“We wanted someone who would turn around and say, ‘this is your child, what do you want?’, rather than them telling us their demands for putting their lives on hold for nine months."

[niceberg]

I used to be generally supportive of non-commercial surrogacy until threads here made me think more deeply, and explore further, the issues with it.

Being aware of the law commission consultation on surrogacy law, a link to an article on a gay couple's trouble with surrogacy caught my eye. I'm afraid it's Pink News, which I didn't realise until I clicked. But I'll give you a potted summary to save you giving them more clicks.

The headline of the piece is "A Devon gay couple have spoken out about their rollercoaster journey to becoming parents, highlighting the desperate need for surrogacy reform in the UK." OK thinks I, there must have been some traumatic event / breakdown in the relationship with the woman / trouble getting parental orders. Something difficult for them which I'm prepared to read about even if my ultimate concern will always be the welfare of the baby and its mother.

But the story contains nothing of the sort. It was as straightforward for the intended parents as you can get. They took the baby home the day after he was born. The 48 hours waiting for the DNA test result was apparently a complete nightmare (!). They had to wait the requisite 6 weeks to apply for the parental order...um, yes, and?

My violin was already small and it shrank to miniscule then disappeared completely by the end. Now I just feel sick at the entitled approach. Maybe Pink News is doing them a disservice - it's all in the editing right? - but clearly they think this is an angle that will resonate with their readers.

Even if parts of the story cast doubt ob the veracity of the couple's claims, the entitlement on show here is breathtaking.

Other surrogates were not nice (in my experience this means they were probably self-assured and assertive about their own rights and needs). They say she was going to do it for nothing, and they insisted she get paid - they made it a transactional process according to their own words - now they're unhappy it was transactional and even have the gall to claim she only did it for the money.

I'd also be too ashamed of myself to publicly bemoan the fact that the mother of my child didn't put my wishes first during her pregnancy and instead prioritised her own needs (which is what the main complaint boiled down to).

At this point I do wish journalists would write better quality pieces, even at tabloids, and point out that the needs of the person in whose womb the child is growing and who is doing all of the work should obviously come first, even if just for the sake of a healthy pregnancy, but that's clearly not on with this type of sensationalist reporting. Or that parental orders can very deliberately only be awarded after at least six months have passed since birth to allow for the mother to change her mind about relinquishing her parental rights. Especially important in a case like this where the birth mother is also the biological mother of the child. Again that's something a journalist worthy of that name would mention.

As for not being present at the birth - only the birth mother has the right to decide who can come into the labour room with her. It seems that their relationship may have broken down before birth, and she didn't want them there, but to run a story in national media when the only complaints you have are that the birth mother didn't accommodate their wishes before and during birth while otherwise giving up her child as she had agreed to do is cold, plain egotism.

So it wasn't the gloriously wonderful experience to have a baby as they imagined it would be. These two still got their happily ever after, but the road to it wasn't unicorns, glitter and fuzzy warm feelings all round. Well, that happens in many pregnancies, if not most. It's hard work to grow a baby and things rarely happen the wy we imagine they will at the start.

Massively breathtaking entitlement and disdain for the woman who gave them the most precious gift anyone could give you - her own child.

And this is one the ways all of our maternity rights are going to go down the pan.

Not to mention that these men show utter disregard and downright callous attitudes towards the mother of their baby.

No one has the right to be a parent. And no baby should be treated as a commodity.

Utter pigs.

“We wanted someone who would turn around and say, ‘this is your child, what do you want?’, rather than them telling us their demands for putting their lives on hold for nine months.".

Enraging. Mind you, unrelated to surrogacy, I can imagine a few men thinking this after their partners have given birth. It's rather unpleasantly telling. Stop demanding shit for just doing your JOB, woman.

It's not clear what could have reasonably been different.

Surrogacy must prioritise the needs of the surrogate mother and the child.

A man's involvement in the birth of a child is unavoidably limited by biology.

And the glorying in the full 12 months maternity leave, despite having no physical recovery from the pregnancy and birth

Like the OP it was threads like this that made me think about surrogacy.

This particular bit is part of a bigger issue I'm aware of by men and women, where maternity leave is increasingly viewed as holiday.

It’s so not the done thing to discuss the reality of pregnancy and birth. Some of that is to ensure the continuation of the species, not making a future mother fearful.
But on the askDanielRadcliffe twitter hashtag, women were asking for advice about the women’s biological problems, And this was hateful. Apparently.

“If you say to him, ‘why don’t you have a mummy?’ - which he has already been asked by a member of the public - he says, ‘because I am a special boy, and I am special because I have two daddies as I don’t have a mummy’."

