Surrogacy on the NHS

[Viewfromtheisland]

Didn’t know it was allowed in Scotland but I’ve been educated by the Daily Record today....

Also, a brief summary of the risks of multiple birth/twins from the HFEA.

So don't you care that surrogates don't like the word mother to be used. Why do these women's sensibilities not matter to you? Is it them you're protecting or your own desire to have things the way you like them? You're hardly respecting women by forcing a name they dislike upon them because you like it, are you?

As for something bad already having happened to the baby so no point considering its best interests thereafter because that would interfere with your desire to punish commissioning parents, words fail me.

You seem to think other people are entitled and irresponsible if they don't hold your views but I find the sentiments here and disinterest in self reflection enormously selfish, arrogant and frankly vindictive.

So the right to a 'family' means using women as incubators and babies as commodities, hence, 'commissioning' parents. On what planet is this not some sick shit?

“In addition there is a push to allow IVF for same sex couples in the NHS in the UK.”

Why would this be an issue? If a same sex couple suffer from fertility problems why shouldn’t they receive the same help as a heterosexual couple? Likewise with donor insemination, if a heterosexual couple are provided with this on the nhs for whatever reason, why shouldn’t a lesbian couple be provided with the same service if they require it?

Ultimately it is the child who would suffer if commissioning parents were singled out as not deserving of standard treatment. Going by our friends experience, surrogates are generally delighted to hand over baby on arrival and the suggestion they should look after baby while in hospital would be greeted with horror and a flat refusal. As nursing staff are not nannies and early bonding with future caregivers is important, it is not difficult to see why hospitals might also want the commissioning parents on scene, especially for medical checks etc. Otherwise you have confusion over who is actually responsible for the child's needs.

I'm sorry but the surrogate has looked after that child for 9 months give or take, I'm sure they can manage to look after the baby until they are able to leave the hospital. If they are not prepared to do that then don't be a surrogate.

As you say the midwives are not nannies and the nhs is not a hotel. A maternity ward is for mothers and babies to recover from labour. The IP have no business being on a maternity ward other than to visit.

Biological the mother is the woman who gives birth, same applies legally, until a parental order passes through the courts or a child is legally adopted.

If a woman has difficulty with that word I suggest she doesn't get pregnant, to have her own children or someone else's.

Surrogacy, being an exploitative industry and banned in many countries for that reason, I seek to protect women who wish to be surrogate mothers for financial, emotional or self-motivated reasons.

For the babies that are born from surrogacy I will do what I can to have surrogacy restricted further in the UK (or at least for the laws not to be further relaxed) to protect a newborn from trauma, because, in my view, no child should be born expressly for the purpose of being removed from their mother, again the woman who gave birth.

(The exception being where a child is at risk from harm or neglect by the mother. If the mother posed a danger to a child then the child should be somewhere where they are safe and one hopes, loved. Someone in my extended family keeps having babies but she does not care for them so they are repeatedly placed in care. Not surrogacy but the mother knows she is giving birth to a child expressly for the child to be removed, alt most immediately after birth. If she stopped getting pregnant the babies wouldn't be traumatised. If the babies stayed with her, they would be traumatised further.)

You can think I am vindictive, disinterested in self-reflection and enormously selfish. You are entitled to hold that view.

Surrogacy isn't all fluffy happy families. If you want to believe it is, I would suggest you are narrow minded and could perhaps research the darker side of it a bit more then see if you feel the same way. I am entitled to hold that view.

Ultimately it doesn't matter what you or I think and say on here Ov9. What matters are the laws around surrogacy and people not breaking those laws and people not being harmed by those laws. This? This is just a discussion.

surrogates are generally delighted to hand over baby on arrival

I rather suspect the babies themselves are somewhat less delighted to be handed over to strangers.

Happened in Worcester with me when I had my two surrobabies.

No drama.

What happened Minecraft? As in which bit in this thread happened to you too?

I find it very strange that women, who are so kind and giving that they would want to grow and birth a baby for another person, often a stranger, just out of the kindness of their heart - just want to give birth to the baby and then never see it again. They care so little for their child that as soon as it's out of their body they want no more to do with it. They won't even care for it for 24 hours after giving birth.

I can understand doing that if you were putting your baby up for adoption. It might be easier to just have the baby taken away asap. But you've chosen to be a surrogate. (I realise some women chose adoption but it's a choice made post conception). If you can't handle giving it away, so much so that you can't bare to care for the baby for a day or so, then why surrogate. It just doesn't fit the "most wonderful gift" "we're so lovely and altutistic" mantra we're told. It fits a narrative of women who don't really want to give their baby away and are doing it for other reasons, or women that don't give a shit and are doing it for other reasons.

