Queensland Bioethics Centre director RAY CAMPBELL, who is a spokesman for Brisbane archdiocese matters of bioethics, explains the archdiocese’s concerns about the surrogacy legislation to be considered by the Queensland Parliament
TOWARDS the end of last year the Queensland Government introduced its Surrogacy Bill into State Parliament. It will probably be debated in early February.
The new bill should be of concern to all Queenslanders. It does much more than decriminalise surrogacy.
The bill redefines the meaning of parenthood, creating a legal construct completely divorced from biological realities.
Altruistic surrogacy is where one woman (the surrogate) bears a child (of which she may or may not be the genetic mother) with the intention of handing the child over to a commissioning person or persons (who may or may not be genetically related to the child) after the birth of the child without being paid a fee, although she may receive payment for “expenses”.
Presently this is a criminal offence in Queensland.
Brisbane archdiocese and many others supported the decriminalisation of surrogacy as far as removing criminal sanctions against the surrogate mother and the commissioning parents, while maintaining other sanctions to discourage surrogacy.
The new legislation decriminalises and seeks to regulate so-called “altruistic surrogacy”, but “commercial surrogacy” remains illegal.
This division is somewhat artificial.
It is inevitable that IVF services will be involved in assisting surrogacy.
I have not heard any of them declare that they will offer such services for free or at cost.
For IVF services surrogacy is a commercial transaction.
On this matter you could argue that the legislation is discriminatory.
It allows those who assist in the begetting of the child through surrogacy to profit from their actions, but the woman who carries the child is not allowed to profit.
All surrogacy is disrespectful of the dignity of the child in his or her origins and has the potential to be the source of confusion of personal identity for the child in the future.
The Government has maintained the situation that a surrogacy agreement is not legally binding.
To this extent it seems to recognise that surrogacy is not a good thing. But it then introduces a range of measures to support people who have entered into such an arrangement.
By regulating surrogacy the Government approves of it and in so doing creates a system which will lead to more children being subjected to the confusion of surrogacy.
According to the legislation any person, regardless of relationship status, will potentially be able to enter into a surrogacy arrangement.
This means:
- A child can be conceived using “donor gametes” such that none of the contracting parties have a genetic relationship to the child. A child could in effect have six parents – the genetic parents, the surrogate mother and her partner, and the commissioning “parents” who become the social parents.
- A single person could be the commissioning parent.
- De facto couples can be the commissioning parents.
- Same-sex couples (male/male or female/female) could be the commissioning “parents”.
- The commissioning parents will apply for the transfer of legal parentage which will result in them being recognised as the legal parents of the child. Parenthood is completely divorced from biological reality and made into a purely legal construct determined by the desires of adults.
The proposed legislation will deny to some children their fundamental rights to both a father and a mother and to know and be reared within his or her own biological family.
The importance of our biological origins, embodied in our genetic connections to earlier generations, is so well attested today that it is difficult to imagine why a government would produce legislation which is so dismissive of this reality.
We are more than the sum total of our genes, but our biological origins are important for our identity.
We have had years of experience of adopted children seeking out knowledge of their biological parents.
We have had the experience of millions of people tracking down their genealogies, wanting to trace their biological origins.
We have had the experience of children conceived from anonymous sperm donation testifying to the hole that they felt in their lives when they discovered the truth of their origins.
We have had the experience of the “stolen generations”.
You would think that we would learn from the past. But it seems not.
The bill also allows for the creation of a new class of child, the legally fatherless child and the legally motherless child.
The legislation is clearly about satisfying the desires of adults.
Whenever the term the “best interests of the child” is used by people supporting this legislation it really means the best interests of the child “after” the interests of the adults have been served.
It is difficult to understand why well meaning politicians are so blind to what they are doing in this legislation.
Christine Whipp, a donor-conceived child, puts the question well:
“I could not understand how the pioneers of AID [artificial insemination with donor sperm] had thought it possible to translate the breeding principles of animal husbandry into the more complex arena of human relationships and ‘family building’. Why should the pain of childlessness of one generation take precedence over the needs and rights of the next?” (‘Worrying the wound: the hidden scars of donor conception‘, in ‘Who am I? Experiences of donor conception‘, by Dr Alexina McWhinnie (Warwickshire: Idreos Education Trust, 2006) p.21)
The concerns which the Government has regarding children who are unfortunately born through surrogacy can be addressed in other ways.
There is no need for this deconstruction of the family.
We need people to contact their local state member to express their concerns regarding this legislation.
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