Building families through surrogacy: A new Law - Consultation

[FannyCann]

Building families through surrogacy: A new Law - Consultation

Last Tuesday I attended one of several public consultation events around the country to hear discussion of the proposals and recommendations to the government regarding new laws to regulate surrogacy. Now I am opposed to surrogacy in all forms and wish Britain would follow other European countries such as Switzerland, France, Germany and Sweden in banning it. However our government and the department of heath take a different view:

“Our project does not seek to examine whether or not surrogacy should be allowed. Instead, we take as our starting point that surrogacy is an accepted form of building a family, as recognised by the Department of Health and Social Care in the guidance it publishes on surrogacy arrangements”

So in the spirit of examining how the laws should be reformed I thought it would be helpful to have a new thread devoted to this discussion - there have been quite a few threads where the rights and wrongs of surrogacy have been discussed and I have voiced my opposition. Now I think we should look at the fine detail of the proposals and support and advise anyone who wants to contribute to the discussion by responding to the consultation.

Links:

Summary of the consultation paper, a shorter overview of the proposals.

https://s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/lawcom-prod-storage-11jsxou24uy7q/uploads/2019/06/Surrogacy-summary.pdff_

The full consultation paper, all 502 pages, not for the faint hearted! Disclaimer - I haven’t worked my way through it all yet either!

https://s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/lawcom-prod-storage-11jsxou24uy7q/uploads/2019/06/Surrogacy-consultation-paper.pdff_

Link to respond to the consultation - at the event one of the organisers stressed that all answers are welcomed and don’t feel you have to answer all the questions. Just answer some if you want to.

https://consult.justice.gov.uk/law-commission/surrogacyy_

Or you can email comments to:

“However, we are happy to accept comments in other formats. If you would like to a response form in word format, do email us to request one. Please send your response:
By email to [email protected]k_
OR
By post to Surrogacy Team, Law Commission, 1st Floor, Tower, 52 Queen Anne’s Gate, London, SW1H 9AG.
If you send your comments by post, it would be helpful if, whenever possible, you could also send them by email.
If you have any questions, you can contact the team at: [email protected] “

Back to Tuesday. I have name changed as anyone who was there will know who I am. I left work at lunchtime planning to catch a train that would get me to Cardiff with plenty of time to cross the square from the train station to attend the event starting at 4pm. But it was a very hot day. Successive announcements warned that the train would be delayed by 12, 18, 36, 48 minutes...I contemplated abandoning the trip and going swimming. We got on the train (dd had decided it would be interesting to come with me), and soon we were told the train would be terminating for maintenance and we had to change. So...three trains later I staggered into the meeting room, extremely hot and sweaty, having somehow acquired a generous smear of black grease from one
of the trains all down the front of my dress, and the only seats available were at the front🥵!

The presentation had just finished and questions were starting. Of course I was very disappointed to have missed the presentation however the slides on the screen were of the twenty four pages of the summary paper linked above which I had printed off and read so although I missed the wider explanation I have an idea what the previous hour had covered.

From the questions raised referenced by some of the screenshots:

There was discussion of the proposed new pathway, which will include legal advice for the surrogate and the intended parents, and “implications” counselling for the surrogate, her family and intended parents.

A hopeful intended parent disagreed with compulsory legal advice on the grounds that she was a solicitor and didn’t need it. A recent surrogate mother disagreed with compulsory counselling as she knew what she had done and didn’t need it.

Both of these points were politely dismissed by the person presenting the proposals. And I absolutely agree with him. If anything these views demonstrated to me how these provisions absolutely need to be compulsory and I was surprised that two apparently intelligent and thoughtful people would not see that these proposals are to provide protection for other people who may be less well informed.

There was discussion around the payments and costs. I queried compensation for death of the surrogate. It was suggested that intended parents would be expected to pay for life insurance for the surrogate.

I also raised the matter of egg donors, as they appeared not to have been mentioned. We were informed that payment for egg donors is capped at £750 in the UK.