In regards to changes in the laws, gay men should be the last people to have a say in it. They are bias and thinking of themselves. The only people that should be asked are relevant medical professionals (not ones with stakes in the ivf or egg farming business), mothers, women and the children of surrogates.

But I actually think a first step should be to ban egg farming. Its unethical and dangerous. That would also stop alot of surrogacy in its tracks.

I rather suspect the babies themselves are somewhat less delighted to be handed over to strangers.

I don't know how any human can think it right and ok to take a newborn from it mother(unless the baby is in danger). Psychos all of them.

Ov9, I understand why you’re sticking up for your friends. And yes, sometimes surrogate mothers are content with their role and feel fine about handing the baby over.

But some do change their minds during the process, because they may have bonded with the baby, or grown to dislike the commissioning parents, or both. If you read the article by Jennifer Lahl I linked earlier in the thread, you might understand why some people, including me, are horrified by the proposal to relax surrogacy laws in the UK.

Here is a UK case of a surrogate mother changing her mind. It was supposedly “altruistic surrogacy”, but in reality it was anything but.

The surrogate mother (known as V in the judgement) had learning difficulties and limited financial means. She didn’t understand the arrangement she had agreed to, and had doubts early on in the process, but was afraid to tell the commissioning parents.

www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed161502

The applicants, A and B, were the commissioning parents. They already had twins, who had been born to a surrogate mother, V. Russell J was extremely critical of the couple's behaviour towards V. She described them as being "dismissive" of V, "wholly uninterested in her" and as seeing "her primarily as a service provider to whom they had paid £12,500" [35]. A, said Russell J, had "no understanding…that he was dealing with another human being whose own expectations and feelings needed to be taken into account".

Human trafficking on the public dime? Criminy!

So far California it appears that those influencing UK law are mostly those who profit from it; family law firms who get paid to draw up those unenforceable contracts or draft the wills of the woman who might die, the 'match-making' agencies who are advertised as non-profit on the HFEA website (COTS, Brilliant Beginnings) and gay men (British Surrogacy is run by the Drewitt-Barlows, Two Dads say on their website that they are involved, Lance Black was the poster boy for the media plan with his series on surrogacy on the radio)….oh and Stonewall.

There are also surrogate mothers, I believe they consulted formally with two and one child of surrogacy who is now an adult. There was also a therapist. I don't know why there was a US firm involved....or maybe I do, I have my suspicions at least.

This was all on the FOI response that I've seen, it was posted early on during the threads on the public consultation.

www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/public_consultation_on_proposed#outgoing-1021358

I was please to read that Penney Lewis was appointed Commissioner last year as previously I think it was mostly men. 11 men, 7 women at the time.

www.gov.uk/government/news/two-law-commissioners-appointed-to-the-law-commission

Thanks for that case Cat, was that the one where the SM signed the US online contract, printed off the internet, in a service station without a translator? That one was horrific.

Why would this be an issue? If a same sex couple suffer from fertility problems why shouldn’t they receive the same help as a heterosexual couple? Likewise with donor insemination, if a heterosexual couple are provided with this on the nhs for whatever reason, why shouldn’t a lesbian couple be provided with the same service if they require it?

Or alternatively stop spending NHS money on any infertility issues.

And btw I'm serious about that. The NHS can't fund everything everyone wants. No one dies because they can't have a baby. The world isn't running out of people.

So don't you care that surrogates don't like the word mother to be used.

As you can see from this case from 2016 the judge uses the term surrogate mother. Because she is, in law, the mother. Which actually was the whole point of the case. The Commissioning Parents, having thought it was a good idea to impregnate a 51year old woman with twins were then unconcerned about her health leading to a breakdown in the relationship between the two parties.
The surrogate mother then refused to agree to the parental order as she did not want her ill treatment to be dismissed and forgotten.
If the CPs had honoured her as a mother maybe the relationship wouldn't have broken down.
Any woman who thinks it is a good idea to be thought of as just a carrier or whatever really hasn't thought through the issues.

https://www.familylaw.co.uk/docs/rtf-files/ReABSurrogacyyConsent2016EWHCC2643Famm_.rtf

@OhHolyJesus, that sounds like the same case. Although, I think the SM spoke English, but was illiterate.

You seem to think other people are entitled and irresponsible if they don't hold your views but I find the sentiments here and disinterest in self reflection enormously selfish, arrogant and frankly vindictive.

You see I think it is rather entitled and irresponsible to go around impregnating 51 year olds with twins.
Or indeed younger women, given that a twin pregnancy carries significantly more risk for the mother.

Not only am I very concerned for the health and welfare of women and their babies, I am also extremely concerned about the financial implications for the NHS which will impact ALL WOMEN when services are cut to make financial savings.

