Gay dads take surrogate to court after she bans them from seeing twin baby girls

[Cwenthryth]

www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/gay-dads-take-surrogate-court-21231692

This popped up on my Twitter this morning, I thought it might be an interesting case to discuss here. The details are very hazy, and there are two sides to every story, but on the face of it, reading this has challenged my thoughts around surrogacy a bit - poor dads fighting for their daughters sob story, ‘the surrogate’ is painted as manipulative and dishonest. However, I really dislike how the woman is referred to as the men’s surrogate throughout the article, rather than the baby’s mother, or anything in her own right, and there is no regard for the trauma she has been through with a twin pregnancy, premature labour and very very poorly babies. She risked her life to make those girls, we are all very aware how women’s mental health can be severely affected during and after pregnancy. The article doesn’t even reference the children’s point of view/relationship with their mother, ot is all about the gay couple, their wants and their experience.

I don’t really have any conclusions at the moment but wanted to open up a discussion with other FWRers. I think perhaps the current laws are not working as well as they could, reform is probably inevitable and surrogacy isn’t going to be banned entirely any time soon, so needs to be regulated somehow.

So the £3k was the remainder of what was owed by them to her

They paid her the agreed sum of £17,000 before she was discharged and then the surrogate's partner demanded an extra £3000 which they couldn't afford to pay.

I can sell a car privately, put "sold as seen" on the receipt and the buyer has no come-back. In fact if they show up to buy it I can change my mind and tell them I want to keep it.
But people are advocating that if it's a child the sale should be forced through? And that the surrogate mother is contractually obliged to eat her five a day etc? In case she somehow damages their property?

This legal firm suggests the contract should include clauses on the surrogate mothers health responsibilities: surrogate.com/intended-parents/surrogacy-laws-and-legal-information/understanding-surrogacy-contracts/

In the US, commercial surrogacy is legal. Mothers do not have the rights to keep their babies. There is enormous pressure being put on the U.K., spearheaded by men like Lance Black and Tom Daley to move towards a commercial model

Men spearheading what happens to women’s bodies and in the 4th trimester makes me uneasy, and annoyed. And other words that are stronger.

Has anyone watched the recent TV series following families in the first 6 weeks of their babies lives. There is a gay couple featured, whose friend was a surrogate for them. She didn't use her own egg and iirc was very clear when she visited the babies that she in no way viewed them as hers, since they weren't her genetic children.
Presumably the egg donor also doesn't view them as her children either. That's what I mean when I say that children born in this way don't have a mother - of course they have a genetic mother and a birth mother but no woman who actually believes that she is their mother.

Two minutes of searching and I've found some bargains

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-42845602

Foreign couples have been coming to this corner of Europe in droves since 2015, when surrogacy hotspots in Asia began closing their industries one-by-one, amid reports of exploitation. Barred from India, Nepal and Thailand, they turned to Ukraine, one of the few places left where surrogacy can still be arranged at a fraction of what it costs in the US.

"We have so many childless couples coming to our country - it's like a conveyor belt," says Ana, who asked for her identity to be protected.

Before she was discharged from hospital she told them she wanted the remainder to be paid - bringing the amount they had given her nearly £17,000 in total.

She will have had additional expenses during the many weeks her babies were in the NICU and she was in hospital with them.

On Egg donors, it's a risky business in terms of health. I recommend watching Eggsploitation to learn more. I actually find it difficult to believe that the egg donor is not the mother considering the biological connection. I feel as if children born from egg donors and surrogates have two mothers but they know neither of them and they may or may not have another mother who raises them.

On the Indian surrogates onemore thank you for explaining that, it's very interesting. The women who do it for financial benefit....can I use the word 'escape'?...probably see it as a means to an end and I can't blame them, given the options, but no one seems to care, not even the mothers, the ones giving birth, about the babies being taken from their mothers when this is their home, their source of life. I agree with the PP who spoke about how little we still know about the 4th trimester. I know two children whose parents left them at 5 days old to go on holiday without them. Both have an unusual eye contact pattern. The intended parents will love them I'm sure but they are not from their bodies.

I have seen The Baby has Landed and I was intrigued that the gay couple have seen their colleagues vagina as she gave birth and they all worked in the airline industry (Virgin Atlantic I think it was) and they have excellent private health insurance and maternity leave which I'm sure helps with the costs. The mother had a daughter (and a son) and I wondered what message it sent her about her body and about what others want. Also the husband didn't seem at all happy, "they're not mine", he didn't feel for kicks etc. He of course had to care for the children and he would do that if the child was his...basically you'd have to have a very supportive partner and it could end your marriage. It's a lot to ask of someone, even for the ones who want to do it.