Thinking about it since the event, shouldn’t egg donors have some sort or health/sickness/life insurance too?
Ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome is a well known complication and can be life threatening in 1-2 % of cases.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/ovarian-hyperstimulation-syndrome-ohss/symptoms-causes/src-203546977_

Also I have been looking at some American donor egg bank sites online. Payments are significantly higher over there, especially for young women with sought after genetic traits (high IQ, athletic prowess, beauty etc). Payments may be as much as $10,000.
I have no idea if it is legal but if I was looking to make money from my eggs a holiday in the USA and a substantial payment looks a lot more attractive that £750!

Discussion moved onto the question of payments to the surrogate. The surrogates in the room were very clear, the commercial model of the USA, where surrogates may be paid around $40,000 is not welcome in the UK. The presenter was in agreement. One surrogate mentioned the type of punitive contracts used in the USA and absolutely rejected the possibility of signing such a contract.
So surrogacy should remain altruistic with just payments for expenses covered, this was generally agreed.

However I have been thinking about this more over the past few days and it seems to be a bit of a conundrum. Look at the proposed pathway and think about the number of services and professionals involved along the way, all of whom will have a commercial interest in surrogacy:

Lawyers
Counsellors
Private fertility clinics
Egg donors - at least for £750
Insurance companies
Surrogacy agencies
Possibly advertisers if this is made legal

All of these people have skin in the game and will be profiting from each surrogate pregnancy. The intended parents get their baby. And the surrogate? Some redundant maternity clothes, a few more stretch marks and a warm fuzzy feeling at having given the most generous gift of life.

That just doesn’t sit right with me. Maybe I am just too selfish, too close minded, too unimaginative to understand why someone would want to go through nine months of pregnancy and birth for someone else. But I hate to feel ripped off and taken advantage of. And I can’t wrap my mind around the principle of a whole industry (the presenter mentioned they expected a growth in numbers) predicated on a steady supply of generous individuals who are the only people in the chain who make no profit.

The only comparable situation I can think of is altruistic kidney donation, which is uncommon but some people do it. I’m not sure exactly how one would go about it but I would think in the uk approaching the national transplant organisation would put you in touch with your nearest transplant centre, they would do medical and psychological assessments and if all was well make arrangements. It would all be in house, within the nhs, absolutely no profit anywhere, of that I am sure.

Incidentally the questions raised about making counselling and legal advice compulsory seemed to be rooted in trying to keep costs to a minimum for the intended parents. Which seemed to miss the point of these recommendations somewhat.

I have no answer for this - commercial, with substantial payment to the surrogate v altruistic with payment of expenses only to the surrogate but lots of side players profiting along the way. It is definitely something I will mention in my reply to the consultation.

So to wrap up, there were one or two people present who I suspected could be mumsnetters - one woman mentioned the rights of the child, the “quiet voice” of the baby which was the silent voice in the room. Another woman drilled down some statistics that had been mentioned in the presentation that I missed so I couldn’t comment except to say she was tenacious and had a sound mathematical mind which put the presenter at a distinct disadvantage. Well done her.

I may or may not have caused outrage with one or two grenades I lobbed - least said the better 😉

Which reminds me, I am not happy with a proposed minimum age for surrogates of 18. Yes, as someone said, it is the age of adult majority, and the presenter said it was unlikely in reality that an 18 year old would be accepted, but still....

There are more public events to come, and the screenshot I have shown doesn’t include the Scottish ones - Edinburgh on 9 September, Aberdeen 10 September, another London event is planned, date to be confirmed. You can search for events on Eventbrite, look for “Building families through surrogacy” and they come up.

Also the closing date for the consultation says previously said 27 September but seems to have been extended to 11 October on some of the information, probably best to email directly if you have queries about this.

So I hope this thread can be a useful result rice for anyone be interested in commenting on the proposals and looking at how the new law may pan out. I know many of us get heated about the rights and wrongs of surrogacy but I think it would be helpful to keep those discussions on other threads and keep this one centred on the proposals for new laws in the UK.