Why would this be an issue? If a same sex couple suffer from fertility problems why shouldn’t they receive the same help as a heterosexual couple? Likewise with donor insemination, if a heterosexual couple are provided with this on the nhs for whatever reason, why shouldn’t a lesbian couple be provided with the same service if they require it?

The thing is donor insemination simply requires a man to wank for half a minute.

For a male same sex couple a woman is required to inject herself with fertility hormones to overstimulate her ovaries and subsequently have multiple needle stabs to extract as many eggs as have been produced (40 eggs = 40 stabs).
Another woman is required to gestate a baby or two for nine months and go through labour and birth at considerable risk to herself (as previously mentioned, donor oocyte pregnancies are at increased risk for a range of pregnancy complications) and then give the baby away.

It's not exactly the same help is it?

I wonder how many men would volunteer to be sperm donors if they had to inject themselves with hormones that affected their health and moods, have repeated trans urethral scans to inspect the inner workings of sperm production, their testicles to become the size of two grapefruits (this is how big an overstimulated ovary becomes) and then have a needle passed up their urethra to wherever the sperm might be hanging out up to forty times?

And yet they talk of reproductive equality.

fanny

You didn't answer the question which is an answer in itself. You're happy to discount the language used by the legal system when you don't like it, I presume. How they're described in law is no reason to go over the heads of the women who fit the definition. What you're actually doing is making those women more vulnerable. They don't want parental rights or anything like it. They do not see themselves as mothers and are usually not even related to the child they've carried. Their partners and husbands usually don't want to know this child (fair enough) and the marriage would probably be under great strain if they were to be left holding a baby they never planned and don't want. In no possible world is it in their best interests or the baby's for these unrelated people to be shoehorned into a family dynamic to suit someone else's views of what makes a family. It's coercive.

You're not talking about parental rights being signed over at birth, you're talking about using a term to describe a woman that she personally would dislike and forcing her to look after a child when she's in a very vulnerable state. That's good for no one. Pivoting into pointing the finger at someone else doesn't change that. If you don't like surrogacy, attack the legal system that has all but rubber stamped commercial surrogacy in this country. Don't go looking for ways to penalise the women and babies who have got wrapped up in it. Collateral damage like this is not ok.

Remove the finance - even the expenses - and then build a legal system of surrogacy around that. Any financial incentive is likely to affect decision-making and will ultimately impact women of less means than those who 'commission' their babies.

Surrogacy (if it must exist) should include same checks and review as adoption too. It's shocking that it doesn't.

Another thing I wondered - if the NHS is paying for and providing surrogacy IVF, what burden of legal responsibility would they have if a dispute arose in the surrogacy agreement itself?

it is not difficult to see why hospitals might also want the commissioning parents on scene, especially for medical checks etc. Otherwise you have confusion over who is actually responsible for the child's needs.

Sorry to go way back to a post from yesterday morning but this is important.

The law is absolutely clear that the mother is responsible for the child's needs. Whether she is a surrogate mother or not. The Court of Appeal judges in the McConnell case were very clear that this is what the law says and that there are overwhelming public policy reasons why it should remain the case.

There is no reason why the commissioning parents need to be present at the hospital. If a hospital is seeking consent from the commissioning parents instead of the surrogate mother they are not acting lawfully.

What you're actually doing is making those women more vulnerable. They don't want parental rights or anything like it. They do not see themselves as mothers and are usually not even related to the child they've carried. Their partners and husbands usually don't want to know this child (fair enough) and the marriage would probably be under great strain if they were to be left holding a baby they never planned and don't want. In no possible world is it in their best interests or the baby's for these unrelated people to be shoehorned into a family dynamic to suit someone else's views of what makes a family. It's coercive

You talk about it as if the mother had no say in the pregnancy. Like she was insemiated by a strangers baby in the night and just wants to get rid of the baby asap.
The pregnancy was planned. The mother and her family made the choice to have the baby and took on any potential risk associated with it.

Many of the reasons you give are reasons surrogacy should 100% be illegal in all forms. A child is a human. Not a pet that can be sent back to the pet store if it's is not up to scratch or the buyer changes its mind. A surrogate mother and her family should not be left with a baby they didn't want, but that can happen and the fact the a surrogate mothers would refuse to take the baby shows she shouldn't be a surrogate. No one should. A baby has a right to a it's mother and to be loved and nurtured by that mother. Obviously that doesn't always work out in natural pregnancies, but that is the position we should be starting with and not deliberately going against it.

And she doesn't carry the baby. She creates it, grows it and builds it from her own body. It's not in a bumbag. And she is related to the baby, the egg just gives the blue print, the mother is biologically related to that child from the process of growing it. My friend had a child through donor egg, she is no less that child's mother than I am to mine.