Where New Zealand's surrogacy laws could be headed

[Dangertime]

www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/parenting/pregnancy/conception/300237663/where-new-zealands-surrogacy-laws-could-be-headed

I do know who they are and some are far too kind for the tone of the 'debate' here.

Far too kind? Brokers for the sale of babies or the mother themselves who can't defend their position?

I've discussed surrogacy with volunteers from Surrogacy U.K. in other forums and we have continued to disagree but found areas on which we agree.

Bad form to guess the identities of posters on an anonymous forum.

If you work for a surrogacy agency or have been a surrogate mother I think it would be helpful to state this as you have come from a biased position whilst attacking the opposing view. Important to to be transparent whilst not revealing your identity. If you were a family lawyer, personally benefitting financially from surrogacy, or a fertility clinic doctor, I would say the same.

There's only a small handful of ways to know a group of surrogate mothers. It's a small 'community', largely with closed Facebook groups or private forums connected to surrogacy agencies. More than several women who work for surrogacy agencies have been surrogate mothers.

How does it go down in these groups @Defmy when the surrogate mother regrets her decision and needs advice from her 'community'.

It's clear you've reduced to a situation where all's fair in war

Now that's fighting talk.

That undermines you and says a great deal about you.

I agree with Delphinium, in warrior terms I'm battle ready and I have no intention of giving an inch, despite remaining realistic about what can be achieved when the Law Commission in the U.K. appear to be in bed with the 'opposition' and have more power and influence than I could ever have.

It's always strange to me when someone says something like this. As if I should be embarrassed about my view. Some say 'you don't know what you're talking about' when I read a lot about surrogacy and share research studies, news stories, personal stories, quote books on the subject or leading figures or UN conventions or U.K. law.

As if unless I've been a surrogate mother or a commissioning parent I couldn't possibly understand and yet it's exceptionally rare for anyone who I come across in this 'debate' to present their case with the child at the forefront of their position on the matter.

"This happened recently, when a surrogate decided she wanted to keep the baby – an intending parent’s greatest fear."

When I was an intending parent (or, as I liked to quaintly call it, pregnant) my greatest fear was that something terrible would happen and the baby would die during pregnancy or birth. I was going to say that an option where a living baby went to live with someone else rather than coming home with me never occurred to me, but actually I distinctly remember telling my husband that if something was to go terribly wrong and he had to choose between us I'd want him to choose baby over me, as long as baby had a good chance of making it. (It is possible that pregnancy hormones made me a little over dramatic.)

It is telling when we start to other pregnant women by referring to them as 'surrogates' almost as they are objects and diminishing their humanity.
I thank those of you referring to them as pregnant women.

There may be lots of heterosexual couples where the woman has had medical difficulties, and suffered in the quest to have a baby. By engaging the services of that surrrogate mother, they just want to outsource those health/medical risks to another woman.
How is that reasonable?

@Syeknom

Parentpower20 I can see your point if there is a personal connection, that's not what these people are describing and asking for though. These are more general points about the article, not your stance. They are complaining about their informal arrangements breaking down and so they want the law changed to make it like a business transaction. I hope my kids would never be destitute enough to be in such a crap situation but I want the law to protect them AND all other women from exploitation regardless. It seems even worse they are asking for state funding. If you are a gay couple or a single man, should you have the right to rent a woman's body so you can have a child? Surely your sexuality (or just not wanting to be in a relationship of any sort) is more important to you and therefore you have to accept it isn't possible to have a child with your DNA but you could adopt and have a family. Or is it right to demand that the state buys a woman's body to create a child for you? I have children, but, if I couldn't have there is no way I would be so entitled to think it would be appropriate to get another woman to do this for me, in my case for love money, but I can see why some might do it for love.

I agree. I guess I just wouldn’t want a woman who had a baby for her sister after she had cancer treatment to be treated the same as a women in a poor country being paid for by rich middle aged men (or women). There is a big difference in one case the mother is viewed as a necessary evil or commodity and in the other the birth mother, important and intimately connected to the child forever.

I couldn’t and wouldn’t be able to offer to do surrogacy for someone else due to health reasons but I would want to for my sister and a close auntie relationship

For a detailed global perspective on Surrogacy, with speakers from France, Argentina, Australia and Canada, this webinar from Women Human Right's Campaign was on Saturday and the recording is here:

Pro surrogacy article in the Financial Times this weekend. www.ft.com/content/9e069a5d-3b81-4a72-bfe7-d27a009f22db

Oh have you got a share token for that @cocoapopfan by any chance?