I'd been hoping to avoid it as I didn't want to read 500 pages, I'm sure they only made it that long to put us off. I'm free then and it's local so I feel obliged to go and stop them trampling all over well meaning but probably poor women with low self esteem and no idea of the emotional and physical risks of surrogacy.
It's sex exploitation and class exploitation.

Great news. Here is the Nordic Model Now response and guidance to send a ten minute response

nordicmodelnow.org/2019/08/30/how-to-respond-to-the-uk-surrogacy-consultation-in-10-easy-minutes/

Please read their overview and explanation and either reply using their template or take a bit more time to personalise your response if you wish to. And most of all, shout it from the hills , let's get as many responses as possible - those smug five men are expecting a few hundred positive responses from their mates and other interested parties. It's massively important that they are outnumbered by as many negative responses as possible.

One of the things I struggled with as I worked my way through was that at no point was the question I wanted to answer asked. So there are quite a few questions that seem strait forward like say no 39 that the HFEA should be the regulating body and it seems reasonable to agree. However advice from NMN is that this will be interpreted as general agreement with the underlying premise. So I have to change my responses to a few questions like this to register my disapproval of all aspects of the proposals.

I think this must be good advice and they also suggest that responses to each question are likely to be analysed separately and in isolation to responses to other questions. (I must ask DD studying quantitative methods How to Lie with Statistics about this point). Anyway I am taking they're advice and suggest no answer would be better than agree depending on how you choose to respond.

Can I let everyone know that the questions are towards the end of the 502 page document, chapter 19 page 420 onwards. Depending how closely you want to look at the questions and what IT gadgets you use: I have downloaded the whole consultation into iBooks and can easily scroll between the pages. I also printed off the 26 pages of questions as I found it easier to have them in front of me whilst typing in my answers into a document for my reference, and then I could refer back to the relevant section of the consultation paper as necessary when I found I needed more background to the question to understand the implications.

@BernardBlacksWineIceLolly @JoanOfQuarks

I think the Nordic Model Now response and advice are great and encourage everyone to follow them - I have been on annual leave this week and buried myself in the whole thing, I have spent at least 15 hours on it and am now going to edit some of my answers in keeping with theirs. So save yourself the time and use theirs!

Bernard asked it there were particular questions that should be concentrated on.

I would say questions 64 and 65 which deal with age, suggesting no upper age limit and a minimum age of 18 for intended parents. Question 65 suggests a minimum age of 18 for surrogates.

I was pleased to see NMN disagreed and came up with more or less the same reply as me. Maximum age 45 and minimum age 25 for either intended parent or surrogate with some robust reasoning behind the answers. I think we can all find a few things to say about 18 year olds embarking of a career as a brood mare but NMN add some good reasoning behind their answer.

Question 70 that there should be no requirement for the surrogate to have previously given birth.
I think we can all agree that someone who has never been pregnant or given birth can have any idea what they are undertaking. There is also the risk that in the event of some serious complications her own future childbearing capacity could be impacted or even rendered an impossibility.

Question 71 no proposed maximum number of surrogate pregnancies a woman can undertake.

As has been previously mentioned even dogs are protected in law to six litters and the Kennel club restricts the number to four. I mention this along with the risks of grand multi parity (obstetric speak for large numbers of pregnancies) and point out that India and Israel restrict the number to One. NMN also references the Kennel Club.

Questions 72 - 88 all deal with aspects of payment. I really struggled with these questions and referred back to the consultation paper which had some interesting details, and did my best but of course it all boils down to the simple question - should it be possible to to pay a woman to rent her uterus? To which the answer of course is No.
I advise going to the NMN document and doing as they have done, answering each question with the same answer summed up as: that paid surrogacy commercialises women's reproductive functions and should be opposed. That's my short summing up, not my suggested full answer.

