Surrogate mother wins access to her biological son in landmark case - after gay couple said it was 'homophobic' for her to be involved in their 'motherless family' with 'no vacancy' for a woman

[lechiffre55]

Surrogate mother wins access to her biological son in landmark case - after gay couple said it was 'homophobic' for her to be involved in their 'motherless family' with 'no vacancy' for a woman
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13828699/Surrogate-mother-landmark-case-gay-couple.html

The threshold for removal from the child's home is incredibly high (for good reason) and excluding the other parent would rarely approach the threshold.

I think SS got involved cos the Dads called the police when DM turned up
to visit and Dads had cancelled it without her knowing. Row broke out which backfired as the police (then judge) heard Dads abusing DM.

Both sides were petrified the other side wanted to steal ‘their’ baby. DM with reason, Dads cos they didn’t want her around given DS had two parents.

But double dad isn’t origins, which is why DM, psych and the judge had to enforce DM’s parental responsibility. Origins matter to children, which DM alone had been battling to maintain.

The core issue is that the Dads’ wishes are contrary to the most fundamental wellbeing of their son. In court those wishes translated as trying to erase DM from DS’s life and replace her with a stepdad, which is what 2dads and SS were after.

DM fought back, alone representing the rights of DS and her parental responsibility to those rights.

The council’s child social workers were deranged given they’ve been trained in how damaging it is to wipe out a child’s background.

To erase one parent deliberately, when that mother is alive, has legal rights to
the child and wants contact…how low can you go.

SW behaviour really doesn’t get any more abusive: parental alienation is a crime in the same set of courts, as it happens.

SW aggravated the fight no end by representing the Dads’ wishes, not the child whose rights and wellbeing they’re paid to enforce. Retraining please.

How much money did the mother receive?

In this case the "surrogate" is actually the biological mother, too. The child was conceived with her egg and sperm from one of the dads.

I think SS got involved cos the Dads called the police when DM turned up
to visit and Dads had cancelled it without her knowing. Row broke out which backfired as the police (then judge) heard Dads abusing DM.
Yes, she recorded them without them knowing. It must have been pretty bad, the judge described it as "horrendous" and sounded aghast. There seems to be quite a gap between how the dads wanted to portray themselves to the authorities and how they treated the mother.

I honestly think her understanding of surrogacy is only a small part of the problem here. The dads' ideology, trying to erase the idea of a mother and the very real, physical reality of her was the real issue here. They had reneged on previous agreements and the judge and the psychologist seemed to think they would do the same in future. Remember that a previous surrogacy attempt fell through - you have to wonder why.

plus the utter failure of the local authority to put the child's interest at the center of what they do.

My take on this is that the mother was told she'd be part of the baby's life and treated as a mother but this was a total lie on the part of the dads.
In that situation, and given that she knew the couple and we are in the UK where "payment" is supposed to be limited to expenses, but the mother was a not very well off single mother, I don't think she'd have agreed if she wasn't being paid but I ALSO think she wouldn't have agreed if she thought she wouldn't be an actual mother.

What do you mean ‘sister carrying for sister’ has always existed? Do you mean since the dawn of time or the past 25 years? Since, unless the sister slept with her sister’s husband, I doubt this could have happened pre IVF 🤔

I don't think "sister carrying for sister" has existed but "bringing up a child if you have too few and a sibling has too many" has existed.
I don't think this can be termed surrogacy, it's kinship foster care if anything.

It happened loads, see Jane Austen. Childless couples adopted excess children (usually boys) from their poor relations. Excess children were plentiful, for slightly unattractive reasons.

The deal was that the child’s rights and their responsibilities were completely transferred to the better off couple and their setup - bio parents were acknowledged as birth parents only.

Worked really well, as it happens BUT with a notable exception in JA’s own family. Her elder brother was adopted by properly rich relations and when his mother and younger sisters inc JA fell into true poverty he did sweet FA to ease their homelessness. One of the reasons she died at 36, that.

The dads do not come off well at all. They tried to paint her as unreasonable and said she was mentally ill, and denied how they'd treated her right up until they realised there was a recording of it. It certainly looks like they were trying to set her up to fail in order to get what they wanted ( no contact for her).

For a judge to call something horrendous is really strong language, they usually say 'surprised' to mean wtf or 'unusual' to mean batshit. It must have been really bad.

