Our last blog looked back at our activity in October but things have moved on quickly and since posting the government have confirmed that the reforms we have been fighting are not proceeding.

We are thrilled to hear this news but want to continue to debate the proposed reforms and raise awareness of what they would mean if passed into law. What better way than to share the footage of the debate called “The Morality of Surrogacy” from the Battle of Ideas and continue the conversation.

We invite readers to tell us what you think of the law reforms through the comments, our Twitter (@WombsNotForRent) or via the contact form. What do you think of surrogacy as a way to have baby, what do you think the law should or shouldn’t do?

For those who prefer to read rather than watch, we also share the speech by Co-founder, Lexi Ellingsworth below.

Text from Speech:

1. Good morning. Thank you so much to Baroness Fox and Battle of Ideas for inviting me here today. 

2. My name is Lexi Ellingsworth, and I am the co-founder of Stop Surrogacy Now UK, a grassroots campaign group which formed four years ago in direct response to a public consultation by the Law Commission to relax surrogacy laws in this country; an issue I will talk more about in a moment. 

3. Firstly a word on language. We use ‘mother’ as opposed to ‘surrogate’, as ‘mother’ is not only a social term – or even a moral term – but a legal term. The term ‘surrogate’ is dehumanising in our view, and erases what is actually happening in surrogate pregnancies. Under The Children Act (as recently tested by the case of Freddy McConnell) a woman who gives birth is a mother and this not only gives parental rights but also responsibilities for the child. In the MConnell judgment, and others from the Family Court, the term ‘commissioning parents’ is used in surrogacy cases, so we apply the same wording. 

4. By its very nature, surrogacy – the act of having a child for someone else – directly affects women and children. Women’s bodies are ‘used’ for our reproductive capabilities and in every surrogacy arrangement a newborn is taken from his or her mother at birth. 

5. We know about the mother/baby dyad and the 4th trimester, from decades of research and straightforward common sense. Babies know their mothers. They know their heartbeats, voices and even their smell from tasting amniotic fluid. A baby knows their mother and not the gametes that are conceived from. A surrogate born baby does not know they are born through a surrogacy. 

6. For those who haven’t come across them, the Law Commission’s “new surrogacy pathway” proposals: 

o give commissioning parents, parental rights at birth, removing the surrogate mother from the birth certificate 

o cuts the time a surrogate mother has to change her mind to just six weeks (even then she will not have any automatic right to custody or access, even in cases where she has used her own egg) 

o and would allow open advertising for surrogate mothers, meaning young women who may never previously have given thought to this will be drawn into it as demand grows.

7. The Law Commission further proposes: 

o A minimum age of 18 for commissioning parents and just 21 for surrogate mothers. 

o They do not require a mother to have previously given birth or completed her own family before embarking on a pregnancy for others. 

o And they would allow for a woman to continue to use her own egg – meaning at the point of handover the child is literally being given away from his or her own genetic and birth mother. 

8. The youngest surrogate mother in the UK that we know of, was a single mother aged 21. She became interested in surrogacy after watching a tv documentary and was matched with a couple through an agency. At first, she continued to have a relationship with the family and visited every birthday, but in a recent tv interview she explained that she had lost contact with the children whilst they were still very young. The ‘friendship model’ was not ongoing for her. 

9. In a small UK study of children born by surrogacy, by age 10, only 60% were still in touch with the surrogate mother. That’s 40% having no contact by the time they reach puberty. We understand some claim the UK has a ‘friendship first’  model: but in our review of submissions to the Law Commission consultation, we found multiple examples of would-be commissioning parents saying this is not what they wanted, they didn’t want a ‘third parent’ and they did not want an ongoing relationship with the mother of their child. 

10.One of the stated aims of reform is to dissuade UK commissioning parents from seeking surrogacy abroad, which the Commissions acknowledge “can bring a greater risk of exploitation of women and children”. Despite this, no changes are proposed for those bringing children into this country from international commercial surrogacy and children who are conceived and carried this way will likely never see their birth mothers again. 

11. The proposals would continue to allow for gifts and ‘recuperative holidays’ for the surrogate mother and her family. One woman’s surrogacy pregnancy was inspired by her own mother and her childhood memories of holidays they had as a result of her mother’s multiple surrogacy pregnancies; so we are now starting to see surrogacy continue down the generations. 

12.Benefits offered by one agency include Apple products, theme park passes and vouchers for an adult retailer. 

13.But money is not the only reason for women to engage in surrogacy. Some surrogate mothers have said themselves that it is addictive. One surrogate mother said she had low self esteem and she wanted to ‘prove she was a nice person’. We believe women like this are at very real risk of coercion and exploitation. We know of women who have been pressured and groomed by friends and family. 

14.A surrogate mother we have spoken to told us her motivations were to help as this is something she could do. She later recognised how the expectations of her were deeply rooted in her upbringing and being socialized as a young woman to Be Helpful and Be Kind. She referred to this as Toxic Femininity and now feels strongly that women, their eggs and their wombs are not a resource for others. 

15.We hear from women who have surrogacy regret, who find themselves ejected from private online groups when expressing doubts or a change of heart. When they find themselves bonding with their unborn baby they are reminded they are just the ‘Oven’ for the ‘Bun’ or told they are an ‘Extreme Babysitter’ and not The Mother. 

16.There is little study of surrogacy regret but we have written about one study from 1994 which is entitled “I wanted to be interesting. I wanted to be able to say I’ve done something interesting with my life” As the UK law had only been introduced less than a decade prior – and with the popularity of surrogacy at the time in no way reflecting the levels we have today – this can only serve as a snapshot in time but also as a stark warning for the future. 

17.The issue of surrogacy goes to the heart of equality for women: seeing women as human beings and not body parts to be rented out, or treated like commodities; our reproductive capabilities are not to be capitalized on for the benefit of others. 

18.It remains an inconvenient truth, that it is women who have babies and it is women who are mothers, and babies are not ‘blank canvases’, but human beings with rights of their own. 

19.The Law Commission, pro-surrogacy lobbyists and surrogacy agencies, would have you believe these reforms modernize an outdated law that simply needs clarifying, and that they improve safeguarding of children…when in reality they enable and legitimize, through state sanction, separating mothers and babies – which is in opposition to all NHS guidance and best practice and against the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. 

20.Surrogacy remains a subject many have concerns about – the Law Commission stated in their report that the majority of responses “opposed most or all of our provisional proposals for reform, and advocated instead for surrogacy to be prohibited”. But they said that banning surrogacy is “outside the terms of reference”. 

21.You will hear arguments today about ‘choice’ and rights to do with your own body what you want in a free society. Women can and should have rights over their own bodies but not what is done with someone else’s: in this case a newborn baby. 

22.The last few years have reminded us that laws are made for ALL of us, they are not meant to prioritize or satisfy a small section of society. Laws are intended to protect everyone and to uphold the rights of the most vulnerable. Law-makers must balance the demands of a small number of adults with the rights of children, and what we find to be acceptable in wider society. 

Thank You. 

~ends~