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.

Because it will be seen as an infringement on the rights of same sex male couples to have children

No one has the 'right' to have children.

this is NOT an LGBT issue. And she is the surrogate mother. She made an agreement, of her own accord, and broke it, of her own accord. That's not on is she the biological mother? An agreement doesn’t erase facts- biological facts

No one has the 'right' to have children completely agree but that’s how the argument will align itself.

I did lose some sympathy for the mother when she claimed that the babies were her boyfriend's.

I wonder how a figure is decided on?

Part of me feels that there is now too much interference with nature.

Other media coverage of the case accuses her of ‘blackmail’ but I can well appreciate she might need to be recompensed for her loss of earnings or compensation from having to take time off in hospital with ill babies who were born 12 weeks early. That’s three months that she isn’t working for and she still has living expenses and may have other children to provide for for all we know. 3K isn’t much at all to cover that and her expenses for looking after herself after she leaves hospital. It seems fair to assume that she will be incurring legal fees too? That’s what these guys are fundraising for their 26K for.

Also her saying the boyfriend is the father, naming the babies what she wants to and so on- it’s legally open to her to keep both the babies, and to name him as the father on the birth certificate if she wants to.

That has to remain her right, surely. Because the alternative way of removing her rights entirely in advance of the birth is not acceptable.

In every surrogacy situation one of the three parties - the birth mother, the adoptive parents, or the baby - gives up rights, or in the baby’s case has rights removed. Only people who are happy for that to occur support surrogacy. I don’t.

I really think some people use the word ‘vitriol’ very differently on here to what I understand it to mean!

I just don’t think banning surrogacy is realistic
Why not?

Eternal pessimism? I think private arrangements will always go on, with the potential for exploitation so regulation is needed.

For me a lot of this isn’t so much about protecting the woman’s rights as just basic respect for the woman herself, as an independent human and everything that goes with that, rather than a vessel or tool. Same for the children, they are human beings, not something to be bought.

The problem is that the surrogate mother isn’t genetically the mother. So it’s different than a case where a woman gets pg with another man that isn’t her dh.

There needs to be clear guidelines as to who the child belongs to, bearing in mind that the fathers could also decide they don’t want a premature child with SN and decide to bugger off. Atm The surrogate mother would then end having to look after a baby she never wanted....

Let's not kid ourselves here. This is about buying and selling a human being. It's ironic that you can't buy a kidney or heart or lung to keep someone alive in this country, but you can buy a baby? Dressing it up by saying it's 'expenses' is just kidding yourself.
Whilst it's very hard if you want a baby but are not able to by conventional means (IVF, adoption etc) procuring a woman to rent out her womb in order to play happy families is all sorts of wrong.

I’m not sure about how these things work but I assume the surrogate would be entitled to M.L. and would have planned that?
Even wo having to look after a baby And fir that baby to be premature, she would have needed to recover after the birth anyway.

I would also like to know why she would have had to be with the babies when they were in NCU. Surely, her role stopped after she gave birth, regardless of the circumstances?

@Soontobe60 there is no renting out in the U.K. though.

just don’t think banning surrogacy is realistic- Why not?

Because it will be seen as an infringement on the rights of same sex male couples to have children

No such right exists.

I just don't think banning surrogacy is realistic

Surrogacy is completely illegal in Sweden, Norway, Austria, Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland.

So it's very possible to have a ban on surrogacy in Western European countries.

This is not an LGBT issue. This is a women's and children's rights issue. Women are not vessels. Children are not commodities.

Eternal pessimism? I think private arrangements will always go on, with the potential for exploitation so regulation is needed

True surrogacy must involve a high degree of medical intervention and can easily be banned.. A private arrangement whereby a women is impregnated by one half of a gay couple isn't surrogacy.

Such muddy waters. Everything about surrogacy is wrong in my opinion, the idea of a woman (usually disadvantaged compared to the couple she is 'employed' by) literally being a walking incubator is unethical and dystopian!
I don't like how all surrogates are presented as selfless women who just want to help other couples and love being pregnant and childbirth. That's so far from what must be the reality for most surrogates. It's exploitation.

After their little boy began asking for a sibling, they decided they were ready to expand their family.