The dads sob story timeline doesn't quite make sense.

Their son was born via surrogacy in 2015. Then he "started asking for a sibling", so I assume he must have been nearly 3, at the earliest, in order to ask for a sibling. So let's say that's 2018.

Then they tried various surrogates "over the years" [since 2018]...

Then " In 2018 they found their latest surrogate, and began trying to conceive early last year."

Then they got married.

These twins were 'conceived' Feb 2019.

So it sounds like they've hammed up their journey, somewhat, making it sound like it was years and years disappointment when it actually sounds like it happened very quickly and they must have cycled through 'failed surrogates' at lightening speed.

There was a story last year of a surrogacy which went badly wrong and the surrogate had learning difficulties and really hadn't understood what she was doing. I wonder what the story is from the mother's point of view is here.

In effect, we already have commercial surrogacy in the U.K. These men had paid a woman they didn't know to provide them with a baby (or babies - I'd put money on them having had two embryos implanted).

These men had paid a woman they didn't know to provide them with a baby (or babies - I'd put money on them having had two embryos implanted).

That's an interesting point actually. There's a good chance there were multiple embryos implanted, possibly more than two. In the event the surrogate ended up carrying quads (for example) would the men feel empowered to force her to terminate one, two or three of them? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_reduction

The intended parents in the Baby has Landed each fertilised one egg and both were implanted, so they were each related to one of the twins but it's not clear if the eggs were from the same donor and I'm not sure it was made clear if the mother used her own eggs (I think not as she had her own kids).

The newspaper story is really unclear, I wouldn't like to make any definite assumptions about what went on based on what it says. It's possible of course the mother and the boyfriend were trying to squeeze the gay couple for more money. But it isn't clear by any means.

I think that it's really a quite simple question in the end. We can say all kinds of things about potential exploitation, and they'd be true, but in the end it is grossly immoral to produce children to sell or give away. And it completely ignores the rights of the child that someone upthread mentioned, as outlined by the UN. I also think egg and sperm donation come to the same thing, giving away or selling your children, denying them a chance to know you, creating these situations where there is potentially no mother or father that the child can know.

This is entirely different than either adoption, or just bad and absent parents. In the case of the latter, while there are limited possibilities for forcing someone to parent, we all agree that this is selfish and worthy of social disapproval. To the extent that we can we try and force at least financial support, until the point where the state sees that the biological parents are a danger to the child. Whereas with surrogacy or donation of gametes we are being asked to see it as socially acceptable. What's more, we are asking the state to provide legal methods to facilitate this giving or selling for the good of those doing the selling or buying. This is again different from adoption where the state takes over care of the child for the good of the child, and facilitates an adoption insomuch as it is better for the child than being an orphan.

I do agree though with some posters who have said that ultimately this gets argued in public as a LGBTQ issue. It's wrong, but I've seen it time and again. And while this forum tends to dismiss that, in the last discussion I saw of this the exact same thing was said about concerns about sperm donation, that it was homophobic because it would impinge on the ability of lesbians to have kids. It's a specious argument though, the fact that it would affect the ability of some people to have kids, for any reason be it infertility of being gay or lesbian, in no way makes it ok to do something that is in itself morally problematic.

@FlyingOink, no IVF clinic in the UK will ever implant 3 or 4 embryos. The maximum is 2 and will depends on a lot of factors, incl the age the parents and previous history if miscarriages, quality if the embryos etc....

The issue about who is the mother ....

Atm a child who is born automatically has a mother (and a father) as it is seen that the mother is the one who gave birth and the father is automatically her husband if they are married.
If some time later, another come and can show by DNA that the child is genetically his, he will get the parental right and will be seen as the father.

Until now, a woman who is giving birth had to be genetically related to the child. The law hasnt kept up with technology. But you can wonder if the mother is the one who gives birth or the one gave the egg like it is about the sperm....

The other issue is that a surrogate IS only a vessel and at the same time isn’t. It’s very clear that the baby will be affected by the mother and vice versa (hormonal changes, hearing the heart beat etce etc).

So I would say that the mother is the one genetically related to the child (as is the father). But that the surrogate will have a special relationship with the child (maybe like a second mother? I think so far the effect of ‘just’ carrying the foetus onto the child -on the long term- is still unknown). And the father is the sperm donor.

