Surrogacy Bill in Seanad

[DrNickedMaCorpus]

Are they rushing this through?

https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/seanad/2024-06-13/19/

Health Deputy Stephen Donnelly:

'Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Bill before Seanad Éireann. This is ground-breaking legislation. For hundreds, and possibly thousands, of families around Ireland, it will provide the route to full parentage for children, mums and dads all over our country. It will introduce, for the first time in Ireland, a regulatory framework for assisted human reproduction, AHR. One of its many benefits will be the extension of fully State-funded IVF to intending parents using donor materials, including same-sex female couples.The legislation will support thousands of people in Ireland who wish to have children through AHR. It will clarify the legal position of those children and provide an ethical framework for research and new reproductive technologies. It introduces pathways through which surrogacy can be pursued with full parental rights into the future.
All considerations in respect of AHR treatment and surrogacy are underpinned by the protection of the rights, welfare and best interests of any children born as a result. We have worked to ensure that identity information of children is preserved and to safeguard against the sale, trafficking and exploitation of children. The provisions of the Bill are designed to prevent abusive or exploitative practices involving surrogate mothers and to protect their rights, interests and welfare.'

...

'I am not aware of any other jurisdiction globally that has legislated for a type of process for the regulation of international surrogacy similar to that provided for in this Bill. The legislation will provide clarity and peace of mind for many who have been in limbo for far too long and for those considering assisted human reproduction journeys, including surrogacy.'

So given is uncharted territory, they'll be at pains to carefully discuss it all, right?

'I did not realise I had only ten minutes. I was handed a 40-minute speech, which I got down to about 15 minutes.'

'https://ionainstitute.ie/news-roundup/surrogacy-bill-being-rushed-through-seanad/

Senator Mullen calls for a pause:

https://www.irishcatholic.com/senator-mullen-demands-pause-on-governments-surrogacy-legislation/

'Senator Rónán Mullen has condemned this Bill on June 13, calling “at a minimum” for a pause on the far-reaching provisions on surrogacy added to the Bill in recent months. “There has been very little public discussion of this Bill, it has passed the Dáil without, to my knowledge, a single vote being called, and the national media have failed to shine a light on the controversial, and potentially bizarre, nature of some of its provisions,” Senator Mullen says.
“This is the exploitation of the poor and the commodification, the buying and selling of children. Our responsibilities under the UN Rights of the Child are being ignored in deference to the rights of financially advantaged individuals or couples,” said Mr Mullen, who also points out that “of its nature, international surrogacy is commercial and conflicts with our duties under the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Slavery Convention of 1926”.
This bill raises significant ethical questions. Senator Mullen claims a necessity for public scrutiny and ensuring the protection of children’s rights in line with international human rights standards

From Twitter:

'Minister@DonnellyStephen avoids answering@RonanMullen's question as to whether a male with a gender recognition cert, who has provided a male gamete and commissioned a surrogate, can be recorded as the 'mother'. Donnelly suggests that this question is entirely excluding trans identified people from surrogacy arrangements. This is simply false. The Senator merely questioned as to whether a genetic father of a child would be recorded as the mother, which would be falsifying records which in turn prevents the child born through surrogacy being able to obtain accurate information about their conception.'

https://x.com/NotAllGays/status/1803753561987178624

They've rejected an amendment to stop sex offenders buying babies via surrogacy. I'm hoping there's more to it:

'Seanad Committee stage begins. Stephen Donnelly has REJECTED@SenatorKeogan’s amendment to exclude those convicted of sexual offences from engaging in surrogacy services. This is shocking. #StopSurrogacyNow

https://x.com/radicailin/status/1803744601334829420/photo/1

https://womensspaceireland.ie/articles/surrogacy-exploiting-women-and-buying-babies/

Related:

'Growing Families, an agency which held a Dublin "conference to explore surrogacy and egg donation options for same-sex parents" last September, offered a discount to people opting for the Mediterranean Fertility Institute in Chania, Crete which saw eight arrests take place last year. '

'“Greek police allege the clinic was a criminal organisation that exploited 169 foreign vulnerable women as egg donors or surrogates and defrauded patients through sham embryo transfers and they’re accused of brokering illegal adoptions.“The clinic's entire medical team have been arrested and imprisoned, accused of child trafficking.”'