They tried several surrogates over the years, but went through miscarriages and failed pregnancy attempts.

they didn’t go through any miscarriages.

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.

“The remainder” suggests she was asking for money that had previously been agreed. Sounds like they reneged on the deal but still wanted to take their goods.

It’s also not clear whether the surrogate is the biological mother of the twins or if a donor egg was used.

as they had already drained their lifesavings to pay for the surrogacy and were scrambling to meet the cost of caring for their poorly newborns.

What costs? Their poorly newborns were being cared for free of charge by the NHS. They didn’t have them at home at that point. They weren’t paying for that.

Surrogacy being illegal only exacerbates the risk of exploitation.

Making something illegal doesn't make it disappear (making drugs illegal hasn't exactly worked).
All it does is make it easier for individuals to be exploited as the legal framework to protect them isn't clear and they themselves risk being prosecuted.

If there was a clear, enforceable legal framework, with the focus around ensuring individuals are protected from exploitation, providing independent counselling, legal advice etc to those individuals, ensuring independent scrutiny - that would achieve a lot more than simply trying to ban something which (like it or not) is happening worldwide.

Surrogacy is misunderstood and misrepresented, in part because its an emotive subject but also because its impossible to use one catch all term for such a broad range of circumstances.
That's where laws come in, to try to define what is and what isn't exploitation and ensure individuals are protected.

By chance I had the opportunity to speak to someone who chose to have a child for someone else, it made me realise how many misconceptions I had (and as she quite rightly pointed out, my former views were patronising).

The article is written by and on behalf of the gay couple so is very biased naturally.

I too would be interested to hear the other side.

Who stayed with the twins from 26 weeks? The article doesn’t say so I assume the mother.

Also assuming she has a job or other children the £3000 extra could have been to cover extra expenses such as child care, travel for her family etc whilst she remained with the twins.

These two lines jumped out at me from the article

They befriended the new one

The new what? Can they not say woman?

She was just 28 weeks along, and the couple said they drove for three-and-a-half hours to rush to hospital to meet the twins.

Why even mention the time it took to drive to the hospital particularly when the woman had a difficult birth with a breech? Poor men had a longish drive.

It reads as though they had an agreement for the couple to cover her expenses for the whole duration of the pregnancy (the whole 40 weeks and maybe for some time off afterwards) but when she gave birth at 28 weeks, that stopped. She was expected to hand over the babies and that was it.

I don't think it's disgusting that the surrogate and her boyfriend asked for the deal to be stuck to. After all, she had a traumatic birth to twins at just 28 weeks and was about to be left high and dry. Does she even qualify for maternity leave being a surrogate?

The couple clearly state that they didn't have the money to pay the rest of her expenses so why did they agree to use a surrogate then? So instead of giving her £3,000 more in expenses which I assume was to cover her time off after the birth, they racked up £26,000 in legal fee's? It doesn't really add up to be honest. While it's a bit sickening that babies were being withheld due to non payment, I still think this woman was being left high and dry and it was merely an attempt to make sure she was looked after as promised.

If she isn't entitled to maternity pay, this woman may well have to return to work only having taken a couple annual leave and the money for expenses was to ensure she could have some time off after the birth

It's not even that long a drive!

It's just an advert for their go fund me to pay off their debts

Pay your own debts everyone else has to 🤷‍♀️ some people in family court have to self rep because they cant afford it

I just looked at their fund raising link, I wasn't impressed at some of their comments:

e.g.

'After many many years being part of the surrogacy community we conceived our first,'

Really? they conceived? I think not.

they didn’t go through any miscarriages.

Why not? Because they're not the mother? One of them is the biological father.

Also agree that surrogacy should be banned outright.

they were scrambling to meet the cost of caring for their poorly newborn

What costs? Thought the twins were in hospital being cared for, for free, by the NHS?

The couple are appealing for support from the public after taking out loans of up to £26k just to cover the legal costs, on top of the amount already paid out to their surrogate.

Well, presumably they agreed with the surrogate what to pay her at the start, so that's a foreseeable expense and I have no sympathy there.

Hard to know who's wrong or right with only one side of the story being given here.