This is opening huge cans of worms though. What about babies born from egg donors or sperm donors? The idea that there has been a sperm donor seems to be more accepted than acknowledging that having used an egg donor gives a different relationship between the mother (who carried and gave birth to the baby) and the child.
Eg we might say that a man is the ‘Dad’ of the child even if he isn’t the ‘Father’ (aka sperm donor) but I dint think anyone would dare saying that the woman is the ‘Mum’ and not the ‘Mother’ iyswim

I also think you just can NOT dismiss the woman who gave the egg as the mother.

We know very well that children who are born with sperm donor or those who have been raised by a man who isn’t their father genetically (aka the mum had an affair...) will know that the link they have their dad is different. I have a couple of friends in exactly that case - even though this is never talked about within the family.
I can not imagine that this will be different with the egg. These children WILL have some sort of link with the egg donor that cannot be dismissed, regardless of who has given birth to them.

Reading this thread again I'm reminded of two things In the consultation document:

1. That a child born of surrogacy can access a register to find out when they are related to a partner - it was asking what age this should be allowed. So the DNA is pretty key, if you ended up trying to start a family with someone you're related to.

1. It asked how much compensation should be paid to a surrogate who loses the baby and it asked how much on each trimester, as if there is more value the longer into the pregnancy before a miscarriage

There are other problems I have it with, such as gifts/payment and the age a surrogate could be (so 18 year olds can give up their eggs/DNA/bodies). Lovely. In the US they target students at college.

There is no doubt that there are attempts to make U.K. surrogacy law more relaxed, more commercial under the disguise of 'keeping it on our shores', keeping it away from the exploitation of women in other countries and being more accepting of a way of a way to start a family. Handmaids Tale here we come.

I think surrogacy should be banned. I also don’t believe anybody has the right to have children they cannot make themselves with their own bodies and using their own DNA. It’s too complicated a situation to legislate fairly for in all cases. Payment or contract both exert control over somebody a woman’s body. We don’t allow payment/contract for transplanted organs in this country, using someone’s womb to grow a a child and all that pregnancy and birth and post natal health entails is just the same. It should be illegal.

no IVF clinic in the UK will ever implant 3 or 4 embryos. The maximum is 2 and will depends on a lot of factors
That's good to know, thanks.

Goosefoot excellent post

think surrogacy should be banned. I also don’t believe anybody has the right to have children they cannot make themselves with their own bodies and using their own DNA

Why not? So presumably you don't agree with (some forms of) IVF or sperm or egg donation either?

In life there are groups of people who are in relationships where one partner for one reason or another, and these reasons can be varied, cannot reproduce a child biologically by themselves. For example, a couple who are man and a woman where the woman does not have a womb, a couple man and woman where man has no viable sperm, the case of two women who need sperm to reproduce, or the case of two men who require someone else's womb and eggs to reproduce (note that their situation is identical to most men who also need a female womb and eggs to reproduce).

All of these people are united by the fact that they cannot reproduce naturally without the assistance of a third party (although in realistic terms that is the case for all of us - no-one can reproduce on their own). On what grounds could you deny just one couple such a third party without being simply discriminatory.

I’ll say it again: no agreement exists within surrogacy in which someone does not relinquish rights. It’s reliant on all three parties involved to be happy and unquestioning of the outcome. That means the instant there’s a grievance, there is no structure possible that can appease all grievances.

It’s basically 9-12 months of people crossing their fingers and hoping everything stays on track and everyone does what they’re supposed to, but with a baby being exchanged as part of that. It’s disgusting.

no IVF clinic in the UK will ever implant 3 or 4 embryos. The maximum is 2 and will depends on a lot of factors

It is however increasingly popular to travel to use fertility clinics abroad as this is considerably cheaper than in the UK. And the upper limit on embryo numbers being implanted varies between countries.

On what grounds could you deny just one couple such a third party without being simply discriminatory.

I'm not sure how you think this is discriminatory? You might as well say that some people are discriminated against for being born short, or with a genetic disorder, or something else. Nature I suppose is the ultimate discriminator but that's not really something you can seek justice about.

This thread has made me realise that surrogacy is wrong, unethical and should be banned.
Thank you for finally quieting my ambivalence.

you might as well say that some people are discriminated against for being born short, or with a genetic disorder, or something else. Nature I suppose is the ultimate discriminator but that's not really something you can seek justice about

But surely this about disability - and we do legislate against discrimination on the basis of disability.