This is par for the course in Ireland these days, very few Senators or TDs are willing to go against the prevailing political narrative that Ireland desperately needs to be more woke.

The Irish government continues to push legislation that the majority of the population does not want and they ignore us (or lecture us disparagingly) on the issues that the electorate do want addressed.

Seems easy peasy to rush harmful legislation through in Ireland.

It beggars belief they way this is being presented as a shiny new positive thing, when in fact it's of a piece with the solipsistic demands of the gender movement. Whatever I want, I should be able to have/buy. 🙄How this ever got regarded as 'left' in any meaningful sense is remarkable. Surely in the same way that it's plausibly argued that legalising prostitution increases demand (and hence the international market in trafficked girls and young women), likewise encouraging surrogacy will surely have an equivalent effect. The attention is all on the recipients of the 'prize', not the woman who bore them.

Senator Regina Doherty gave evidence at the Scottish consultation on Gender Reform in 2022.

She started off very proud of their self ID bill, but it became increasingly clear that they'd not actually considered and/or weren't collecting or monitoring data to measure the impact:

'Again, embarrassingly, none of those things was identified as an issue around the time of the enactment of the legislation'
...
'To my mind, speaking to you here today, that is a glaring gap in policy formation'
...
'You should learn by our mistakes. I am not even sure that we realised that that was a mistake until you told me about it here today, which is a poor show.'

https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/official-report/search-what-was-said-in-parliament/EHRCJ-22-06-2022?meeting=13847&iob=125556

Thanks for highlighting this, yet again Senator Mullen is an unlikely team-mate, as I would probably disagree with him about 98% of everything else! Fair dues to him on this topic.

I'm not sure that this is as 'woke' as gender legislation, I think it comes more from a beatification of The Family and Motherhood. I've heard some very emotionally-charged accusations against critics of surrogacy, saying that they are cruel for not understanding what it's like for a woman to be unable to have a child. It's hard to argue with that, without sounding hard-hearted and indeed misogynistic, as being unable to have a child is obviously a deeply emotional issue for some women.
It's a brave person who says 'Some women just can't have children, deal with it.'

I'm not defending this, I'm just stating the emotional defence of surrogacy as the understandable solution for women who tragically can't naturally achieve their 'natural' state of motherhood.
It sounds quite old-fashioned rather than 'woke' doesn't it?

The emotional, rather than 'woke', political response is to allow couples to have the much-wanted and precious child that they couldn't have without surrogacy, but this is extended sideways to give male couples the 'right' to have babies by surrogacy, and that's more likely to be driven by right-side-of-history gender ideology.
It's a bit of a tangled web, and therefore very hard to challenge in the current Irish context.

Makes sense, Marie. I can see it coming from a 'having as many babies as possible is always the best option' stance, too.

I'm just always absolutely staggered that people don't consider the baby/child's best interests.

Tweet from Radicailin re Seanad Committee:

https://x.com/radicailin/status/1803744601334829420

'Seanad Committee stage begins. Stephen Donnelly has REJECTED @SenatorKeogan’s amendment to exclude those convicted of sexual offences from engaging in surrogacy services. This is shocking.'

Something I've noticed also with the Scottish GRR bill was that some very sensible amendments - from both Labour and Conservatives, iirc, were voted down.

I think it's because the people supporting the Bills just absolutely cannot countenance that there might be any possible downsides or unintended consequences. It's a quasi religious belief that this is a Good Thing and therefore it is unmitigated good in every way. It's also a fear of facing the cogntive dissonance.

I hope that’s what is behind them refusing sensible amendments like this one because, on the face of it, their behaviour does not appear to be decent if they believe that people who’ve committed sexual crimes should have access to children.

Yes. It reminds me of the amendment in the scottish GRR to exclude violent sex offenders from getting a GRC. Voted down.

It has its own sort of twisted logic - if you have the untrammelled sacrosanct right to buy a baby that applies to everyone.

The way in which our politicians want to be oh so liberal and open minded that they don't even consider the ramifications of their stupidity makes me furious that I have to agree with anything Mullen or Keoghan say.

Honest to god, modern politics makes for very strange bedfellows 🤷‍♀️

There's no way younger me would believe that I would be in agreement with so many of the politicians I agree with these days regarding big issues affecting women, children and LGB people.