What do you think of our surrogacy laws?
Posted by TheGulfofWhat@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 29 comments
I'm not talking about the headlines you see about rich people using a surrogate because they don't want the "hassle" of carrying a baby or "stretch marks" but more about a couple who require a surrogacy due medicals risks of the mother carrying said child.
Do you not think its insane that if you are couple and use your own eggs and sperm, the person carrying the child that shares zero DNA to said child is deemed the mother and can change her mind and essentially kidnap your own child? Thankfully, you would think this is extremely rare since the couple are likely to use someone they trust but I can't imagine the stress leading up to the birth and waiting to legally adopt your own child.
As a non-parent, do a large portion of people think that if you carry a child for someone you should automatically be the parent of said child? I was actually extremely surprised at how this all works.
cgknight1@reddit
I guess only if I thought women were just wombs on legs? Like a meat based production machine?
lookglen@reddit
what are you talking about? The question is whether the child should be with its biological parents or not. What about the father? He doesn’t carry the child, are fathers not real parents?
cgknight1@reddit
As defined in UK law, the biological mother would be the surrogate.
Biological in Uk law does not what you think it means.
lookglen@reddit
Biological vs legal.
The biological mother is who gave the egg. Legal is who had birth, goes on the birth certificate
bishibashi@reddit
I don’t have an issue with the law as it stands. I can see it would be awful as donors, but at birth the real bond that exists is with the woman that has carried the child.
lookglen@reddit
Aka, there’s no such thing as a bond between a child and their father
El_Scot@reddit
It's too tough to say. I think you obviously need to be aware of the risks with going this route. I'm wondering what the rights of the dad are in this situation though: he would still be able to be in the birth certificate, and could surely push for shared custody as a minimum?
TheGulfofWhat@reddit (OP)
Another weird thing is that if the surrogate has a husband I believe he is legally the father of the child. He might be away for 9 months and have no idea his wife has became a surrogate and gave birth and yet he would have more rights to that baby than the people who were meant to have the baby that shared their DNA.
El_Scot@reddit
I think that seems quite archaic. Having looked that up, it says their spouse is always automatically considered the father on basically any birth certificate - seems quite harsh if the baby isn't theirs, to land them responsible.
I'd at least hope it's not too difficult for a biological parent to find their birth certificate, even if as I say, it only ever gains them shared custody.
TheGulfofWhat@reddit (OP)
I dont even think that they legally need to tell the child that they aren't the biological parents either. They could move to a different country and the biological parents could never see their baby again and when the child becomes of age he/she would just assume nothing happened.
terryjuicelawson@reddit
Not insane no, as the default should be the woman carrying the baby to term and giving a birth, rather than the originator of the genetic material. What arrangements are made outside of that is separate.
idontlikemondays321@reddit
It’s depends where it happens. A surrogate in the UK or US who is doing it because they want to do so is very different to a surrogate in India or Romania who is doing it out of a need to survive is very different. The law in which the surrogate is on the initial birth certificate makes sense a little as there are rare cases where the surrogate has got pregnant themselves and the pregnancy has been mistaken for that of the other person.
Pineapples-1971@reddit
As a child-free guy maybe I’m not best placed to speak but I’m going to anyway. I acknowledge that I have no dog in this fight. What amazes me, however, is when people put themselves and others through this process when there are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of babies and children that already exist that loving homes.
I think it’s worryingly self-absorbed to insist that to have a child and love it, it must be related to you or share some of your genes. Like some sort of mini-me.
Not to mention the indignity of treating a woman’s body like some sort of baby-oven…”here, have a baby for us, fuck your body up, possibly die giving birth to it but it’s fine, we’ll give you some money…”
Adopt every time. And if you can’t, maybe accept that a child is a blessing and not an entitlement.
gingersnaps874@reddit
“Just adopt” isn’t really a simple thing - for a start, most of the kids in care are looking for foster homes, not adoptive parents. If you foster a child hoping that their parents will lose parental rights and you’ll get to adopt the kid, you’re potentially setting yourself up for a lot of heartbreak as well as working against what’s best for the child (reunion with their birth family if possible/safe). The number of kids whose parents have already lost their rights and who are looking for adoptive parents is lower than you’d think (and lower still for babies, which most people want).
