New feminist campaign "Stop Surrogacy Now"

[RabbitOfCaerbannog]

A new feminist campaign has been set up against the commodification of babies and women's wombs for rent - Stop Surrogacy Now. Looks like an important cause to get behind. From Stop Surrogacy Now's home page:

Surrogacy is the social practice where a woman is ‘used’ for her body, her fertility and reproductive capacity to grow and birth a baby without the intention of being a mother to that child and giving that baby away, or ‘gifting’ that child to ‘Intended Parents’.
We see Surrogacy is the sale of a child where any profit is made. No amount of pretending its ‘gestational service’ changes the reality. Commissioning parents want a baby not a service, the baby is the ‘end product’.
Surrogacy as a practice developed from the demand of wealthy, infertile people to have exclusive parenthood of a biological child.

1. exploiting women as baby making machines does not advance women’s rights
2. The child’s right to have a relationship with all its parents are disregarded
3. It perpetuates that same old structural injustice where poor/ vulnerable women are used for the benefit of the wealthy – the power imbalance in surrogacy is a key argument ‘Using a surrogate’ means replacing the only mother a child has ever known. “People who seek a surrogate have a very specific desire…it is not only a desire to raise a child, but also a demand that the mother be absent.” ~ Kajsa Ekis Ekman “Being and Being Bought”

This is the website:

stopsurrogacynowuk.org/2021/04/22/welcome-to-stop-surrogacy-now-uk/

Also, even if pregnancy doesn’t kill a woman, it can cause lifelong medical problems. Some of them might not become apparent until later in life, eg incontinence. Is that really worth it for 10k in expenses so that some rich couple can have what they want? No way would I be prepared to do that for such a paltry sum and I’d question why any woman would. The Law Commission suggests no lower age limit, maximum number of pregnancies or a requirement that the woman must already have had children.

@Helleofabore

I don't like the idea of surrogacy (or artificial insemination by donor come to that), but I do feel there are some exceptions with surrogacy, as I outlined above.

Sadly, when things go wrong within the pregnancy they will still go wrong and may cause death in the very worst cases, but still may be life limiting or shortening. It is very hard to know what degree of coercion there is or even if it is done in love, the ramifications of it going wrong are horrendous and need to be planned for.

I am not sure it can ever be clear cut.

But having a baby for any reason can go horribly wrong. Why is surrogacy particularly wrong?

Because someone is paying you to use your body. It’s as unattractive as selling your organs to the highest bidder. We don’t allow that so why do we allow people to buy women’s bodies and also to buy babies they cannot have themselves?

Well said Pota2.

The sooner it is banned altogether, the better.

Some people already have babies born of surrogates, nothing against them, I wish the children well. What has happened in the past does not mean it should happen now though.

@OhHolyJesus
@RabbitOfCaerbannog

A colleague sent me this which shows maternal deaths in the developed countries including the US. The information from Unicef and World Health Organisation was rather out of date.

www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/nov/maternal-mortality-maternity-care-us-compared-10-countries

The Nordic countries, Netherlands and Germany all have rates below 5 in 100,000 live births. The UK is at 6.5. In the US, it is a frightening 17.4

suggests no lower age limit, maximum number of pregnancies or a requirement that the woman must already have had children

And in this regard there are official bodies (kennel club, for example) who put more safeguards in place for female dogs (and puppies) than the Law Commission puts in place for women and children in human surrogacy arrangements. Puppies should not be separated from mother until 8 weeks, bitches not bred until 1 year old, for example.

I think we really should be pausing when there are more concerns about safety for female dogs and puppies than human women and children.

@Pota2

One of the huge risks of allowing a more commercial model to operate in the UK is the potential to exploit younger, poorer women.
If you are a young, single parent, or a female graduate saddled with student debt, or working in minimum wage work and are a parent, £10 - £20k is an eyewatering amount of money.

On the BBC3 programme, one of the surrogate mum was a lone parent of a 3 year old. Had she been less emotionally vulnerable, in better paid work, had better access to childcare, had support from the 3 year old's father, she might not have sought out surrogacy.

On the BBC3 programme, one of the surrogate mum was a lone parent of a 3 year old. Had she been less emotionally vulnerable, in better paid work, had better access to childcare, had support from the 3 year old's father, she might not have sought out surrogacy.

