Janice Turner on Surrogacy

[Igneococcus]

I can't see Janice Turner's comment about surrogacy in yesterday's Times shared anywhere. Sharetokens don't work for me at the moment and I can't get archive to work either. I hope someone else can. It's a very depressing read.

https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/why-allow-mother-of-all-abuse-8kz9sk572

I didn’t know that @BernardBlacksMolluscs
Cognitive dissonance in action yet again when it comes to issues that directly affect women and mothers.

it's been years since I read his book but the description of a woman dying from a postpartum hemorrhage was very vivid and obviously affected him deeply. except, not that deeply apparently

He seems to me like he despises women tbh

Me too. His contempt for women oozed off the pages as he threw around his ego using women giving birth for his own financial ends.
A vile man and we should be thankful he's no longer anywhere near pregnant women.

There is no right to have children. Ireland, afaik, is also into trans? I think the emphasis on gay men is that frequently it is gay couples who go for this, rather than adoption and it is two gay men who have led the charge on removing the mother's rights to her child.

I think the parents of a child are those who are fulfilling the responsibilities for raising them and the parents of a child may not always be those with a genetic link to them.

It is not necessary for a surrogate to have a genetic link to the fetus/child.

You are focusing on the adults, not on the child's rights or needs

Odd how the needs of the child rarely feature when surrogacy advocates talk.

What a brilliant article. Quite sobering.

Is there an organised lobby or letter writing campaign?

On September 7, MPs will debate abolishing the last vestige of humanity accorded these women by the UK: the right to change their mind. After appearing on This Morning, fashion entrepreneur Adam Frisby and his partner Jamie Corbett, who had a daughter via an American surrogate, raised over 100,000 signatures for a government petition calling for a surrogate mother’s rights to be removed at birth.

Currently, whether a baby is bought abroad or born after an altruistic surrogacy arrangement in Britain, commissioning parents must apply for a parental order to ensure the surrogate genuinely consented and to allot a social worker to assess the child’s welfare. Checks are far less rigorous than for adoption: these orders are almost always granted. Even so the surrogate’s name appears on the original birth certificate as “mother” and she can assert her rights to the baby for six months after it is born.

We have the late moral philosopher Mary Warnock to thank for preventing surrogates here from being reduced to Handmaid’s Tale vessels. As author of the landmark 1984 report on reproductive ethics, which established the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), she wrote: “Perhaps what I am saying, is motherhood is somehow sacred, as other aspects of nature may be; and if babies become commodities, we shall have lost something irreplaceable.”

There's something very cold about this post

And yet the surrogate will always have a genetic link to the child. Cells from foetuses remain within the mother for her life through out different parts of her body.

And it was her body components that were directly used to build the foetus. For instance, Calcium from her bones built the skeleton of that child.

There will always be a link between those two people.

I wonder if there is any data on the longterm effect of these fetal cells on women who carried a baby that they are completely unrelated to, with a different HLA system.

I think surrogacy is akin to the trade in organs. We ban payment for very very good reason and even so there is well recognised potential for coercian in altruistic donation. How often do you hear of someone’s “employee and long term” friend donating a kidney to a very wealthy individual?

I say this as someone who has had far more experience with IVF than anyone ever should. It still didn’t change my mind on surrogacy and I am strongly against anonymous sperm and egg donation.

I agree with most of the article, but I don't think it's helpful to describe motherhood as 'sacred'. I know some people think it is, but it makes it sound a bit woo, and as though the only objections are religious.

There are real practical consequences to attempting to retcon mothers out of the picture and treating them as more disposable than a breeding bitch.

So simple and so true. Thank you for saying it.

I have never heard anyone mention the child’s needs. The baby is a commodity to be bought and sold.

I recommend Alev Scott's book Cash Cow to anyone who is interested in this. She stops short of condemning surrogacy, probably because she has personal friends who have purchased babies through it, but it is a really eye-opening piece of investigative journalism, mostly on the fertility industry in North Cyprus.

One of the quotes from the book that really sticks with me is from an older Cypriot woman who says “I am a mother. If I carry a baby inside me, it has my blood. It is made with my blood. Is it not?”
The author somewhat brushes it off, as she does with some other evidence of the harms, but even when she's a bit dismissive she still includes the evidence.

The change in UK law in 2005 away from egg sharing arrangements was a massive mistake. Although the couples never met, each couple helped the other. But have you ever spoken to donor conceived children? Very different views to those adopted in the 50s and 60s under a shame shadow.

Do explain how saying how the parents have and discharge their responsibilities to the child is not focusing on the needs and rights of the child.

It's been written on here plenty!

It is not necessary for a surrogate to have a genetic link to the fetus

'It is not necessary for a birthing unit to have a genetic link to the consumer product'

'Anyone can buy a baby if they want!'

Yeah. it is a ridiculous statement.

As if a human can be constructed in a factory without every single growth element of that human being the product of the gestating unit.....

Avoid fuelling the gestating unit with alcohol, soft cheese and sushi, and limit caffeine intake as these can negatively impact on the product.

The 'care for the baby' programme is installed in gestating units as a factory setting. Override instructions are included, but we do not take responsibility for user error.

The child barely gets a mention in surrogacy agreements, other than as whose ownership it becomes.

The whole process is designed to meet the needs of the adults - the donors, the surrogates, the agencies, the prospective parents.

If the process centered the child, the adults would find egg donors who match their characteristics, not choose super models and elite athletes.

They would be allowed to know who their egg donor is - their biological mother. In most cases this info is withheld.

They would be allowed to bond with their surrogate and be slowly weaned off her, both physically and emotionally. She would be around for the first few months. But atm there are hospitals where they deliver the baby in one room and rush it through to the prospective parents in the next room, never to be seen again. In some countries and US states the prospective parents' names are on the birth certificate, so the child never gets to know who birthed them.

These children will be brought up to accept all this as normal. No one will be interested in their confusion or sadness over their loss. They will be expected to be grateful.