No, sorry, but I could access it via twitter, if you find the post that way on FT.com twitter feed.

Blessed be the fruit!

FFS, it was supposed to be a work of fiction, The Handmaid's Tale.

@Defmy

Must surrogates I know are in favour of this. Their greatest fear is people perceiving a link after birth where there is no longer a link.

And how are they protected should the commissioning ' parents' change their minds?

I have found a summary of the FT story on the writer's own website which doesn't need a share token but struggling to post a link here.
Bear with me ladies.

Got it.
Here you go. This story is from the writer of the FT article
ginannebrownell.com/lily-ivf-adoption-didnt-work-i-found-surrogate/

I think the surrogate mum's labour will have been more exhausting than that of the writer.

Updated story based on FT piece:

ginannebrownell.com/ft-weekend-surrogacy-america-and-me/

Thanks Roar

I think the surrogate mum's labour will have been more exhausting than that of the writer.

I imagine the pregnancy seems longer than average and the two failed attempts would have made her question whether she could get out of the '3 attempts minimum' contract she signed.

There is so much to unpack in that article, I wish we had heard from 'Caroline' and I wish I had had a glass of wine and taken a deep breath before reading.

From that updated version Embarrassing

They warned that poor women of colour would be taken advantage of by wealthy white heterosexual couples desperate to have a child. “What we learn from experience today is that a lot of surrogates are white and tend to be lower middle class, so empirically this has not held true,” says Cornell University law professor Sital Kalantry, who has written extensively on surrogacy in both the US and India. “People who . . . have never spoken with a surrogate before have these deep assumptions about it,” says Heather Jacobson, the author of Labor of Love: Gestational Surrogacy and the Work of Making Babies. “If the concern of so many people is the exploitation of women in surrogacy, well then talk to them.”

Here's a woman from lower middle class who is white, somebody spoke to her about her experience too.

@EmbarrassingAdmissions
Thank you for this, much appreciated

Just chilling. And people want to make it 'more accessible'
in this country. I can't drink wine ( I get headaches) but reading all this and watching that video is making me sad about what my daughters will see in the future.

Yep, let’s just make the system easier for “intending parents” .

www.google.co.nz/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/may/19/man-who-sexually-abused-surrogate-twin-baby-daughters-jailed-for-22-years

FairScunnered
So grim
In the Ukraine, one of the most popular places for cheap destination surrogacy. There are over 100,000 orphans in care. Some of these are failed surrogacy children.
The whole business is shady.

@habibihabibi
Awful isn't it. I've heard people talk about Ukraine being 'more accessible' and having 'friendlier laws for foreigners' when it comes to surrogacy.

What I really hear now is that they mean it's a place where women and children have little protection in the law.
And it is a business, a grubby one.

The situation in Ukraine is that McMafia now run fertility clinics and maternity units.
It's beyond terrible.

I have nothing but contempt for anyone who would consider going there for surrogacy (over and above my general disapproval). And on top of their ignorant lack of curiosity regarding the safety and well being of the woman contracted to carry their baby, they are also idiots as the baby they claim to want so badly may not even be theirs. Poor care for the surrogate mother means their baby may be born with a range of health problems. Why are people so ill informed and frankly, stupid?

"Yuriy Kovalchuk, a former state prosecutor whose office oversaw a series of criminal investigations into BioTexCom in 2018 and 2019, says at least three other women went to law enforcement after having their wombs removed following surrogate pregnancies organised by the company.
He says other investigations involved allegations of fraud and even a human trafficking inquiry in 2016, after an Italian couple discovered in 2011 that the children they had taken home were not genetically related to them. Kovalchuk was removed from his post last year and believes the investigations into BioTexCom have stalled as a result. He wrote to the ombudsman’s office in May outlining his concerns about the clinic."

"At Hotel Venice, Albert Tochilovsky, the owner of BioTexCom, does not deny there were mix-ups with embryos during surrogacy procedures in 2011 that led to the human trafficking investigation.

He blames the error on a lack of experience when the clinic was only a year old, and says: “I don’t think it was only us who used to make mistakes here. If someone starts checking DNA, there will be a lot of scandals.”

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/15/the-stranded-babies-of-kyiv-and-the-women-who-give-birth-for-money