I felt so sorry for Emma, I felt sorry for all of them really. Caitlin's boyfriend broke it off with her towards the end of her pregnancy but Emma was on her own (she had her mum but not a partner) from the start. Maybe that's easier, start as you mean to go on? IDK. Her 'expenses' have been reported in the papers as being about half the national average but the disparity between her and Kevin and Aki's financial situation was stark. She even commented on this herself at the baby shower she attended at their flat when their friends bought her gifts. She said they were all employed and she and her friends weren't (or most weren't). She was in a studio flat, sleeping on a pull out sofa with her son sleeping in a cot divided off the lounge by a wardrobe or cupboard. You can see why having the best part of a year of your living costs being covered by 'surrogacy expenses' would be attractive but she didn't appear to be driven by money. She did seem to think that she would have a co-parenting type set-up where she would get to see Mia grow up. Maybe that will be the case. Her son and Mia are related so hopefully that relationship will be sustained and she won't experience any regret.

She did seem terribly lonely to me and she clearly saw her personal value in her ability to have babies and clearly wanted to be kind, help and also give her son a good life. Maybe Kevin and Aki could help her get a good job or help with childcare so she could study if she wanted to?

She's only 26, I can envision her repeating the process and perhaps become a 'serial surrogate', I certainly don't get a sense that the reasons behind her choice were free of other issues.

I had an old article archived about surrogacy, it is written by a journalist after a Supreme Court Ruling (UK) about surrogacy.
It's from the Independent in Ireland.

Several parts of it hit a chord.

This is not the only insurmountable moral dilemma created by surrogacy. It also unavoidably makes the child the object of a contract. This is the case whether the surrogacy contract is commercial or non-commercial, written or verbal, because the surrogate agrees in every case to bear a baby for the commissioning adults and then to hand the baby over to them at the end of the nine months.

It ought to go without saying that children should never be the object of a contract.

If you are a young, single parent, or a female graduate saddled with student debt, or working in minimum wage work and are a parent, £10 - £20k is an eyewatering amount of money.

If you work it out at 20k over 9 months (24 hours a day) it's £3 an hour.

The living wage foundation sets it at £9.50 an hour.

I think it's unbelievably dodgy and exploitative that the only person NOT paid handsomely is the actual surrogate.

If it's altruistic and expenses only that should apply across the board to the lawyers, IVF clinic and so on.

And the fact they wouldn't do it under those terms shows exactly how exploitative it is and all the 'free choice' arguments are hollow and redundant.

I also think it's a) not right and b) most voters wouldn't support the already underfunded and on it's knees NHS funding care for these pregnancies, where lawyers and private doctors are racking up the thousands. It's exploiting the taxpayer. And whilst so many people, including children, are on endless waiting lists and aren't even getting life saving cancer treatments on time it's not OK, not when others are profiting handsomely (if the lawyers and IVF clinics were doing it entirely altruistically then I'll revisit this, until then, nope).

The Law Commissioners recognised that many players would make money from surrogacy whilst the surrogate mother was expected to do it for free, and that this could seem a little ahem... exploitative. They then devoted many pages and iirc 18 questions to the matter of payment. The solution being a generous interpretation of "expenses".

It's a fudge isn't it? Trying to make it so she is reasonably 'paid' whilst not calling it what it is because it's 'icky' as you're buying a baby.

The list of 'expenses' that the LC say should be allowed prices this for me.

How is a holiday an 'expense of pregnancy'? How can gifts and holidays not be a way of payment (disguised as a 'thanks for having a baby for me') and therefore not a benefit in kind = not done for free and out of the kindness of your own heart?

Do they think we can't see it?

Basically it's all living expenses for the best part of a year plus a holiday reward. Think MO's expenses scandal.

More expense details

Oh it deters women from "acting as surrogates" does it? Well what a tragic situation, this must be rectified immediately! I can't guess which stakeholders find this so worrying and that there is a 'shortage' of 'surrogates'. How will these non-profit agencies manage?

I note the 'flat fee' for the surgical removal of the placenta.

Money for bodies and babies.

