Surrogacy Resource thread : please post your links here

[FannyCann]

A Happy New Year to all.

I have been thinking about how I should concentrate my energies in the New Year - women are fighting many battles on so many fronts - against porn, prostitution, domestic abuse, the wonderful We Can’t Consent to this campaign, abortion rights, to maintain our spaces, our language, our sports and so much more that I haven’t mentioned.
For myself, I have been asked to join a particular campaign against surrogacy and I have decided that is where I will be devoting most of my time whilst still supporting all the other important causes in spirit at least.

The surrogacy market is a global business currently thought to be worth about $21billion with growth expected to reach about $41billion by 2026 according to India based market research firm Data Bridge. Women’s reproductive “services” are big business globally.

The Law Commission Consultation on new surrogacy law in the UK closed on 11 October 2019.
Many posters on FWR did great work researching, discussing and exploring the implications, educating and raising awareness, encouraging people to respond to the consultation so that responses weren’t simply confined to cheers of approval from “stakeholders” but real concerns and educated critique were raised.

Many of us may be wondering what happens next?

According to the Consultation paper what happens next is this: “After reviewing all responses, we will decide on our final recommendations for law reform, which we will publish in a report, accompanied by a draft bill (legislation) in 2021.”

The consultation, raising awareness and sharing the knowledge was very much the first battle. There is much to be done to follow up to prevent these harmful recommendations becoming law in the UK and to keep that global market out of the UK.

I am not able to give details but I wanted to let people know that there is work ongoing behind the scenes and small positive signs that the Law Commission are belatedly reaching out to some women’s groups who raised concerns.

Meanwhile I believe now is the time to prepare: we have a new parliament with many new MP’s who are no doubt completely unaware, now is the time to start lobbying MP’s and the government in advance if that draft legislation. I plan to hold my nose and meet with my MP, who is a staunch Catholic and who, for all his faults, I expect to take a dim view of the proposals. I will also be sending letters to key people in the government and department of health.

Since I first heard about the Consultation and proposed changes to the law just over a year ago, I have spent many hours reading, articles, legal cases, research papers, listening to podcasts, watching documentaries, reading and contributing to threads here, where so many other contributors share their knowledge and post informative links.

So I thought it might be helpful to have a resource thread, that we can refer to from time to time when looking for articles, research papers and other sources of information, links to FOIs, trying to find that thread where we saw interesting posts and so on.

I will kick off with some links to the consultation and related threads.

Please join in and add anything of interest you come across.

*The Consultation
*
Short summary

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

The Full Consultation Document

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

Obviously it is too late to respond now as the Consultation is closed, but for reference here is the recommended response to the summary from Nordic Model Now, which many of us used as a template or a guide to help us formulate our own responses.

https://nordicmodelnow.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/surrogacy-consultation-responses-pdf-2.pdff_

Several women’s organisations responded to the consultation with public letters:

Nordic Model Now Open letter:

https://nordicmodelnow.org/2019/10/11/open-letter-to-the-uk-and-scottish-law-commissioners-about-the-surrogacy-consultation/

WPUK submission to Law Commission consultation on surrogacy reform – Woman's Place UK

https://womansplaceuk.org/2019/10/08/wpuk-submission-to-law-commission-consultation-on-surrogacy-reform/

EVAW (End Violence Against Women) response:

https://www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/FINAL-Letter-on-Surrogacy-.pdf

NIA response:

http://www.niaendingviolence.org.uk/perch/resources/surrogacy-consultation-response-october-2019.pdf

*Links to some of the related threads on FWR:
*
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womensrights/3606313-The-Rumplestiltskin-Laww__
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http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womenss_rights/3613356-All-male-Law-Commission-discussing-surrogacy

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womensrights/3651968-The-illegitimacy-of-the-Rumplestiltskin-Surrogacy-consultationn__

_
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womenss_rights/3706683-SURROGACY-CONSULTATION-ENDS-ON-FRIDAY-11-OCTOBER-PLEASE-SUBMIT-A-RESPONSE-Edited-by-MNHQ-at-OPs-request

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womensrights/3649812-building-families-through-surrogacy-a-new-law-consultationn__

_
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womenss_rights/3698520-Did-everyone-know-that-MN-now-has-a-surrogacy-board

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/amiibeingunreasonable/3169070-To-think-theres-a-valid-discussion-to-be-had-about-the-ethics-of-surrogacyy_

_
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womenss_rights/3708724-Famous-men-and-surrogacy

Anyone watch The Nest last night? I enjoyed it more than I expected to and I hope it raises wider awareness and understanding of some of the issues, depending on how the series pans out obviously.

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/mar/20/will-bbc-ones-the-nest-tell-truth-surrogacy

Also adding link to this thread as it has some important update information.