Yep, every two year old can parrot this kind of bs . The views this couple hold about women are pretty clear. They apparently wanted to keep in touch with the mother but for reasons don't, and now, no mother required.

Sad.

I really hate to think about babies being motherless by choice, and that's not because I think all mothers are saints.

It's chilling to think that in some men's minds, a mother is solely an incubator.

CharlieParley you've expressed that so well.

“We wanted someone who would turn around and say, ‘this is your child, what do you want?’, rather than them telling us their demands for putting their lives on hold for nine months."

Also, the way they say they have “input” from one of their mums when what they really mean is that she babysits for them to allow them to work. It’s the way they talk about people (women) as if they only exist to serve them! The sense of entitlement and lack of empathy is horrifying.

I'm not sure if conception takes place like this and not through a clinic that the child would be registered with HFEA and so if the relationship breaks down and the father/s don't tell the child the truth will they ever know their mother?

This is of course an argument for reform but how can you police this?

I feel so desperately sad for children made this way. I'm sure they are all spun a line throughout childhood about being special but evolution has not yet eradicated the role of the mother in making and growing a child.

Everyone has a mother, I hope all children born this way find theirs.

The simplest way to reform surrogacy laws is to ban it in its entirety.

“We both saw it as a relationship with the surrogate that would hopefully be life-long.”
Well that worked out didn't it!
No contact since the day after he was born and now the child says that he doesn't have a mummy.

The entitlement is dreadful

@CaraDune

In other news, "men who deliberately set out to exploit a vulnerable, desperate woman are surprised when the woman they set out to exploit turns out to be vulnerable and desperate."

And then complain to a newspaper that the mother didn’t want them watching her give birth, and imply she set out to defraud another couple!

That baby will be able to find her through a DNA genealogy website one day, and no doubt he will know that his dads slagged her off in the press. They’ll probably have the cutting in his baby scrap book!

@KaronAVyrus

The simplest way to reform surrogacy laws is to ban it in its entirety.

Yep. I totally agree.

I cant help but wonder that anyone willing to use other peoples lives and bodies for their own egos, which ultimatly is what surrogacy is, are the kind of person that can put a babies or childs needs first. They dont have the type of mindset that naturally makes a good parent.
Add to this the lack of any biological link or socialisation to put others needs first and I can see things working out very badly.

Another horrendous surrogacy story from a few years ago

Surrogate mother who agreed to give birth to a baby for a gay couple she met in Burger King wins custody of the boy after judge finds she was 'manipulated and exploited'

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3671887/Surrogate-mother-agreed-birth-baby-gay-couple-met-Burger-King-wins-custody-boy-judge-finds-manipulated-exploited.html

The child won't be able to trace his mother through the HFEA no, because this pair of revolting men wanted a cheap baby

Whatever new law ends up being cobbled together it won't be possible to stop people doing it the DIY way. In fact I suspect there will be more of it that way as the proposals from the Law Commission, with more regulation, agencies, compulsory counselling, advertising etc will inevitably drive up the costs.

So people wanting to do it on the cheap will go DIY. I also suspect people who are of a more exploitative nature, like the couple featured in the case above, will go for that route with their back of the envelope contract made with a vulnerable woman.

In that case eventually the mother was awarded custody. I think it's one of the few cases that favoured the mother. Clearly the baby buyers commissioning parents were awful people.

Actually in the case OldeMagick mentioned it was a DIY contract but not the insemination. They went to a cheaper fertility clinic in Greece for that.

OneEpisode, the dads are dreadful people.

I read this whole thing because I couldn't understand the title. Who's putting whose life on hold? what do you mean, on hold? And so on.

I've read all the way to here before I took on board that they wanted the biological mother to disappear and not get in their way, thank you very much. "Shut up. You're an egg and a rent-a-womb."

I guess they can congratulate themselves. They're now the proud owners of slavers' minds, unable to see the humanity of their chattel.

The entitlement is chilling and as for telling that boy he hasn’t got a mummy everyone has a mummy! Just another couple of men who would like women to disappear off the face of the earth.

If surrogacy is to continue it could be done via a surrogacy register. Where all women are assessed to ensure they are not vulnerable or exploitable. With strict laws in place that the insemination is only to take place in a fertility clinic under HFEA guidelines.

No more short cuts. It would safeguard the biological mothers, the potential parents to be and the child.

Absolutely hideous. I had no real opinions about surrogacy before becoming pregnant - now I think it’s an absolutely disgraceful industry which values the ‘needs’ of the ‘parents’ above that of the woman and HER CHILD. These men should not have a child, end of story. They are misogynistic creeps.