All-male Law Commission discussing surrogacy

[NotAtMyAge]

An excellent and justifiably angry article by Catherine Bennett in last Sunday's Observer.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/09/who-better-than-men-to-rule-on-delicate-subject-of-surrogacy-law-commission

Haven't yet read the article, but legal support is not useful if there are no laws to enforce.

capitas
it's her choice

And the baby's choice too, I suppose.

Are such children allowed (as adopted and sperm-donor children in this country are, by law) to go and find the woman who carried and bore them?

I’m infuriated about this issue in my home state at the moment. Our democrat governor has positioned this issue as a “LGBTQ rights issue” and if we cared about gay men enough to let them marry what right do we have to prevent them from having children?

He literally did Not mention that these gay men would be using a woman’s body and gametes during this process. Women made invisible.

capita's "choices" are not made in a vacuum. Surrogacy, like prostitution, involves (in most cases) the more powerful party using the body of the less powerful party for their own purposes. This is not something women with real choices does. The decision to become a surrogate or a prostitute is made because of a lack of real choices.

A few women may actively choose to be surrogates out of pure altruism. If their sister or a close friend for whatever reason cannot have a child herself, they may want to have one for her. That is not a commercial transaction, and not really relevant to the discussion, but I thought it needed to be said because otherwise it invariably gets brought up in this discussion as if it had the slightest equivalence with someone rich buying a baby from someone poor.

Awesome by which I mean really fucking infuriating that those people who have no experience of pregnancy and giving birth (and are unable to ever have any experience of pregnancy and giving birth as they are non-women) are the ones making the decisions

I filled in that terrible survey, which was surely designed to be as opaque and off-putting as possible.

I currently feel that I would like to see ALL payments to surrogates banned. Even expenses such as lost earnings. If that means that only wealthy women choose to be surrogates for family and close friends, so much the better. Because this way, there is no power imbalance caused by income disparity. No sense of obligation caused by the money paid. And, assuming that people obey the law, no woman in this country will become a surrogate for financial reasons.

FWRLurker yes, that's two mother's rendered invisible in gay surrogacy - the mother who donated her eggs and mother who grew the baby and delivered it.
Two father families are just ignoring the two mother's involved.

@Cattenberg

I currently feel that I would like to see ALL payments to surrogates banned. Even expenses such as lost earnings. If that means that only wealthy women choose to be surrogates for family and close friends, so much the better. Because this way, there is no power imbalance caused by income disparity. No sense of obligation caused by the money paid. And, assuming that people obey the law, no woman in this country will become a surrogate for financial reasons.

That's a brilliantly simple solution. I wish I had thought of that and put it on the consultation answers.

Hmm... I would like everyone involved to not be able to make a profit.
If it's altruistic, it should be the same throughout the chain. Not just the surrogate who doesn't get paid but the clinic earning handsome profits.