Surrogacy Consultation - Update
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3855758-Surrogacy-Consultation-Update

I enjoyed The Nest too Fanny, even if Martin Compston's accent wasn't a bit jarring after watching Line of Duty!

I was really disturbed by Kaya's character, not only what she has been through but her age and institute being pounced on. Maya was very clear about what she wanted - money and to be useful, or appreciated in some way and she encouraged the couple to use her as a surrogate but she's not in a stable living situation like the SIL (who was probably too old).

Very interested to see how the BBC manage this drama.

I was rather pleased with the depiction of Kaya OhHolyJesus - aren't these just the type of eighteen year olds that are likely to be tempted? As she said, sit around and do nothing and be paid thousands (or something like that, I paraphrase). It will tempt young women who will be exploited. And I don't trust the mandatory counselling/IVF clinics to protect them.
That an IVF clinic would impregnate Jill Hawkins, age 47, with her ninth surrogate pregnancy (twins) despite her various health issues including depression, suicide attempts and previous pregnancy complications hardly fills one with confidence.

Anyway, it looks like coronavirus is putting the brakes on IVF and surrogacy plans for the time being.
Apparently dosing women up with immune suppressing steroids isn't a good idea...

nypost.com/2020/03/21/coronavirus-tales-we-had-to-put-our-surrogacy-plans-on-hold/

Women in the USA, Canada and Mexico are due to give birth to babies that they were not expecting to have to mother, the commissioning parents unable to travel to collect.

www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/03/23/surrogacy-queer-families-coronavirus-impact-children-covid19-travel-ban-restrictions-nelfa/

Times are tough when you can't buy babies during a global pandemic.

Apologies for the PN link. I had to grit my teeth.

www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/03/23/surrogacy-queer-families-coronavirus-impact-children-covid19-travel-ban-restrictions-nelfa/

To save giving them the click counts:

The coronavirus pandemic is having a dramatic affect on LGBT+ parents who are expecting children via surrogacy, according to an open letter from the Network of European LGBTIQ Families Associations (NELFA).

NELFA aims to raise awareness of LGBT+ families within the EU, and to ensure that LGBT+ families have the same rights in EU countries as families led by opposite-sex parents.

The organisation wrote an open letter to make “responsible ministries and administrations” aware of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on queer families using surrogacy to have children.

The letter read: “The coronavirus pandemic affects us all, more than ever expected at the beginning when the first cases were reported from China.
“In the meantime, we all face some sort of lockdown: serious administrative measures, travel bans, curfews, school closings et cetera.
“We are all extremely vulnerable, but some of us struggle with additional problems.”

It said the current restrictions are causing problems for LGBT+ families in “cross-border situations”, for example international surrogacy arrangements and fertility treatments abroad.
NELFA said that one of its volunteers had reported multiple instances of queer families who have been trapped “far away from the woman who carries their child”.

One French gay couple, and the new dads of a baby born this month, were stuck in the US, struggling to access documents they need to be able to return home.

Another French man, identified as “P”, was unable to travel to his surrogate in San Francisco. His husband caught a last minute flight out, just before the travel ban, and their surrogate is due to give birth soon. According to the volunteer, P is “desperate” to be there for the birth of his child.
One couple living in France are expecting a baby girl in America next month, but their ESTA has been cancelled and the American embassy will not answer their calls, leaving them panicked that they won’t be there for the birth of their daughter.

The NELFA volunteer added: “There are dozens of LGBT+ parents facing similar problems. Some of them are stuck in Europe with deliveries in the USA, Canada or Mexico. They are highly stressed and don’t know what to do as they are far away from the woman who carries their child.”
Some parents are already abroad with their babies and struggle to get the official documents to come back to Europe. The American government suspended all passport offers except for customers with a qualified life-or-death emergency and who need one within 72 hours.”

The organisation said it was calling “on responsible ministries and administrations to support these families and to make sure that parents and children can be together and come back safely”.

Sorry Fanny cross post from yours last night 🙄

Well it's an ill wind that blows no good.
Will they still want their babies if they have to wait six months or more to take collection? And if the surrogate mothers have bonded and find they want to keep them?
Thanks OhHolyJesus

I was thinking about this last night. Right now pregnant women have been identified as having a higher risk of getting Covid-19 - does this not put paid to the idea (that I never, ever subscribed to, but am sick of hearing) that surrogacy is juts a job and women have choice over their own bodies etc etc.