Question 107 asks about how consultees think this may impact the NHS. Especially if you work in the NHS this is an opportunity to let rip. NMN have raised similar points to me and I have raised some that they have not.

Like why have they consulted with Mcmafia in the Ukraine (page 21 chapter 1) but not the RCM or RCOG?
Why has there been no mention of the egg "donors" they will need and where do they think all the eggs will come from?
NMN also makes some good points about health professionals being aware of the possibility of women being coerced into surrogacy by partners or family members especially if increased commercialisation is allowed.

Question 118 is basically any other business and NMN make a lot of excellent points.

Hope this is helpful.

I also wanted to add some of what I have learnt about the payments and how this whole debate is a massive state sponsored fraud. There is a sense that the commissioners either do not approve or believe the general public would not approve of full commercial surrogacy USA style so they prefer to keep the British model of "altruistic" surrogacy. I can't shout this loud enough, there is no such thing as altruistic surrogacy as my reading through the chapter relating to it confirms.

They have done research into payments surrogates have been receiving, the median payment was £14,795.54 and 9.61% were paid more than £20,000

Payments were claimed for things like takeaway meals and cleaners.

Now I recognise some aspects of a surrogate pregnancy may present additional expenses over your everyday pregnancy and I also realise that other people's experiences are different and some of you may have had more expenditure during pregnancy than me. But I can honestly say my pregnancies cost me hardly anything. Not the children of course and obviously I spent money preparing for the baby but that isn't a pregnancy expense. I was paid full maternity pay (so my employer had an expense) , there was a small amount of travel expense for antenatal appointments. Many of my maternity clothes were shared in a group of mums so I didn't spend a lot there. Maybe for bras and I bought one or two nice things for myself. But £20,000???

I also think surrogates who think they are going to pocket £20k in "expenses" and "gifts" may get a nasty shock if/when HMRC or the benefits office catches up with them.

So let's all be under no illusion: there is NO SUCH THING AS ALTHOUGH SURROGACY. It's a lie. Pure sophistry. State sponsored fraud.

Oh, and the commissioners also realise what I point d out in my OP that is could be seen as, er, a little exploitative if there are lots of paid parties but the surrogate herself isn't paid. That's why it has to be presented as expenses or gifts. FFS.

And I have said a lot of those things in my answers.

Altruistic that was meant to say, at the end.

"14.54 It is notable that other people involved in surrogacy receive payment for their contribution. Lawyers and medical staff receive their professional fees, while private fertility clinics, for example, operate on a commercial basis. Indeed, it seems that the role of surrogate – a role uniquely played by women42 – is the only one that the law prohibits from being recognised by receipt of payment. It may therefore be argued that not permitting payments undervalues the role of the surrogate:
Paying women to bear children should force us all to recognize this process as the socially useful enterprise that it is, and children as socially valuable creatures whose upbringing and welfare are critically important.43
14.55 It may be suggested, therefore, that not permitting surrogates to receive payment is a form of exploitation: surrogates are uniquely deprived of the choice whether to be paid for the service that they provide. This lack of choice is linked by some commentators to long-standing denigration of the economic value of women’s work."

Sunday morning bump. Now that you can use the Nordic Model Now ten minute download to respond
please everyone do so. This is so important.

nordicmodelnow.org/2019/08/30/how-to-respond-to-the-uk-surrogacy-consultation-in-10-easy-minutes/

They also give some really useful background explanation.

Thank you FannyCann. I have used the NMN template to respond as I found the whole document a bit overwhelming. I added my tuppence in the forwarding email.

Many thanks Fanny. Now done.

I'm so pleased @MargueritaBlue and @9years
I will pass on to Anna at NMN as they have put in a massive amount of work to produce that template..

I watched Jennifer Lahl's documentary #BigFertility on Amazon prime and was reduced to tears which is quite unusual for me as I can be a hard hearted cynic, but I was so outraged at the callous cruelty of this industry. I am now reading her book Broken Bonds. It's a tough read, it's really upsetting, the way women are abused for profit in the baby making industry. There is no way I want to see these sorts of practices coming to the UK.

