Woman asking nhs to pay for US surrogacy

[hoorayforharoldlloyd]

A woman whose cervical cancer was missed by the NHS is suing for over £500k to enable surrogacy of 4 children in the US as she wants the legally binding contract that isn't available here.

Initial ruling found against her, appeal court for, going to supreme court.

Very concerning for opening the way to commercial surrogacy in this country.

The thing is, even pretty

early cervical cancer is treated by radical hysterectomy leaving the woman infertile. The surgery is brutal but gives the woman the best chance of long term survival. So the truth is that most likely cervical cancer robbed her of her fertility, not the delayed diagnosis. She has been compensated half a million pounds for the delayed diagnosis which is reasonable but the additional claim is taking the mickey

Yes it would be with the claimants’ own eggs (at least for a first attempt). Some of the original award was for egg harvesting and freezing.

In that case, I suppose I can ever-so-slightly see her point, if there are only a few eggs available, she doesn't want the risk of it being successful but then the surrogate keeping "her" baby.

But 4 children is still asking for too much and I agree that as the arrangement she wants to have is not legal here then she shouldn't be enabled to do it.

This just seems grabby, Loss of fertility is awful but a million pounds? She's alive and without the NHS she would be dead. The fuck up with diagnoses is awful but this whole case just seems wrong, and thats aside from what I consider morally objectionable plans to rent a womb or series of wombs.

As an aside can we agree that "harvesting" is such a grim word. I always hear "bringing in the sheaves" in my head when I hear it *shudder.

Has the mainstream media covered this issue yet?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-50809116

I think the rights and wrongs become a bit more obvious if you draw a comparison to an equivalent situation that is less emotionally charged and tinged with misogyny and ownership of women's bodies.

So, think about kidney transplants.

In the UK it is illegal to buy and sell organs. This is because of the ethical minefield that could open up if a richer person was able to effectively buy life and health at the expense of a poorer person. So even if you are very wealthy, if you need a transplant then, rich or poor, you have to wait until you reach the top of the priority list for receipt of a donor organ from a matching recently deceased stranger donor, or hope that a matching family member or friend chooses to donate to you - but if there is any suspicion that money is changing hands then the surgeons will not operate.

There are countries that don't have these legal barriers. In some cases the "donors" are prisoners, or are in such dire circumstances that selling their body parts is the only way to survive.

If the NHS made some kind of clinical negligence mistake that caused someone to lose kidney function and need a transplant, obviously they would go onto the waiting list for a donation organ but it might be a long time (or never) before they reached the criteria for being the most appropriate candidate for an available organ. If that person started demanding that the NHS should pay for them to travel to a country without ethical controls on paid donations, where kidneys were available to be bought, doesn't it seem much more obvious that this should definitely be refused?

Back to the case in point, and the reason this woman wants the money to pay for US surrogacy is because they don't have the ethical restrictions which UK law has in place to protect the rights of the vulnerable woman providing the surrogacy. Our stricter ethical laws are not obtuse and unreasonable barriers, they are reasonable balancing of different people's needs. The idea that UK tax payers should be compelled to pay for someone to sidestep UK law is unreasonable.

But this woman wouldn't be buying someone else's baby, she would be paying a woman to grow her genetic child. It's a bit different to buying a poor person's kidney.
I'm a bit torn on surrogacy. I do believe the genetic parent is the one who should be legally recognized as the child's parent, rather than a surrogate who carries a pregnancy but doesn't use her own egg.
OTOH, I'm concerned about people getting eggs from one woman (anonymously and from someone who doesn't view herself as the mum since she wasn't Pg or gave birth), getting another woman to carry the baby (who also doesn't consider herself to be the mother since it wasn't her egg) and these children not having any 'real' mother. That does feel like adults getting what they want at the expense of the child.
And of course, vulnerable women need protection from exploitation.
But I don't really think it's wrong to pay a person who chooses freely to become a surrogate, to carry your genetic child if you are physically unable to do do yourself.
Altruistic surrogacy is an amazing thing - I would hate to be banned from doing this for someone I loved, if that was my choice.

Whatever she’s doing, the state shouldn’t a) pay for something that is illegal here b) ensure that every part of someone’s disappointed expectations are fulfilled. Some people want a family of 7. Should that also be included in the damages? She has more than enough money to go ahead with surrogacy but wants more because she wants four children.

Would it not have been possible for this woman to access an altruistic surrogate in the UK? Natalie Gamble talks about matching services, you don't need to know the person to have them have a baby for you without paying them. This is not illegal in the UK. There may be other reasons why she wants to buy babies from America, maybe it's down to how many she can have here? I don't know, I do wonder why the £500+ wasn't enough for her to do this anyway, a further court action is excessive as is the 'right' to 4 children via surrogacy. She could adopt with that money also. There's more to this I feel.

I think the reason is that in this country the surrogate is the legal mother - if she changes her mind, she could potentially keep the baby even though she isn't the genetic mother. In the USA, the surrogate is not deemed to be the legal parent.
I can quite understand her wanting that legal protection, since the babies would presumably be genetically hers. But expecting the NHS to pay for 4 surrogate pregnancies is madness.