It is as if the world of biology is getting its revenge on all those people who believed that progress had made them immune to the realities of life on earth, a man is XY, a woman is XX and you cannot decide to change what you were born as; a person can buy a baby from another person, using their own sperm and a third person's egg - when you read that back, it is hard to believe that was the world we all lived in until March 2020.

just - forgive the typos please

No problem with the SPaGs Annasgirl
I do hope that when we come out the other side of the coronavirus crisis there will be a bit more respect for the blessing of good health - for those that have it, and less of an inclination to take risks with one's health, in lots of ways.

Anyway, this newsletter lays bare the extent of the international surrogacy trade. In Canada about 50% of surrogacy is international. I don't know how the health care system works, in terms of foreign baby buyers being assured that the surrogate mothers will get free, high quality maternity care. What I assume drives it is that in Canada commercial surrogacy is illegal, surrogate mothers cannot be paid, as it is meant to be "altruistic", albeit generous and inventive "expenses" are allowable. But surrogate mothers can be paid if the money comes from abroad! So they must be highly (financially) motivated to enter into an international arrangement. I can't help thinking those who are promoting new surrogacy laws in this country have their eye on the international trade too.

Sorry, when I copy and paste from an email I've no idea why parts of it have a line through it or what to do about it.

International surrogacy and COVID-19
Mar 24

Among the many people caught up in the COVID-19 nightmare are those involved in international surrogacy arrangements: expecting parents trying to get in, new parents trying to get out and others stuck in quarantine, unable to see their newborn children.

Joe Durak and Valeria Martinez Viademonte are expecting their second child on April 16. Problem is, their home is in Australia and the surrogate who is carrying their baby lives in Canada.
Among the many people caught up in the COVID-19 nightmare are those involved in international surrogacy arrangements: expecting parents trying to get in, new parents trying to get out and others stuck in quarantine, unable to see their newborn children. Canada has become something of an international surrogacy magnet, so a good deal of this is playing out right here. Among the pressing questions are whether exceptions should be made for these foreign nationals, whose children are Canadian, and, if not, who will look after their babies.
Durak and Viademonte had planned to be here well in advance of the birth -- on March 24. But when the coronavirus advisories started rolling out, they moved their travel forward. The earliest flights they could get had them entering the country March 18.
But that, as it happens, was the day Canada closed the border to all foreigners other than Americans.
The couple, and their seven-year-old son, Marco, got all the way from Sydney to Houston. But Air Canada told them they could not board their connecting flight to Toronto. "They said that we'd missed the cutoff," said Durak on Thursday night, from a hotel near the Houston airport.
Letters from lawyers and doctors held no sway. Global Affairs Canada, though aware of the situation and working on it, had their hands full with Canadians scrambling to return home.
"We'd be happy to drive up there," said Durak, "but obviously we're a long way away." They knew that by midnight on Friday, the border would be closing even to Americans. They were worried that if they didn't make it in, they might miss not just the birth, but many months from the beginning of their daughter's life.
They decided to try their luck at a land crossing. Early Friday morning, they flew to Detroit and got a taxi to the border. Canadian officials said they could not enter. For one thing, they risked bringing in the virus. For another, they had no guarantee of leaving: Australia's main airlines had announced they were suspending flights.
"They gave us a white slip saying we had to go back to the US," said Durak. "Then, through the window, we managed to plead our case to a couple of other officers, and we got into the immigration building." Their surrogate drove several hours to the border to be interviewed by officials. In the end, the family was allowed in, and they drove to an AirBnB, where they started their two-week quarantine, exhausted but relieved.
According to Cindy Wasser, their Toronto-based fertility lawyer, some 50 foreign families are in a similar situation expecting babies through surrogacy in Canada between now and July. The Australian family got in. So did an Israeli dad-to-be, whose child is due in May. Another intended father from France managed to fly from Marseille to Munich to Toronto to Winnipeg on the same day Durak and Viademonte were denied entry from Houston.
Others have not been so lucky. One couple is stranded in Japan en route. Several families in Spain are barred from leaving their own country, even if Canada were to agree to let them in.
It is not clear who will look after these infants if their parents can't get here. "We're starting to see women on Facebook saying, 'I'm a doula, I'll step up,' " says Wasser. "But can they?" There are legal questions, she says, not to mention concerns about COVID-19.
On Facebook groups, some people are questioning whether incoming parents are putting the Canadian public at risk. One person commented that he hoped no one would get sick just because a foreign intended parent "wanted to watch a birth."
Leia Swanberg, who runs Canadian Fertility Consulting, one of Canada's largest surrogacy agencies, says all of the families coming from abroad are undertaking a 14-day quarantine. Swanberg estimates that, among all the Canadian agencies, there are about 25 families currently in quarantine in the country, awaiting the births of their children.
But this too is posing problems. Swanberg has clients from France, for instance, whose baby arrived last Monday, almost five weeks early while they were still in quarantine. The parents have not yet met their daughter, who spent seven days in the NICU and was then discharged home with the surrogate. Their quarantine ends Thursday.
Then there are the families who are desperate to get back home. Their babies have been born and now they need documentation to leave the country. But that's not so easy anymore. An Australian couple who were trying to get a passport for their baby last week in Winnipeg were turned away at the Passport Office's door, according to their lawyer, Robynne Kazina. Luckily, an emergency passport was issued and the family is now making their way home.
Even before a passport can be issued, though, a new baby needs a birth certificate. In Ontario, the law mandates a seven-day wait period between when a baby is born and when a surrogate can sign away parentage. Given the urgency of leaving the country, Wasser asked the registrar last week to suspend the seven-day wait. (BC, for instance, has no such wait.) She had clients who were desperate to get their newborn back to Belgium. "I said, 'Let us register a birth so we can print birth certificates quickly, get them to the passport office quickly, and get them home before this goes down,'" said Wasser. "And they said, 'We're not changing our requirements.'"
As for all the other surrogacies-- the ones in people's dreams as well as the ones right on the cusp of going through — they have all been put on hold. Approximately 10 women are currently primed to have embryos transferred at a US clinic, says Swanberg, but they can no longer get there. Even domestic surrogacies will have to wait. The Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society, which speaks for the industry, last week advised freezing any embryos from current IVF cycles and postponing everything else.