Disgusting. And the poorer the surrogate, the lower the expenses will be of course. What about future health complications? Will the surrogate have any recourse if she suffers financial or health issues that can be attributed to the pregnancy? Thought not.
Whichever way they try to dress this up, they’re talking about an agreement to buy and sell a child. A human being who has no choice whatsoever in this. While I sympathise with infertile couples, having a child is not a human right. I know one couple who have made use of surrogacy. The mum was 48 when they did it so obviously felt she was too old to carry the pregnancy herself, even if they had used a donor egg. She already had two children from a previous marriage but the dad wanted a biological child of his own. I just dislike the idea that if you throw enough money at something, you can overcome all natural limitations. To think that some people argue that not having children is selfish!

I always just keep coming back to the point that we seem more interested, in society in general, in ensuring female dogs and puppies have a good start to life that children born of surrogacy and women who become surrogates.

How can a society be up in arms about taking puppies away from their mothers before 8 weeks, and recognise the trauma this causes to the puppies, and yet be FINE with it when it comes to a human being? It's just sick.

Of course, the main thing is the push to change the law is being done under the radar. Maybe we should get all those celebs instrumental in getting 'lucy's law' enacted to consider whether they're in favour of similar safeguards for human babies or not.

www.gov.uk/government/news/lucys-law-spells-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-puppy-farming

Totally agree @IloveJKRowling but I think that surrogates have already been dehumanised to such an extent that they are no longer seen as the mother. They are literally just a vessel and the real parent is the one that stumped up the cash for the child. Partly I think because the surrogate is nearly always invisible or silent in the tales of surrogacy in the media. We don’t see her. We just see a gleeful announcement by the procuring parents and everyone thinks it’s wonderful.

You’d think that we’d care for instance when a man who had multiple credible accusations against him that he was a pedophile just bought three children whom he then forced to wear veils and dangled one off a balcony (Michael Jackson). But apparently not, or not enough.

I wonder if doing a compare and contrast of the surrogacy proposal and lucy's law wording might be helpful.

A human baby will have the same need to be with the biological mother that birthed them as a puppy. They will have heard her heartbeat and voice, know her smell. They won't know a contract's been signed. There will be trauma from an abrupt handover at birth. Deliberately inflicted trauma that we apparently want to avoid (because of the long term harms and behavioural problems it causes) for puppies but not human babies.

Sharing this as it's a really complex and fairly recent case that went through the U.K. courts. I'll try to summarise but suggest anyone with a strong interest read in full.

A husband and wife have a surrogate born son in another country. All of fine and the parental order goes through. Meanwhile the wife has instructed the overseas clinic to store her husbands sperm for longer and later uses it to have surrogate born twins with a different surrogate mother, also overseas, without his knowledge or consent. She takes £60k from the joint account and doesn't say a word at any social worker appointment or during legal proceedings for the parental order and doesn't tell her husband, the father until it it too late.

Understandably it all goes a bit wrong in their marriage and various accusations or assault are made and it all breaks down. The wife plans to travel to care for the surrogate born twins for two weeks then return to care for her the young boy for two weeks but she can't manage this.

Ultimately the son lives with the father but they both have parental rights and there is some discussion of how the boy will meet his twin half-siblings (different egg donor).

The mother is not related to any of the children but the father is the biological father and takes financial responsibility and says the twins are 'innocent'.

www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2020/2141.html

Though it is both international and commercial surrogacy so not directly connected, it is the U.K. courts that have the jurisdiction over the decision and it explains why when genetic material leaves your body it is important to retain consent.

As the law commission are using their position to justify what they call altruistic surrogacy to be kept in the U.K., the natural increase in cases will burden both the legal system and the NHS.

There was no real coverage of donor gametes in the LC's documents on donated gametes, as pointed out by that blog, so surely it's this sort of case that creates an argument for tighter restrictions around both this and surrogacy?

Two other parental order cases, also from last year, one involves another break up and the other involves the sudden death of the biological father.

It seems to me that there are far more chances of something going wrong in a relationship than with the likelihood of a surrogate mother wanting to retain her parental rights.

I'm really not clear as to why the parental responsibility has to change and be awarded and recognised in law at birth rather than being sorted out in the months that follow - why change it?

www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed216006

I'm really not clear as to why the parental responsibility has to change and be awarded and recognised in law at birth rather than being sorted out in the months that follow - why change it?

Mothers who wish to place their child for adoption are not allowed to sign any paperwork to relinquish until the child is at least 6 weeks old.

The planned change in parental responsibility is in direct contravention of recommendations of the UN to prevent sale and exploitation of children.

documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G18/007/71/PDF/G1800771.pdf?OpenElement