to create a legal situation where a baby will never have the chance to be with its birth mother, to breast fed, cared for and loved when that mother is alive and well does not seem ethical or moral.

Would anyone say that a baby whose mother died in childbirth was unscathed by this experience? Would anyone celebrate them never getting to be with their mother? If not, then how can the mental jump be made to any situation which forces a mother to abandon her baby either for money or for any other reason.

No one has the right to a child. A child is a human being whose needs need to come above the desires of adults.

Here’s some links from the perspective of child who is a product of a commercial surrogacy payment:

Jessica Kern writes and advocates against surrogacy. She has been left deeply traumatised by her experience as a child who was bought by a rich older couple and abandoned by her biological birth mother.

www.theothersideofsurrogacy.blogspot.com

Another heartbreaking account of what it is like for the baby of this adult transaction:

www.sonofasurrogate.tripod.com

"surrobub" ugh!

Why not just call it a baby? Since that is what it is.