Then even if you do successfully adopt a child, you have to be prepared to deal with the challenges of raising a traumatised kid. Even if adopted as a tiny baby, that disruption of the very first bonds they formed can have repercussions down the line in terms of mental health and behavioural problems. It’s a pretty challenging parenting experience. I know a couple who adopted a pair of siblings and eventually had to send the older one to live in a residential home for kids with behavioural problems because it was unsafe for the whole family to have the kid in the home. Not the kid’s fault at all, they were traumatised and acting out and it was heartbreaking for everyone. Those kinds of problems can obviously happen with biological children too but you’ve got to be extra prepared for them if you choose to adopt.
lasmargar@reddit
This 100% 👏
Alarming-Menu-7410@reddit
Honestly after having my own kids I think it’s absolutely wild that anyone would willingly go through the whole thing to birth someone else’s child 🤯
crystalbumblebee@reddit
Desperation. Money I "donated" my eggs and that was bad enough
I said I was doing it for altruistic reasons because that's what recipients want to hear so increased my chances of being chosen (US not UK) I didn't look desperate on paper at the time
It is better controlled in the UK
TheGulfofWhat@reddit (OP)
or you are a family member or very close friend of someone who would likely die if she gave birth to a child due to medical reasons. Having the power to give someone their own child that they wouldn't be able to have otherwise is a powerful thing.
Alarming-Menu-7410@reddit
Yeah neither of these arguments sway it for me… desperation for obvious reasons and the whole helping out close friends/family seems even messier to me! Adoption is always an option.
crystalbumblebee@reddit
For sure. I'm in a great place now and despite the medical risks, go through the process (eggs) for a sister for whom it was meaningful if I was young enough
But I do also think a child is a privilege and not a right. We don't always get everything we want.
https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/28/egg-donors-risks/#:~:text=No%20one%20knows%20the%20long%2Dterm%20risks%20to,painful%20inflammatory%20disease%20that%20can%20cause%20infertility
Timely_Egg_6827@reddit
The one person that can be tied to the baby without question legally is the mother. So having both the rights to and responsibilites for baby given to her makes sense to me.
A surrogate parent can walk away at any stage in the process with only a monetary penalty in that they lose the money they pay the surrogate. The parental order only transfers at birth. If the law was changed so they had full financial responsibility for the baby then yes, you might have a point,
But that creates a legal mess of wombs for hire and women being coerced into being surrogates. The curent system balances the need of the most vulnerable person in the equation - the woman - to be able to make a free and unforced choice at any point in the process.
dbxp@reddit
I'm not really aware of the laws
That kind of makes sense to me as there's the precedent that genetics don't dictate parental rights ie adoption and fathers not having a say in abortions. Bonding with the child is driven by hormones rather than genetics so it would make sense for it to prioritise the individual with those hormones. It's a weird situation but I follow the logic.
yellowsubmarine45@reddit
I think its very complex emotionally and therefore legally. If genes beats birthing body, what would happen if a woman donated her eggs to an infertile women. Would that mean that the donor should be the legal mother until the baby was born and could be legally adopted by the woman carrying the child?
peppermint_aero@reddit
This really comes down to how we define who somebody's parent is:
Is it the person or people who supply the genetic material? Is it the person who carries the fetus and gives birth to it? Is it the person or people who raise the child?
Alarmed_Crazy_6620@reddit
I think it's a bit more morally complex than you paint it
iolaus79@reddit
The person who carries the child and risks their life to do so (because even though childbirth is so much safer now than in the past there is a risk of life limiting problems developing or death) is the one who is the parent at the point of giving birth - regardless of DNA
BillyJoeDubuluw@reddit
I think this is an area where it is very easy to have strong opinions until you’re in the situation.
We hear of high profile cases and base our views on them from afar.
In my opinion, I don’t believe the law has caught up with the issue in hand in this department.
I’m aged 36 and I am not a parent, so if I was to become a parent I would essentially be an “older dad”… how can I say for sure this framework won’t effect me? I keep a very open mind about it.
rose_reader@reddit
Yes, the person who grows the baby and gives from her bones, blood and organs to allow it to develop from a zygote into a child should correctly be considered the legal mother unless and until she signs over that right.
Women aren't ovens, you don't just pop the bun in and nine months later it goes ping. The person gestating the child is contributing more than anyone else to the eventual existence of the child, even if someone else provided the egg and fertiliser.
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