Surrogacy laws to be overhauled under new reforms – benefitting the child, surrogate and intended parents - Law Commission proposals

[IwantToRetire]

The Law Commissions’ report and draft legislation, the culmination of a detailed review, outlines a new regulatory regime that offers more clarity, safeguards and support – for the child, surrogate and parents who will raise the child (“the intended parents”).

Under the reforms, a new system governing surrogacy agreements, “the new pathway”, would come into force – the first time that the law has introduced a route for surrogacy where scrutiny of arrangements starts pre-conception.
Overseen by non-profit organisations operating under a regulatory body, the Commissions’ new pathway would ensure rigorous pre-conception screening and safeguarding. If the right conditions are met, it would allow intended parents to become the legal parents of the child from birth, subject to the surrogate’s right to withdraw her consent.

The new system would improve the current process, which involves a sometimes complex and lengthy journey through the courts after the child has been born, resulting in some couples waiting up to a year after birth before they become legal parents of the child.

https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/surrogacy-laws-to-be-overhauled-under-new-reforms-benefitting-the-child-surrogate-and-intended-parents/

Really only posting to make others aware of this report (I couldn't find a thread about it so hope its not a duplicate).

Article (from a man's perspective!) https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/women-are-being-ignored-again-in-the-surrogacy-debate/

Response from Nordic Model Now https://nordicmodelnow.org/2023/04/01/ask-your-mp-to-say-no-to-commercial-style-surrogacy-in-the-uk/

I thought that the spectator article was really good.

There’s been a thread, I think it was called something like ‘surrogacy to be liberalised’.

So they want to legalise human trafficking then? Awesome. Suppose it fits in with how the government see people as property.
it’s considered cruel and inhumane to separate puppies and kittens from their mothers at birth, why are human babies worth less consideration?

if it’s illegal to buy and sell organs, how is legal to buy and sell babies?

Such a good article. I like James Kirkup being on our side! He wrote the wonderful article that exposed the Denton's report to the world and showed us why we're in this awful mess.
The questions he raises about women and surrogacy are spot on!

Bumping. That's a great article about a very worrying report. Where else might "ongoing consent" apply if that's permitted here? A bit like "gender identity", it's one to be kept well away from statute.

‘Some consultees wanted a requirement that the surrogate gives further, affirmative consent after the child is born, rather than giving her the right to withdraw her consent. We felt that such a requirement would not respect the shared intentions of the surrogate and the intended parents. A requirement for further consent after birth also suggests that the surrogate’s consent before conception is not adequate, which does not respect her autonomy. Instead, we think her continuing consent can be inferred from her decision not to withdraw her consent, rather than requiring her to make a further declaration.’
Read that bit in bold again, and remember that we’re talking about a woman’s consent to give away her child.
When my car insurance expired recently, my insurer was required by law to ask me if I wanted to renew the policy or take my business elsewhere – because the law doesn’t allow that company to infer my continuing consent to the annual payment of a few hundred quid. But the Law Commission apparently believes that there are circumstances in which it is not just acceptable but preferable – empowering, even – for the law to infer a woman’s consent, in this case to giving up the custody of her newborn baby. And that the best way to ‘respect the autonomy’ of a woman is by not asking her for her ongoing consent.

Very well illustrated important point.

Actually makes me feel nauseous that consent can be implied.

No. The whole point is to stop that. Women have a right to be surrogates thanks. Their body.

in that case babies shouldn’t ever be separated from who birthed them and women should have to breastfeed. There are so many counter arguments to this. The surrogate is often not the biological mother.

Every women who gives birth to a child is that baby's mother.

That's an excellent article from Kirkup and I particularly appreciate his repeated use of the word mother. So many people seem intent on decoupling mothers from their babies.

What about the rights of the child…. Or does property not have any rights?

Buying humans is never ok

it was very clear from the get go what the outcome of this consultation would be

This article was in my mailbox today. You may find fodder for thought in it.
https://www.thefp.com/p/motherloading-inside-the-surrogacy?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The woman whose body grew, nurtured and birthed the child is its biological mother. Genetic material from others may be involved, but it's her biological child and always will be.

Women are not walking baby slot machines for rich people. Children should NOT be created and birthed with the intention of immediately separating them from their birth parent for good. Humans should not be trafficked.