I thought surrogacy was illegal in Ireland?

I wonder if she had to pay back the 5k 'twin bonus' since the second baby was her and her husband's?

edition.cnn.com/2017/11/03/health/surrogate-mom-two-babies/index.html

Annasgirl

It's a grey area.Think of the celebrities who are from and live in Ireland over the last while who have surrogate babies

I wonder if she had to pay back the 5k 'twin bonus' since the second baby was her and her husband's?

Probably had to pay a financial penalty for having sex at the wrong time and incurring additional medical expenses.

I really like this guy.

"The dangers associated with commercial surrogacy are exposed in the stories of the women who have taken part in this process, or who write on behalf of mothers who have not survived it. My own contribution is from the perspective of a gay man and a gay activist since the early 1980s, and it is important that I put on record my opposition to commercial surrogacy and have the opportunity to expose the myth that commercial surrogacy is a gay right and that it enjoys blanket support from the gay community. Nothing could be further from the truth."

www.cbc-network.org/2020/02/im-a-veteran-gay-rights-activist-and-i-oppose-commercial-surrogacy/

So what happens to all the surrogacy contracts when they can’t be fulfilled? Are they still valid if that happens?

Does this mean that babies being born under contract now are being looked after by their birth mothers and then in the autumn or winter or whenever travel restrictions are lifted they will be collected by the new parents from abroad?
So when the babies will be six or nine or however many months old that they will be taken away? Do lawmakers and parents understand what that separation from the primary caregiver does to a baby? What it does to the child and adult they grow up to be? We know all about this from adoption.
I actually find it painful to think about. I can’t imagine the utter distress for a baby.

This woman has won her case demanding the NHS pay for her to have commercial surrogacy in the USA , despite such an arrangement being against the law in the UK.
I am so angry.

www.theguardian.com/law/2020/apr/01/uk-woman-wins-claim-for-nhs-to-pay-us-surrogacy-costs

Here is a link to the previous thread about this.

Woman asking nhs to pay for US surrogacy
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3769869-Woman-asking-nhs-to-pay-for-US-surrogacy

@ChattyLion It's going to be ugly whatever happens. I would assume that the surrogate mothers will be asked to care for the babies. (Will they charge childcare fees?).
Some may want to, and of course are likely to bond with their baby storing up trouble down the line when the baby buyers turn up with their contracts.
Some may not want to.
I did see something in one article about safeguarding issues etc - fostering can't just be an ad hoc friendly arrangement. There are laws to be adhered to.

The Nest on BBC is pretty good, I've just watched episode 2, and yikes.

Doesn't seem to be shying away from the potential issues so far.

I'm hooked SonicVersusGynaephobia

So worried about the dog. It's going to cop it isn't it?

Feminists in New York put up strong resistance and fought off an attempt to legalise commercial surrogacy last year. And the proponents just came straight back and have now got it passed into law.

It's war on women. Legalising farming women like brood mares. Buying babies. Crap.

www.gaycitynews.com/new-york-state-legalizes-gestational-surrogacy/

I fear it'll be more than the dog Fanny. But I'm glad they're confronting the issues head-on so far, and somehow still doing it in a sympathetic way.

Weirdly I only started watching Line of Duty at the beginning of the Lockdown, just finished series 3. I can't believe how good an actor Martin Compston is. I struggled to believe it was the same guy because of the accents, he does the London accent so well! And turns out he's just a little footballer guy from Greenock