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.

We shouldn’t be selling babies. Or gifting babies.

I really don’t see why that’s controversial.

The challenges and distress these situations cause for parents and children is all over MN: they're life dominating, life changing issues and some of those children will spend decades of their adulthood overcoming them

Exactly my point - damage to children is happening in biological families all the time and yet we do not seek to legislate against dysfunctional families or useless parents having children.

There are plenty of individuals not fit to be parents having biological child after biological child - I've tutored fostered children born to mothers and fathers who don't give a damn about them. On the other hand, the majority of children born through surrogacy are very wanted children and live in remarkably happy and loving families. I appreciate I only speak from my own experience but I do feel it's not a simple as biological = good/ surrogacy = bad.

You're confusing the right of any woman to create, not create, terminate or proceed with a pregnancy - which noone here is proposing 'banning' and which right relates to her own bodily autonomy

No I'm not. I was responding to a poster who had said that no child should have to face the prospect of walking past their mother, father, sibling in the street and not know who they are. That is just as likely, possibly more so, to happen in the case of a ons with a stranger that results in a pregnancy.

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.

This.

I’m a bit confused about what has actually happened legally in this case. The men are seeking funds to pay for their £26k legal bill. I would like to know what exactly their legal costs were for. As stated upthread- the surrogate could not be ordered by a court to sign a parental order for these babies. The men have the babies so one of two things has happened. Either she signed the order voluntarily or she remains the legal mother of the children with PR but the judge ordered that the children are to be cared for entirely by their father and his husband. Both options suggest she had no intention of keeping these babies and raising them as her own. (A Judge would not order removal of a woman’s children from her care entirely if she wanted to keep them unless there was serious risk of harm- this would require social services involvement too) so that suggests to me this was about them paying the remainder of the money they had agreed to pay her. I suspect they decided not to pay it when she gave birth early and the court case was to settle this. They probably agreed to pay it in exchange for the signing of the parental order- or whatever paperwork was necessary for them to have the babies. The surrogate registering the babies herself was probably the only leverage she had in order to get the money she was owed. Not sure why she registered her partner as the father though. Maybe at that point the negotiations had broken down and with the men refusing to pay she thought she would be raising the babies.

The impacts on children raised by surrogates is no different to the impacts to children raised by their biological parents.

And this just isn't true. Adopted children, children born of donor sperm and children with absent parents can have issues relating to that, the fact some biological parents are crap and your relative's child was fine doesn't disprove any of that.

Barracker your posts are absolutely spot on. Especially this:

If you don't want your genetic material to be used by another person who will create, with her body and at risk to her own life and health, an entire human with it, then give birth to that human and have rights to the baby she made with her own body, then don't donate your genetic material for the purpose of it going into another person's body

It's the difference between families doing the best they can when things go wrong, and intentionally creating a child to live in those circumstances.

Michelle you are spot on. Whataboutery with regard to other situations that are less than ideal for the child - that omits the reality that surrogacy is intentional, deliberate and has financial implications. Children should not be for sale, no matter how nice or how sad the commissioning parents are.

and yet we do not seek to legislate against dysfunctional families or useless parents having children

What do you think the Children Act does?

Imagine contract law actually applied in surrogacy.
Baby kept by mother - mother sued for breach of contract, or arrested for kidnapping?
Baby born early - fee reduced or discounted
Baby born with health problems - mother investigated for how she conducted the pregnancy, or payment suspended, or refund demanded, or baby rejected
Baby dies after birth - same
Embryo miscarried - same

And surely it would open a legal challenge from dying people who have found organ donors willing to donate for a fee? If a baby can be contractually demanded surely a kidney can be too? What's to stop the legal challenge there if babies born to surrogate mothers become goods bought on lay-by?

We'll see sob stories from dying people desperate for a transplant and willing paid donors complaining the law is an ass? And that it's their body and their decision to sell half their liver, or a lung, or a kidney? (Except nobody will comment on the financial pull and why no rich people ever sell their organs).

Actually despite financial coercion being the main reason organ sales are illegal, that is less awful than buying a baby because the kidney doesn't grow up knowing it's a commodity.

so that suggests to me this was about them paying the remainder of the money they had agreed to pay her. I suspect they decided not to pay it when she gave birth early and the court case was to settle this

According to the paper the court case was about the fact that the mother put her partner down as the biological father on the birth certificate when this was in fact not true and it was Steven - one of the gay men - who was the biological father. There was a DNA test to prove this.

The issue over money arose when the biological mother's partner came round demanding an extra £3000 from the men (not sure what for) when they had already paid the agreed expenses of £17,000 (In the UK 'altruistic' system surrogates are usually paid between 12,000 to £15,000). The men could not afford this extra money as they had used all their savings up in legal costs, her expenses, equipment for the babies etc.

The Go-Fund me page, as I understand it, is to re-coup some of their losses.

Would it cost £26k in legal fees to have a DNA test ordered?

The issue over money arose when the biological mother's partner came round demanding an extra £3000 from the men

It says in another part of the article that she wanted “the remainder” of the money. Which suggests it was the rest of what they had agreed.

and yet we do not seek to legislate against dysfunctional families or useless parents having children
What do you think the Children Act does?

Well I understood that it protected children once they are born but I'm not aware of any act of law that prevents a dysfunctional or useless person, man or woman, from conceiving a child and having it in the first place which was my point.
Otherwise why are so many children born to to dysfunctional or useless parents? But correct me if I'm wrong.

FlyingOink do you know what the law is wrt surrogacy in the US? I know it’s different, more enforceable? But not sure on details.

It says in another part of the article that she wanted “the remainder” of the money. Which suggests it was the rest of what they had agreed

I read a different news item which said the following:

"They paid their surrogate the remainder of her pregnancy expenses at her demand - almost £17,000 in total - before she was discharged.
But then the surrogate's partner allegedly demanded an extra £3,000, which nurses Steven and Marc could not afford after buying all the equipment for their newborns".

The couple claim they had already paid out of their savings to their surrogate toward her pregnancy expenses.

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.

So the £3k was the remainder of what was owed by them to her. They had given her almost £14k at the point of birth.

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

Surrogacy, egg donation and sperm donation should all be banned in my view.

We, as a society, have gone too far in allowing the rights of the individuals created from these situations to be completely overlooked, in favour of the rights of those seeking to create them.

I took the partner coming to their house asking for £3k as indication that they didn’t pay what was owed when initially requested by her before she was discharged.

MarshaBradyo
www.thesurrogacyexperience.com/u-s-surrogacy-law-by-state.html#
Looks like it varies by state.

I wouldn’t want to move to the US model. At least the risk resides with the couple rather than surrogate here.

I may well be wrong about that though.

Thanks

Looks like some US states have a similar law to here in which the birth mother is the legal mother and no contracts pre-birth are enforceable but others look like a free-for-all.