The fact it's all been dressed up in pretty word salad, and involves rich consumers who want babies and none of the hassle of having to think too much about anyone's needs or feelings, particularly the child's and what they are doing to it for their experience of having a cute baby to snuggle, does not hide the very ugly reality.

Just to say I know there have been other threads about surrogacy, but thought it worthwhile highlighting that there is now an official report which may be how the law will be framed.

I think in the past I was sort of wishy washy about surrogacy, thinking of it as a more personal situation, such as a sister being the surrogate. Not quite the same but I know familes where a childless couple have (informally) adopted and bought up the child/ren of siblings as there own.

But now we have got to the point where it has been totally commodified, and inevitably resulted in women in poorer countries becoming part of baby farms.

But also exploits women who either naturally strongly want to be a mother, or even women who are fed and accept that they should be a mother, and think that like everything else nowadays you can buy what you want.

And I suspect many now see it as "normal".

It's being marketed with a lot of sentiment and spin to elicit 'aww bless' and 'her body her choice girlpowerz'.

A lot of consumer based, capitalist nastiness now comes with pretty shiny bows and a fuckton of sentiment to fool the naive.

I think this surrogacy report also drives a coach and horses through our notions of consent.

I run clinical trials as part of my job. The process for obtaining informed consent, even for use of purely data driven, retrospective trials where we have no impact at all on patient care, is extremely high and reviewed on a case by case basis.

If new surrogacy laws state that there is inferred consent for an arduous, potentially life threatening, non altruistic, commercial purpose, I can make a strong argument for less strenuous measures around consent for much weaker interventions, can’t I?

I wonder if the whole approach to it is in fact influenced by the thinking its just about women's bodies so normal scruples and ethics aren't deemed necessary.

Funny when there is so much contemporary thinking that women aren't defined by their biology, but when it is about what is exclusive to biological females, concern and good practice go out of the window as women have no status.

If surrogacy is to be allowed at all (I don't think it should be), then if the mother withdraws consent in the weeks after birth she should automatically become the child's legal parent, with no conditions or penalty. The only circumstances in which a baby should be given to other parents against their mother's wishes are those in which the mother is unfit to raise a child, and those aren't dependent on whether the mother is a surrogate or not, and should follow the same procedures in both cases.

The article mentions financial pressures. I'd be tempted to propose that if you've made a surrogacy arrangement and the mother withdraws, you remain liable for child maintenance payments until the child reaches the age of 18. Nobody who truly cares about the welfare of the child they have caused to be born could object to that.

it’s considered cruel and inhumane to separate puppies and kittens from their mothers at birth, why are human babies worth less consideration?

This puppies and kittens things comes up every time and it bears no relation to human surrogacy. You don't take newborn animals away and give them to human families before they are ready to live independently amongst humans. If the animal mother rejects the litter or is physically unable to nurture them, they will still thrive with a surrogate animal mother. Human babies born through surrogacy and raised by another human from birth thrive too.

Personally, I think the real issues here are anonymous/absent donors and surrogates who don't want to maintain contact with the child and its family even (and it is not easy to find women who want to commit to lifelong involvement) and the exploitation of poor women for whom concepts like active consent and choice of lifelong involvement are pie in the sky.

Did anyone catch the item about surrogacy laws on itv local news? It’ll be on again on plus one and may be on the website catch up later this evening.

basically it was HUGELY biased. I was distracted while watching so may have missed it but it didn’t seem to include any argument against changing the laws/regulations.. if there was anything it would have been brief.

it was part of their “shared content” output so will have been shared across most local news.

I will be complaining about the lack of balance in views.

The unexpected finding of significantly lower levels of mutuality in both the surrogacy and the egg donation families than in the natural conception families suggests that the absence of a biological link between the mother and her child may be associated with less positive mother-child interaction at age 7.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3210890/

There are no studies that I can find that assess the outcomes beyond the age of 7.

There was a very small study last year of children between the ages of 8 to 17 who were either born to a surrogate mother (ie children who were raised by people other than their mother - only 7 of them) or who were children of a woman who had acted as a surrogate (17). Bizarrely, they asked them what they thought about the proposed regulatory changes.

Personally I don't set much store by what my kids think of the law. I certainly don't think they should be able to influence it.