Women's Hour Now - Surrogacy

[PJsatMidday]

FYI

Woman speaking had 2 children by a surrogate. She thinks surrogates' motivation is to see a family being made and see themselves as babysitters. Therefore, law should be changed so that as soon as the child is born, the intended parents become the legal parent. There should be no shared parental responsibility for the surrogate. Wants assumption of legal parenthood without a court process.

She advocates for surrogacy to be regulated and for the legal presumption to only apply in those cases. She is against commercial surrogacy (expenses only, no profit).

She was Natalie Smith, Chair of Surrogacy UK group, advocating for law reform.

Natalie Smith was doing a sales pitch. She was pushing the message that the woman who gives birth should have the right to not legally be the mother at any point.

In Smith's pitch, it's all OK because many surrogates don't want to identify as being the mother. You can imagine what mischief incorporating that legal fiction into law would cause.

She is against commercial surrogacy (expenses only, no profit).

Don't buy into that narrative. The Law Commission's proposals make it very clear that what is being considered is commercial surrogacy in all but name. Already, agencies are paid, and lawyers, and assisted fertility clinics. The proposal for expenses includes payment for "reproductive services". Paying the surrogate for loss of earnings is already allowed, as are unspecified gifts.

Altruistic surrogacy in the UK also includes complete strangers being matched up via agencies btw. And for a woman on benefits the expenses on offer represent a good annual income.

Also the demands on legal parenthood are in direct conflict with the recommendations made by the UN Special Rapporteur on Surrogacy as well as the existing Hague Treaty governing adoption and the rights of birth mothers.

None of these suggestions are good for birth mothers or the child involved. The existing system works very well indeed btw, as one sheriff was at great pains to assure us at the Edinburgh Law Commission's event, so ask yourself why it needs to be changed at all. Who benefits?

and who does this benefit exactly?

I know who it would benefit, taking the legal rights of mothers away.

I am sick to my stomach that any woman would advocate for this. Its total shit.

I see you...

Like Rumplestiltskin.

You promised me the child in your body, and now I claim it. A deal's a deal. I'll be waiting near your vagina to claim my property. Nothing you can do. Too late.

She'd like to transfer ownership of the inside of a woman's body to another person.
Irrevocably.

I'm thinking, fuck off, with your Rumplestiltskin law, Natalie Smith?

The ultimate parent is the woman who created a child with her body, and her rights to her child supersede all others.
No woman should be coerced or compelled to relinquish her parental rights, ever. And no system should exist that allows the postpartum mother to be pressured in any way.

And if surrogate mothers cannot cope with the reality of knowing that, yes, they ARE the mother, and yes, they do relinquish their child - if the only way they can handle that cognitive dissonance is to construct a law for OTHER WOMEN that 'takes the decision out of their hands' then they are lobbying for enforced helplessness for all women.
To justify their own actions. What could I do, the law made me do it, the law said it wasn't my child, I had no choice, my body was just a rented object.

If you can't face the reality and have to legally construct a way to disenfranchise mothers to justify it?
Then you're attempting to justify the unjustifiable.

Applause, Barracker

I filled in the Surrogacy consult opposing the proposed new pathway and pretty much all surrogacy.
I think surrogates have to wise up to how they are being used as well. They have to realise the couples are just pretending to be their friends until they have the baby. They have their own friends and relatives to look after the baby. Some potential parents are just better at pretending to want to be their friend than others.
It is all horrible and should be illegal.

Perfectly summed up Barracker.

I'm old enough to remember when Woman's Hour was all about baking, knitting and being a "good" wife and mother. Then it became more feminist, now it seems to has gone back to its old remit of keeping us in our place, while pretending to be something else.

Thank heavens for FWR board

Womens hour it is no longer.

Its being used to beat and pressure women for other than benefit to womankind. I've just heard too much utter rot on there recently.

Talking in tongues is more like what its become.

Womens rights notsomuch.

Selling women down the river hour. Sounds a lot like mysogyny I wonder why

I hardly ever listen to WH now, after they rebuked Jenni Murray. I just caught the programme on the off chance. No counter balancing opinion - typical for the BBC current affairs coverage of women - plus the presenter being anything but neutral. It pisses me off that I have to contribute towards the BBC propaganda machine.

I have to say, most of the women I have seen interviewed doing "stranger surrogacy" (i.e., not for a loved one or close friend) seem to be people pleasers, otherwise unoccupied by a career, almost keen to justify their existence. The whole "creating a family" bollocks, like they are angels sent from above or something, is cynical. I think the surrogacy industry preys on women like this.

I hate the idea of commercial surrogacy, but part of me thinks that, if you are going to put your body and mind through the ravages of childbirth, at least you should have some reward for it. But then this feels far too much like the sex industry for exploiting and abusing vulnerable women, and justifying it with monetary gain.

I always come back to thinking this should be banned. I've never understood the whole "right" to have a child argument.

Having read and heard a lot more about surrogacy, it supports the idea that people have the right to dc no matter the cost. Like some believe they have the right to sex no matter the cost.

It should be banned.

Buying, or using a person this way should be banned, as should using/paying for women's vaginas for sex.

Should say, buying, or using a woman this way...

But the same should apply to men, that to use them for their body parts.

