Times article on surrogacy

[nythbran2]

Article which ignores the child and the mother to focus on the feelings of the genetic parents. Comments so far very clear in pointing this out. https://www.thetimes.com/article/189228bf-ce0a-49cd-8aef-531bd8e00496?shareToken=63aee5180a9db8e1006cc58f062ac795

Something I always wonder when I read these articles where obviously one parent is genetically related and a genetic parent and the other has its rights infringed by having no rights...can you not apply for guardianship or adoption? I know of two cases where this happened with foster children and everyone just got on with the application etc.
Why can't this be done?

I just saw another article pop up on my Facebook about a woman who adopted - but paid for - some babies from the US in the 90's then had them taken off her and sent back. She was vilified by all accounts and even Tony Blair commented on it at the time. How is that any different to the rise of surrogacy?

I have always been liberal minded and have supported many progressive causes but I have come to despise these articles that start with we are the good people, they are the bad people that has become the trademark of progressive politics. Every social reform needs to be reasoned and judged on its own merits not declared to be righteous by some pillock who thinks they are the high priest of some new religion of social justice.

This is the part I don't understand.

A child who loses a mother at birth to death or abandonment is acknowledged to have suffered a severe loss, no matter what wonderful care they might receive from the surviving or adoptive parents.

So how can it be right to engineer that situation?

That case involved adoption ie none of the prospective parents were biologically related to the children and the birth mother wanted to relinquished them, so new parents had to be found.

Surrogacy involves deliberately creating the situation where a child is going to removed. And usually at least one of the new parents is biologically related eg the man has used his sperm to create the embryo. It is the biological connection that means the UK court will normally allow the child into the country and then the parental order.

International adoption is pretty much frowned upon and it is very difficult to bring an unrelated child into the country.

This is what they do, but they have to be vetted by social services and apply to the courts. This takes ages. They want to avoid this by having the purchasing parents' names on the birth certificate.

"According to these antiquated rules, in Britain the surrogate is always the legal parent and the biological parents have to go through a long and uncertain judicial process to effectively “adopt” their own offspring."

Yet without them, the woman who gives birth signs herself into indentured servitude and has no rights over the child. Without those rights, she is vulnerable to exploitation. She is likely to be poorer than the parents, she needs those rights.

Rohan Silva sermonizes on empathy but displays a frightening lack of it to the woman who has born the child.

We need to cut out all this language of one side being antiquated and one side being progressive and see this from all angles, this is a complex situation where potentially one side can always get hurt.

So this man and his wife had one baby by IVF, another by IVF that died in infancy, then one naturally and finally one using a surrogate. He's like the worst case ever for surrogacy, there was absolutely no need for them to use a surrogate.

Thank you for sharing this, I’ve read it and the comments. Surrogacy articles on The Times almost never allow comments so it’s heartening that as this one does they’re so strongly against it. I’ve always assumed a higher up in the paper has used surrogacy as the coverage is so uniformly pro the buying people rather than the woman or the baby. I wonder what’s happened…

This is the second article in a week in The Times featuring this man and his campaign for easier access to surrogates. He and his wife now have two children born a few months apart (4 months I think), one surrogate and one their own. Both articles all about him and his wife and none of it about the surrogates or the impacts on the babies.

I am not as anti surrogacy as some people on these boards but these articles are pushing me that way. I find his description of laws that are intended to protect surrogates as extremely distasteful. Plus his dis calls for empathy for his situation while displaying absolutely zero for other people nothing short of disgusting.

@Arran2024 I don't want to quote it because it's long, but your post at 11:10 literally made me shudder.

It's like something out of The Handmaid's Tale.

Exactly. He was profiled the other week

We longed for a baby. Now we have two, born four months apart

www.thetimes.com/article/13e6557b-5f1f-4de2-bd94-5750337ad895?shareToken=c241f55ea06a87cdbf6fdddbe2485f24

The section below about Mr Empathy’s thoughts on this subject (in the second article) was particularly disgusting:

“One of the aspects of surrogacy that intrigues them is the emerging science of epigenetics — how your environment interacts with your genes. By that theory, what happens to the surrogate during pregnancy can be passed to the baby, even if they’re not genetically related. It was why they wanted to find a surrogate who was well supported, so there was a low chance of stress being passed on in the womb.”

So the only reason “the surrogate” should be “well supported” and properly looked after is because of the possible effect on the baby you’re buying. Not because of the effect on her and her family. Charming.

Very entertaining case recently where a male couple bought a baby from
a woman and tried to
bring it up insisting it had no mother.

Birth mothers are homophobia personified, the purchasers felt.

This gay-positive thinking was supported by their local authority, who refused the DM access.

Mother and son reunited by family court.

The family court judgment on Bailii is worth a cackle.

I recently received a link for this site - I barely know where to start with it, but I do know that it is alarming:

Future of Human Reproduction - Lancaster University

Ectogenisis?
In-vitro derived gametes?
Stem cell based embryo models?

The risk doesn’t seem to occur to him.

@AnneLovesGilbert you mention someone high up at the Times must have used a surrogate given how many pro articles they have - off the top of my head, News International exec Rebekah Brooks used one.

I think the current U.K. law treats surrogate pregnancy the same as any other.

The mother is the woman who gives birth. Somebody who can prove they are a genetic parent can apply for a parental order.

Surrogacy agreements are not legally enforceable.

I haven't read the full thread yet (I will later) but a 'fact' in the article jumped out. Kim Cotton did not 'carry an embryo for a couple who couldn't have their own child'. She conceived and gave birth to her own genetic daughter then glibly gave her away to a couple she didn't know, from Scandinavia. She also said that the baby was 'very keepable' (words which have stuck with me ever since) but she handed her over anyway. Money talks.

I did read a few years ago that she was sorry that she'd never heard any more about her daughter from that day. Except she didn't say daughter as that would have spoiled the transactional part. Probably her child still doesn't know her true origins 40 years later as there was no obligation to tell her then.

I wrote to my MP about my misgivings re the proposed relaxing of the law and eventually got a cut and paste ' be kind' email back. I doubt he'd given it a second's thought as he's currently busy campaigning for a new airport in another country thousands of miles away.

Would you happily give away your child at 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years old?

A Times journalist - Sophie Beresiner - wrote extensively in the paper about her surrogacy. It was reading her articles (usually on a Sunday if I recall) that alerted me to the issue. The comments were tightly moderated and only fawning responses were allowed. Any reservations / criticisms were immediately deleted. Discussed here:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3920212-Sophie-Beresiner-The-Times-Baby-Born-from-Surrogate-Mother

Interesting that the article is framed to give sympathy to a man. The poor man, his wife almost dies but now is well and the poor man's genetic offspring is stolen by the surrogate. Not the poor woman who had ovarian cancer and has her baby kidnapped by the surrogate.

(I think surrogacy is totally wrong and I think it should be banned, but i just think it's Interesting that that article is framed in a way that there is no compassion for ANY woman. The pesky wife with her defective reproductive system and the pesky surrogate deny the man his birthright of a genetic offspring.)

Or it occurs to him but he gives zero fucks, so long as he gets what he wants.

That's if the surrogate is in the UK and that is rare these days. Most people use surrogates abroad then bring the baby back to the uk as the father is the bio dad and so it's a fait accomplit as the courts won't deny the parent their child and take the baby into care instead.