New York needs our help - dark forces are gathering to bring commercial surrogacy to New York

[FannyCann]

I received this email last week, from the organisation Stop Surrogacy Now.

We need your help to stop the legalization of commercial surrogacy in New York State.

Current New York law prohibits commercial surrogacy but allows altruistic surrogacy.

Governor Andrew Cuomo is working overtime to change this, having recently launched the "Love Makes a Family" campaign which includes a proposal for dangerous commercial surrogacy legislation. As you can imagine, it is important to keep #BigFertility out of New York State.

A new website has been launched at www.legalizesurrogacywhynot.com/. It's primarily focused on New York, but it contains many resources that are valuable to all of us around the world.

Please help us create awareness and a groundswell of opposition to these regressive efforts. Help us by sharing this link and starting important conversations in your spheres of influence about the harms of surrogacy. Encourage many more to sign and share our petition at www.StopSurrogacyNow.com

The background to this is that only last year an attempt to introduce commercial surrogacy to New York was seen off by a concerted effort from feminists. Now the baby buyers have regrouped and come right back at it.

This podcast from Venus Rising gives some explanation to last year's events.

Listen to Podcast #002 - Taina Bien-Amie from Venus Rising in Podcasts. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/venus-rising/id1481872967?i=1000451783360

And an article with more explanation about it from the NY Times.

www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/nyregion/surrogate-pregnancy-law-ny.html

They just don't give up do they? The demand to rent wombs and buy babies, the entitlement that women should provide this service is enraging.

Wombs are not for rent, babies should never be bought/sold/bartered for or wrapped up in ribbon and gifted to best friends or close relatives. How is that so difficult to understand?

We need to watch and learn (and support where we can) as our lawmakers are currently engaged in exactly the same assault on the rights of women and babies, but they are dressing it up as "altruistic", none of that nasty American commercial stuff, oh no. Whilst devoting pages and pages of the consultation, some 18 questions iirc to how women can be paid for the service so that they are not exploited whilst covering up the payments as "expenses" otherwise known as fraud!

New York is woke central - I’m surprised there wasn’t commercial surrogacy there already.

Rent a womb. Are the prospective parents vetted in any way?

Thanks for posting. I hate that women and children are treated as commodities.

Thanks Fanny for sharing, it wasn't long ago that this was won so let's just keep going.

No vetting for commissioning parents Lordfrontpaw
If you've got the $$$ anyone can buy a baby.

Some very upsetting cases from USA and Australia :

"NASTY REALITIES

I wish to discuss a few actual cases to which I have previously alluded, to illustrate the vulnerability of the surrogate mother and child and how devastating failure to regulate ICS will be.
First, I refer to the insidious set of circumstances of the Peter Truong and Mark Newton case. These two, now incarcerated, ‘fathers’ purchased a new- born baby from a mother in Russia for US$8,000, after several failed attempts at ICS arrangements. With falsified documents, the trio entered America and the fathers legally adopted the child. The child was then regularly sexually abused from the age of 21-months to 6 years old. As he grew, he was instructed and groomed and abused and video-taped for posterity, not only by his fathers, but by those to whom he was offered around the world organised via online child abuse forums. The abuse only stopped when police agencies, mostly by luck and coincidence, arrested the fathers.
The Pennsylvanian case of Huddleston59 also highlights this risk. There, a young man commissioned a surrogate child as the sole intended parent. The surrogate infant died, six weeks after being delivered to the commissioning. father, as a result of severe physical abuse.

The very recent Baby Gammy situation offers another illustration of
vulnerability and potential for abuse. This involved an Australian convicted
paedophile abandoning the twin of a commissioned child in Thailand, born with
Down’s Syndrome, and retaining his healthy twin sister. The surrogate mother
was forced to lie to the Australian Embassy that the birth was not the result of
an ICS agreement,
inaccurate information) visa. Such circumstances sound alarm bells about the future safety of the baby daughter in the commissioning father’s care and for the disabled baby son left in the poor surrogate mother’s care. A complete lack of background checks on the commissioning father’s criminal past allowed such arrangements to proceed unimpeded. Furthermore, the surrogate mother, who entered into the arrangement for financial reasons, is now left to care for the disabled child. There are no laws protecting her position, nor that of the child."

www.federalcircuitcourt.gov.au/wps/wcm/connect/bff837bb-f619-4510-9807-9dfe2fe88422/International+Commercial+Surrogacy+and+the+risk+of+abuse.pdf?

