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.

I'm getting increasingly uncomfortable with the framing of wishes and feelings as real experience equal and to be treated as objective reality. Such as 'we conceived' and 'we went through a miscarriage'.

This is the age of female appropriation. Their language is just another example of it.

I imagine that if they were born at 28 weeks the babies were very poorly and will probably have ongoing issues. I can't help but wonder what additional impact being removed from their mother had on the babies at this stage of their life?

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/14/baby-gammys-twin-sister-stays-with-western-australian-couple-court-orders

And this utter shitshow. Paedophile and his wife pay for twins, take one home, and leave the one with down's syndrome behind in Thailand with the surrogate mother.

This is the follow-up story, that states the paedophile didn't abandon the baby (doesn't explain) and details the child safeguarding plan to stop the baby being abused by the purchaser (paedophile is not allowed to be alone with the child).

Thailand banned surrogacy for foreigners after this.

She did not break the agreement she wanted the money as agreed to be paid.

It is buying babies however you cover it up with saying it's expenses and as rightly noted in the U.K you commercial surrogacy is illegal. And yet it cost them £17k, anyone else's pregnancy here cost that? Who gets that cash, lawyers?

There two biological parents who don't live together so in any other circumstance this would mean split custody. The mother kept the babies with her so she clearly does care for them. She didn't sign them over at the hospital which is what usually happens.

I'd also like to hear the mothers side of the story Tinsel and I don't imagine we ever will.

And yes if the babies are with them now what is the funding for, legal fees to sort parental rights?

Also have we forgotten that there is adoption? Difficult though it may be it is a route to having a family when you can't make them with your biology.

Ultimately these are tiny little babies who have been through enough and should be with the mother and the father, and are not means by which these parents can wash their dirty washing in public.

Also surrogacy is banned is many countries, it is not impossible for the laws to be changed and for it to be banned here.

It also involves a “words and pictures story” being read to Pipah every three months that details in terms the toddler would understand the “history and method” of Farnell’s crimes and why he is unable to be alone with her.

What the actual fuck?

I'm not getting into the surrogacy argument but I'd like to point out that it costs parents a lot of money when their children are in the nicu. Of course health care is free but there is travel, food, drink, loss of earnings ect. It cost me and my dp nearly £1000 extra for the 5 weeks our son was in hospital. With twins it will only be worse. Regardless of your views on the case, the men are visiting the babies and that includes a lot of costs

One thing not mentioned here is the trauma and attachment of the baby being removed from it's birth mother, the voice and heartbeat it's known for it's whole life is gone.
Even removing a baby at birth can cause emotional harm.
There is a lot of talk about the adults in this debate but there is the emotional harm to the baby to consider.

Good God, @FlyingOink. That story is unbelievably horrific. What the actual fuck.

I also wonder about expenses.

I can see it if you are taking time off work-although do you lose money for maternity appointments?

Transport costs, clothes.

Regardless of your views on the case, the men are visiting the babies and that includes a lot of costs

They weren’t allowed to see the babies. But the mother would have incurred all the costs you list so it’s unsurprising that she insisted on being paid the full payment.

I've also come to the conclusion that surrogacy should be completely banned/ illegal.

No one has, or should have, the right to have a child, and were already overpopulated enough, and with enough unwanted children in the care system, to not need to add to it.

If they were that desperate for children, they should've adopted, and helped a child or children already present in this world.

The poor woman probably did incur extra "expenses" as she was stuck in a neonatal unti for weeks on end, presumably needing support from her partner. Interesting how they wouldn't cough up £3 extra to the birth mother but were happy to spend thousands in legal expenses and crowd funding when she exercised her actual right to stop the surrogacy.

My partner would never say he went through a miscarriage. But then his concern, as well as the loss, was for my welfare. These men don't sound remotely bothered about the 'several' women that went through it.

This.

For all those offering the extremely unpleasant complications surrounding this awful story as a reason why surrogacy should be 'regulated' - your argument only serves to prove that surrogacy should be banned, and it can never be effectively 'regulated', because every complication you smooth out by regulation, you create another ripple that complicates.

If you have an horrendous situation, made even more potentially horrendous by modern technological advances, which is totally bloody avoidable because it never happens by accident, then there is no need to attempt regulation.

Ban it. Women are not for sale. Babies are not commodities.