"They would have got involved because the court ordered them to. If a private court application is heard by a court and the court has safeguarding concerns they will order the local authority to carry out a section 27 assessment. They wouldn't have got involved voluntarily."
@GuestFeatu was it not the case that the local authority supported the fathers and paid their legal costs? Because if that's the case, I do think they should be answering for this

I haven't read the judgement. If it was private law and they paid for legal advice for the fathers and not the mother that would be shocking and outrageous and I can't see how that could have happened. If it was public law (ie care proceedings) then anyone with PR would have legal aid. Maybe it was public law and the dads got legal aid but mum didn't as her PR had been severed. In that case the LA should have at least paid for a session of legal advice for her but not for representation in court. I do wonder if it was private law and the social work team got blinded by the fact that she no longer held PR and failed to do their duty to put the child's welfare first. Regardless of whether she had PR or not some common sense should have been applied.

@Supersimkin7 That's not surrogacy. The biological mother didn't get pregnant in order to fulfil the child need of her sibling. It's either kinship foster care, or adoption, in today's terminology.

You are describing adoption, not surrogacy. And in modern adoption it's considered cruel to obscure a child's origins or block contact between child and bio family unless there is a clear risk to the child by allowing it.

They said they were 'made to feel that the baby we had always dreamed of would never be ours' describing an occasion when they had sat on the nursery floor and cried.

Menz hurty feelz trumps well-being of woman and child

In a twist that shocks no one

I agree with the PPs who’ve suggested the social workers need some (re?)training.

But this would have pushed all of the buttons their extensive EDI brainwashing has carefully programmed in… their instinctive distrust of men overridden by the chance to be LGBTQ+ ‘allies.’

The Jane Austen system makes sense though, if you see the adoption/fostering as breaking the link between the birth parents and original family. The relatives that adopted them ARE the family, therefore the biological mother and sisters are just relations. (I am not saying he wasn't a twat to act like that).

I know of quite a few sub-saharan African cultures have similar set-ups, where its quite common still for better of (usually but not always) relatives to foster children and give them lots of advantages. The issue there being that even though the child is being brought up by other people they are still the original child of the first parents, with the usual obligations/expectations on them. One of the reasons why international adoptions can cause so many issues is that the original parents are going into it with one set of expectations (and the concept of adoption severing birth ties just doesn't exist in their culture) and the adopting parents going in with their own ideas (adoption severs the ties, the new parents are the parents). Causing confusion and heartbreak and also issues for the adopted children down the line (eg going back to Africa to meet their original family and being expected to buy cars etc for their parents like a good child would and everyone having their feelings hurt).

I know its off topic, but a lot of profit making adoption companies were fully aware of this mis-match - meaning effectively that they knew they were misleading the parents. Now we have profit making surrogacy companies and we expect them to navigate incredibly difficult issues with perfect honesty and sensitvity. Plus ca change.

Actually it also makes me really suspicious of Surrogacy companies operating in places like Africa. You wonder if they are being fully honest about what the surrogacy entails etc. Not because the women there are stupid, but because cultural understandings of parent-child bonds and duties are different. And because Western "child procurement" agencies (can't think of a better description) working in those places don't have the best track record.

When Madonna adopted a boy from Malawi his dad didn't understand what he was signing up to - he thought he would in fact have his son back when he was grown up and educated.
Before the early 20th century, legal full adoption didn't exist in the UK. It was brought in to make sure adopted children had full inheritance rights. They still don't have the right to inherit a title, though.

We aren't all brainwashed

Glad to hear it. How open do you feel you can be about that though?

Fecking hell. What is actually going on in this world? 😭 as pp said, where is the public outcry when these two men tried to eradicate the mother and claim there was no 'vacancy'. 😡

Heartbreaking for the children; heartbreaking for their mothers.

Personally, quite a lot, within certain parameters of acceptable and cautious language. However in the role I have I would definitely be in a position to challenge this decision making and I would do. Thankfully I know my direct line managers aren't captured either, which makes things easier.

That’s quite encouraging.

Brilliant conversation between Miriam Cates and Julie BIndel about surrogacy here. And guess what - it was JB who first covered this story, published it in the Critic and then it was nicked by the Mail. But another example of JB's sterling journalistic work uncovering this shocking episode.

Cates and Bindel discussing an issue that affects all women and children is good to see. I like to see ‘across the aisle’ political alliances on issues that affect women of every political perspective.