Sorry. I don't think that link works. I think there must be something in the program or something as every time I link this article it doesn't work.

www.federalcircuitcourt.gov.au/wps/wcm/connect/bff837bb-f619-4510-9807-9dfe2fe88422/International+Commercial+Surrogacy+and+the+risk+of+abuse.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CONVERT_TO=url&CACHEID=ROOTWORKSPACE-bff837bb-f619-4510-9807-9dfe2fe88422-lpYcMc7

Christ it never even crossed my mind that some men would buy a baby to abuse 😱

I just wanted to say that I wasn’t saying that anyone who can’t have a baby isn’t suitable to have a baby - just as some parents who have their own baby are bloody awful and shouldn’t be left in charge of a cockroach.

Just that if you want to adopt a baby you need to jump through hoops - but it’s like plastic surgeons - there are some who, if you waved enough money at them they’d graft on a tail and bunny ears.

These are nauseating examples of the problem with buying children.

But tbh, what sort of person wants to buy a child? The unsavoury, the desperate and ignorant. Most of those people are unsuitable as parents.

Well no, I wouldn’t paint them as monsters. But some people don’t ever consider for one minute that they don’t ‘need’ to have a child or are even right to have one. Or want one for the wrong reasons.

It just seems very ‘disposable’ doesn’t it? So many celebs seem to be having babies with surrogates these days. It’s all so very consumerist - ‘I wanted a baby so I went and bought one’.

Of course Lordfrontpaw
I'm not suggesting that the majority of people seeking to obtain a baby via surrogacy are unsuitable/abusers or monsters.

But everyone knows the hoops adoptive parent have to jump through. And yet if you Commission a woman to carry a baby for you then none of that matters.

This is the best and most wide ranging discussion I have listened to, it's a longer podcast at just over one hour but I can't recommend it enough. It discusses all this and much more.

Listen to "To Buy a Baby, You Must First Rent a Woman" with MaryLou Singleton: Surrogacy Series Part 1 of 3 from Free Birth Society in Podcasts. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/free-birth-society/id1231912533?i=1000465605381

Oh I know you weren’t saying that - I thought my post could be read as very negative and I’m sure there are brilliant parents out there who have gone down this route!

When I see a pop star of actor announcing they are having a baby (very small print via a surrogate) I don’t start crying with delight and sending congratulations like you see on social media. I think ‘they’ve bought a baby from a woman’ and it makes me feel a bit sad - no one ‘deserves’ to have a baby and I’ve known parents adopt and the process is no picnic.

They have just decided to have a child - often it may be the case they the mum is physically just too old to conceive/carry a baby - lord knows a baby would finish me off at my age - so will the child be an accessory?

According to 2016 HFEA stats 23% of surrogates were aged over 40.
The official maternal mortality stats via MBRRACE reports show that maternal mortality doubles from 12.8 per 100,000 to 24.2 per 100,000 at age 40.
And that's aside of all the health problems, raised blood pressure, gestational diabetes etc. It's a disgrace, the IVF clinics should be saying No to surrogacy over 40. It's not like a woman choosing to have a baby of her own at 40, these surrogate mothers wouldn't be having a baby except for this.
They are also at increased risk because donor egg conception ie where the foetus is not related to the mother is an independent risk factor for obstetric complications, it's thought there is a sort of graft v host mechanism which affects the placenta.

And yet these buyers are so intent on their goal they are totally reckless of the health of the mother and also of the baby they claim to want so badly. 🤷‍♀️

Over 40? Blimey. I read recently of a famous couple using the same surrogate for siblings - so genetically engineering their ‘prefect family’. I wonder if any keep a disabled child?

I doubt it Lordfrontpaw

www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/mother-rejected-disabled-twin-because-she-was-a-dribbling-cabbage-says-surrogate-30537791.html

www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/mother-rejected-disabled-twin-because-she-was-a-dribbling-cabbage-says-surrogate-30537791.html

That is heartbreaking. Absolute bastards.