Just dropping in screen grabs of Nordic Model flyers. The QR codes are a great touch. You can get flyers direct from them or send the images to friends.

“Our project does not seek to examine whether or not surrogacy should be allowed. Instead, we take as our starting point that surrogacy is an accepted form of building a family, as recognised by the Department of Health and Social Care in the guidance it publishes on surrogacy arrangements”

Why in the world would a a government agency consider human trafficking "an acceptable form of building a family"?
Could it be because they already consider buying and selling prostituted women to be an acceptable form of commerce?

Thank you Fanny, really really helpful.

A pleasure Michelle. The more I have researched and read the more appalled I am - the callous exploitation is so much worse than I had ever thought and my level of expectation wasn't high to start with.

So the more people who respond the better, I just want to encourage everyone to not just personally respond but try to drum up other friends and contacts to also respond, I'm going to be doing some mass emailing of family and friends.

Is anyone in Manchester with a few free hours on 24/25 September? It is the RCM annual conference. As an ex midwife (I'm no longer an RCM member) I'm pretty appalled that as far as I can see they are unconcerned about the whole thing - I've looked at the programme and there's no mention of the word. Sadly I can't take those days off work at short notice but it would be brilliant if anyone could spare a few hours to do some flyering with the NMN flyers as delegates arrive or leave.

Excellent interview with Jennifer Lahl, I think it starts about 8 minutes in.

www.dailysignal.com/2019/05/23/the-surrogacy-risks-the-media-wont-cover/

Just watched #BigFertility, thank you for recommending it.

It's difficult to talk about this, as commercial surrogacy has happened in my family. I feel as if I am at odds with everyone else in disagreeing (actually, feeling appalled) with it. I don't think I can express how I feel without causing huge tension.

I will fill in the consultation.

Interesting meeting in Edinburgh. The 2 male lawyers in charge of the meeting seemed to get fed up with the questions from pesky women concerned about the health and rights of surrogates and egg donors.
They didn't seem to see that the paucity of research in to the short and long term health consequences for surrogates meant that surrogates giving "informed consent" to surrogacy had little meaning.

If anyone can't face the whole consultation please think about doing section 13 where they ask about whether or not a surrogate should have given birth before and recommends there is no maximum to the number of surrogate children she can have. It also says intended parents don't need a home visit or psychological or physical assessment as to ther suitability to be parens in this section

Lovely to meet you 2Rebecca
I'm still formulating my thoughts and trying to get a coherent response to Monday evening's meeting. Also on holiday and have a deadline application to do with daughter so haven't done my homework yet!

You made a very good point about the poor level of research they had relied on.

In an unusual move for Engender, they are actually looking for views on surrogacy before formulating their own response. Ahem. That's what they say. So if you wish to slide a few sliders and fill in a tiny text box with additional thoughts, here is their survey.

Thanks Charlie

Will do. Just sitting outside in the sun at a Pret and have accosted students sitting next to me to warn them of plans to open up commercial surrogacy in the UK. The Nordic Model Now QR codes are a joy - they now have the links in their phones.

That’s a great idea to put the survey online to raise awareness.

Wait why has a family solicitors 'generously' donated to this event:

London Public Consultation
19th Sept 16.39-18.30
(Two hours isn't going to be long enough)

Mishcon de Reya LLP
70 Kingsway
London
WC2B 6AH

Also, another event is on the 21st on Eventbrite 0900-23.30

Jury's Inn Hinckley Island Hotel
Watling St
Burbage
LE10 3JA

But this is for those who have kids 0-7 through surrogacy services.

Childcare is provided for a fee!

Run by two facilitators who are members of DNC Donor Conception Network.

All party parliamentary group which I think (?) are behind the request that the Law Commission review surrogacy law. I don't even know who any of those MPs are.