@Aderyn19 the genetic material may come from the plaintiff in this case, but all the risk of long term ill health, or even death if something goes wrong, all the pain and recovery time, is on the surrogate mother and the health consequences of going through a pregnancy can be at least as bad as the health consequences of donating a kidney (both obviously variable case by case). I think it is near enough equivalent even without the additional heartbreak of potentially bonding with a child you carried for 9 months and gave birth to whatever the genetic link (or lack thereof).

Yes, all that is true, which is why I have mixed feelings about it. I would prefer altruistic surrogacy rather than paid but even that is problematic since it might create pressure within families.
It must be awful though to long for a child and be unable to have one because the NHS were negligent.

Well if you pay someone else to carry children, you must accept the idea that that person also has rights. Even if you’d like to think of them as a womb on legs, they’re actually a human being. Seriously, the more I think about this, the angrier I get. I hope to god that she loses this case and has to pay the NHS legal costs. Entitled doesn’t even begin to describe it.

But this woman wouldn't be buying someone else's baby, she would be paying a woman to grow her genetic child. It's a bit different to buying a poor person's kidney.
It's basically rent a womb.
And the people more likely to be willing to grow and carry a child for cash are those who are poor.

Yes, but I'm not sure you can dictate what women do with their own bodies.
Some surrogates enjoy Pg but don't want to have a child, others feel it is a good thing to do and derive satisfaction/self worth from helping others to have children. I'm sure many are motivated by financial gain, since you don't see rich women offering to be surrogates (except perhaps for a close relative). But even so, if they are counselled and informed of the risks and have children themselves already, so know what Pg and birth entails, is it not their right to decide?

I think maybe Britain can't bury it's head in the sand about surrogacy and the way to make it as safe and non exploitative as possible is to legislate fully, have compulsory counseling, have legally binding contacts which take account of all eventualities, full insurance etc.

Yes, but I'm not sure you can dictate what women do with their own bodies

But surrogacy is dictating (using economic duress) what other women do with their own bodies.

@Aderyn19 - surrogacy is banned across most of Europe in acknowledgment of the potential for exploitation.

It is not 'burying Britain's head in the sand' to reject a move towards a more commercialised surrogacy. It's a retrograde step which is hugely harmful to wome and the babies who are taken away from their birth mothers

Aderyn19

Control over another woman's body is exactly what surrogacy contracts are all about. Even up to and including end of life decision making.

https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/11/20390/

Please don't make the mistake of believing there is anything liberal about letting a woman sell the use of her body in this way.

No, she got compensation

That's why Britain ought to take proper control of surrogacy and the actions of British citizens. Women abroad are and have been exploited and because genetic parents have few legal rights in Britain it only encourages them to go elsewhere, not avoid surrogacy altogether.

At the moment I think we kind of pretend that it isn't happening. Rich British people are going abroad and paying for surrogacy services in places where women are not necessarily protected. We are hearing about this woman purely because she can't afford to do that. If she was rich, we wouldn't be having this conversation because she'd just have done it already.

Personally I think that egg and sperm donors should have it drummed into them that they are genetic parents and that any resulting children will have the right to contact them and be entitled to a certain level of care and consideration, especially wrt medical information. It isn't just donating a meaningless cell.
I am also very concerned about couples getting an egg from one place, a host surrogate, gay couples mixing their sperm so they don't know who is the biological father and then having babies who won't know who their biological parents really are. I think all this is massively selfish and denies children their right to a mother and treats them like commodities.

That said, I don't think that growing a baby for another couple and getting well paid for it, is the worst thing a woman can do with her own body. What's essential for me is that she is fully informed and consenting. And since money is made from surrogacy, most of it should be going to the surrogate and not agencies and lawyers.
The state could protect surrogates by ensuring they are counselled and properly paid and insured. Maybe make it illegal to bring children born abroad through surrogacy into the country, in order to deter exploitative practises. Contracts should imo state that the genetic parents are the legal parents - it's madness to me that a surrogate and her DH are the legal parents of children they have no genetic relation to. And genetic parents need legal protection. Contracts should be binding and should take into account what happens if there is disability or something goes wrong. I don't know, not really thought it all through. Just some thoughts on what might improve things, since I think you can't really stop it.

I’m still not quite clear why a US surrogate is specifically said to be necessary here? Is it because this woman’s eggs are scarce and she wants to avoid the possibility of the surrogate changing her mind?
Doesn’t that legal enforceability in California then specifically remove the ‘altruistic’ ethos which is part of what her original compensation was intended to cover (for UK surrogacy costs?)
So is this then a new claim for a substantially different type of arrangement?
If the overall cost were the issue, then in the UK there is also independent surrogacy, ie people making private arrangements together.
Independent surrogates specifically avoid the surrogacy agencies and they seek to make direct arrangements with parents and vice versa.
Websites that describe this kind of arrangement say that it’s typically a lower cost arrangement (for the IP) than using an agency in the UK typically is.

hopesurrogacysupportservice.co.uk/how-to-match

As PP have said I wonder if there’s a bit more to this than is being reported.

@Kilbranan

^The thing is, even pretty
early cervical cancer is treated by radical hysterectomy leaving the woman infertile^

Not necessarily. The proudest moment in my medical career has been picking up a cervical cancer very early in a young woman - she had a trachelectomy (removal of the cervix only) and went on to have her own children.

I wonder if it is anything to do with US citizenship/passports...the more I think about the stranger it becomes to me.

Why the US and not somewhere like the Ukraine, Croatia or Greece, hotspots of commercial surrogacy arrangements.