I watched a documentary on US surrogacy a few weeks ago, and found it horribly disturbing.

I don't agree with surrogacy at all. It's so morally wrong on every level.

And yes I had issues having children, I lost one son at birth but I have never once felt that I had a "right" to be a parent.

I haven’t read the article. IMO any woman who gives birth at 28 weeks has had a very traumatic time and an emotional rollercoaster and it should be understood that all bets are off with regard to prior agreements. However heartbreaking that may be for the dads.

We cannot expect contract law rules to govern in these situations.

There are many fantastic gay adoptive parents. However adoption is a different ballgame entirely as it is about making a lifetime commitment to a child who will inevitably have challenges and traumatic experience, probable attachments broken to their biological family as very few babies are adopted and mostly it will be older children, and parenting an adopted child is a highly committed thing to do that may come to involve extreme end challenges.

The adoption process works hard to screen out couples who are wanting a blank slate child to fit into the hole where they wanted their biological child to be as opposed to wanting to parent a person with a history and challenges. The fitness for parenting is also very strongly assessed as the person of importance in all this is the child. You can see why many would prefer surrogacy, and why adoption really couldn't be an automatic pathway to the exact same experience of parenting that most hetero couples are able to have.

It is going to have to be faced at some point in society that not everybody can have everything, and that disappointment and hurt feelings about your situation does not trump other people's rights, or entitle the trampling of them. I share PP's worries that the child in all this barely exists more than the wanted commodity: this is about the creation and parenting of a person, who will 'belong' to the parents only for a short part of their lives. That shouldn't get lost behind value placed on the experience surrogate people would like and feel entitled to.

17k for 24/7 work for 40 weeks, plus the year it takes for a womans body to recover postnatally is far from the minimum wage.

Surrogacy is disgusting. It's far too close to slavery for comfort.

The cost must have been for the egg harvesting (gross phrase), insemination, lawyers and some minor expenses like travelling to appointments, maternity clothes etc. Surrogacy UK have been in the media saying average 'costs' are £15k I think, and of course there are additional costs of having newborn twins, if they hadn't factored that into the sums I'm not sure they should be doing this. They both work, why do they need financial assistance with caring for these song-longed for children?

For every miscarriage they had I would count it as two women being involved, if they had an egg donor and a surrogate each time, maybe a different one each time. If that's day 3 miscarriages that's 6 women, with the mental and physical impact on each of them. There must have been a cost involved there too, and not just financial.

The more I think about it the sicker I feel that the Law Commission are aiming to make this sort of thing more likely by removing a surrogate mothers rights. It's frightening.

'It's complicated by the fact that one of the men is the twins' biological father, and that they gave thousands of pounds to the mother. I don't think they were entitled to take the babies, but the money should have been paid back.'

IS that a joke? Sod the fact one of the men is actually the biological father just give him his money back??

She's called the 'surrogate' because she agreed to be a surrogate and signed a contract as such. If this had been a heterosexual couple using a surrogate in the same way then the outcome would have been the same.
That's why there are laws in place.

If they go ahead and remove the surrogate's rights, we'll soon be living in a real life Handmaid's Tale.

The cost must have been for the egg harvesting (gross phrase), insemination, lawyers

Those wouldn’t have been her costs though so any money paid for these things can’t be attributed to her expenses. If they are including all these things in the total of what they’ve paid then the figure they gave her is less than £17k.

I can see how you would rack up £17k if you are self employed or on contact work in a fairly well paid job. Good quality maternity work clothes, good quality food, exercise/massages etc to keep your body healthy, travel to medical appointments, then having to cover your costs for enforced maternity leave both before and after birth and a potential period of unemployment. Contingency expenses for possible post birth expenses also should be factored in (e.g., medical repair treatment, counselling, PND meaning you cannot work). As somebody said above, where are all the rich women giving birth for poor people? As a person with an earning capacity of multiples of 6 figures, what would my reasonable expenses be for a year or more of disruption to my career? The only reason they get away with complaining that £17K is a lot is because, as everyone knows, the only women who engage in surrogacy (outside of a sibling or similar arrangement) are poorer ones; and so she should be grateful for whatever nuggets are passed her way for the use of her body.

It’s very difficult. As your biological child you’ll want to fight for that. Being pregnant and growing the baby is no small thing. Handing over a baby isn’t either.