Although stats show that women don't, when paying for 'escort' services, treat the paid men like that.

Lots of inaccuracies in that one sided version of events. Jane Garvey said they wanted to hear listeners views - I have a few I will be sending tomorrow.
In particular they kept stressing how surrogacy in the UK is altruistic. It isn't. Agencies are already charging up to £13k even though they are technically "non profit making" and surrogate mothers are being paid far more in "expenses" than was mentioned. Natalie Gamble actually says "we already have commercial surrogacy"

I assume this is the same Natalie Smith. The article is from 2015, so there has been lots of work behind the scenes building up to the consultation.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/21/surrogacy-in-the-uk

Making intended parents legal parents from birth won't stop them rejecting a "dribbling cabbage"

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11055643/British-mother-rejected-disabled-twin-because-she-was-a-dribbling-cabbage-says-surrogate.html

Easily brushed aside by the law commissioners "this does have the effect that the care system may have to step in to look after the child .....but we do not see this as any different to the situation where natural parents abandon a child"

So I'm not sure why surrogate mothers feel so strongly about not being the legal parent birth. If the commissioning parents renege on the contract it won't make a jot of difference.

We know from the recent Law Commission consultation that there is effectively already no upper limit on what a UK court has said a surrogate can be paid.

Let that sink in. This is our current ‘altruistic’ system before any law reform is done to make it more commercial.

Great post Barracker

Also, if I were a journalist I would want to hear from a series of surrogates about their experiences. And from people born through surrogacy how they feel about how they were born. I’d want to refer to published evidence about the outcomes for these groups.

Why is women and children’s emotional and physical health valued so cheaply? Why are we not more probing of this?

What other ethical minefields of demand, supply, consumerism do we investigate by ignoring the labourers (literally) who are at serious risk of exploitation and harm and even death.... and just by asking the views of the satisfied customers at the other end?

Fanny that ‘dribbling cabbage’ story is absolutely horrific. I feel like crying reading that. How do people live with themselves?

I agree with everything pps are saying. I feel very conflicted about the money side.

Just to be clear again, I think surrogacy should be banned. But that's not happening, it's here to stay. I will hazard a guess that the main users of surrogates are white, monied, middle class couples (heterosexual and gay) and the surrogates in the main are poor and all women. It seems exploitative to me that any surrogate should be told how much she can charge for the use of her body and be persuaded that she should be doing this for altruistic reasons only. If she's just a vessel/babysitter, as the advocates for surrogacy claim, why shouldn't she charge what she wants to? My babysitters gets paid at a rate they demand! I get that commercial surrogacy will mean more woman will be tempted into the surrogacy industry, but we don't have an upper limit on what sex workers can charge*. What's the difference? PP have said that the "expenses" can be very high, so it's effectively commercial surrogacy anyway. Why dress it up instead of calling it what it is?

*Not equating sex work with carrying a child, just the use of women's bodies for someone else's needs/wants in a situation where the woman can be exposed to physical and emotional harm.

The ‘motivated by altruism’ argument is misleading and irrelevant. Altruism is voluntary acts of kindness. Altruism can’t be compelled. So if ‘altruism’ becomes legally enforceable at any point, it isn’t voluntary or altruism any more.

Campaigners want to remove the surrogate’s position as legal mother at birth and to award that legally to another person prior to the birth.

So legally ensuring she can’t change her mind. They can and will take her baby off her by force of law. Like the breastfed, sleeping baby was taken away in the Guardian article Fanny linked to above. It’s a nightmarish scenario. Rumplestiltskin. But real.

The flip side of non compensation is the devaluation of carrying a child. Unfortunately we live in a world where the measurement of value for everything is money. Atruistic surrogacy implies that the pleasure of the surrogate is enough compensation in itself; and implies that pregnancy is a mere puff, a bit of nothing that women get over quickly. I don't know any woman who has bounced back from childbirth with all their physical and mental capabilities unscathed.

The more I think about this, the more I think that there should be a compulsory minimum level of monetary compensation afforded to every surrogate, not just expenses. The average median income in the Uk seems to be £29K, I'd take that as a starting point and double it.

Thank goodness for this thread and others like it. I know in my gut that surrogacy is wrong, but can never find the right words to argue against it. I really hope surrogacy is not here to stay. Maybe if enough intelligent, rational people speak out against it the majority will begin to listen.

I can't remember where I heard this but there appears to be a definite shift to monetise surrogacy, the angle was to make it more available to people of middle class earnings so it's not limited to rich, childless couples.

As PPs say it's via 'expenses'. It didn't cost me £15k to have my child and if the mother gives birth in a private unit then they get paid, not her. Maternity clothes aren't that expensive!

That article Fanny is horrific. Any intended parent who 'disowns' a child due to a medical condition makes me worry about that persons ability to care for child as the love is conditional. What if the remaining twin has issues in the future, how will the intended parent manage of that child doesn't match up to expectations?

Also I'm intrigued with that case as everyone newborn is a 'dribbling cabbage' (horrible) so at what age did this intended parent decide she didn't want this poor child?

The consultation seemed to suggest that there must be a high number of surrogate mothers who change their mind and keep the baby upon giving birth but I'm quite interested to know how many cases there are of that in the UK in recent years and to know how many intended parents change their minds. Who needs protecting with new laws here?