THE passing of the State Government’s Surrogacy Bill 2009 was “a sad day for Queensland”, a leading Catholic bioethicist has said.
Queensland Bioethics Centre director Ray Campbell said he feared many Queenslanders “including some of our parliamentarians, do not understand the implications of the legislation they have passed”.
“But whatever the government has said and done, we are called to continue to witness to the truth about God’s plan for the family, that which is created to be in the words of Pope John Paul II, ‘an icon of the Trinity'”, Mr Campbell said.
Archbishop John Bathersby of Brisbane who, along with other Church leaders met with State attorney-general Cameron Dick to discuss the legislation about a week before it was passed, said his major concern “was about the future of the children involved”.
“This legislation seems to be focussed on the needs of adults rather than the needs of children,” he said.
The archbishop’s concerns were also presented in a letter read out during debate on the Bill in Parliament.
Archbishop Bathersby in the letter said that Pope Benedict as recently as February 8 had told the Pontifical Council for the Family that “the best chance children have of developing properly is found in a family because of the uniquely complementary roles played by husband and wife….”
Family Council of Queensland president Alan Baker said the legislation had the potential to be “an electoral time bomb” and that “it was an abuse of democracy to rush the Bill to a vote just three sitting days after it was first introduced”.
On February 10, Queensland’s 89 MPs had a rare conscience vote on whether to legalise altruistic surrogacy (where a woman bears another person’s child for no financial benefit) and to allow single or same-sex surrogacy.
The Bill was passed 45 votes to 36 following a lengthy debate.
Two ALP members crossed the floor to vote against the Bill.
Former Minister Margaret Keech and Member for Capalaba Michael Choi told Parliament they could not support the entire Bill that decriminalises altruistic surrogacy without severely compromising their consciences.
Mr Choi said he had concerns about the practice of surrogacy because there was a pre-meditated intention to separate a child from their birth mother.
But Mr Choi added that he may have been persuaded to support it as a last resort for infertile heterosexual couples, but he could not back a Bill which also “pre-destined” a child to grow up in a family with just one parent or with two parents of the same sex.
Ms Keech said while she supported the decriminalisation of altruistic surrogacy, her conscience did not allow her to support the widening of eligibility of surrogate parents to include singles and same sex couples.
Mr Campbell said the passing of the legislation will “significantly undermine our understanding of the family and by so doing can only further undermine the foundations of our society”.
“The family is a natural institution, an institution founded upon the nature of the human person, and one cannot play around with that institution as if it is simply an artificial construct,” he said.
“The child becomes by the legal fiat of the State the child of the commissioning parent.
“He or she is no longer the child of its birth parent.
“In the end this is an argument about the truth of the human person.”
Mr Baker said the passing of the Bill had the potential to contribute to the defeat of the State Labor Government at the next election.
“A recent Galaxy Research poll has shown 86 per cent of Australian people support the right of children to be raised by their biological mother and biological father,” he said.
“The Government is obviously hoping that Queensland voters will forget about this trampling on children’s rights in the two years before the next election.
“However, the Family Council of Queensland and other concerned parties will be continuing the campaign through our website www.kidsrightscount.org.au to repeal the same-sex parenting provisions in this Act and will make it an election issue so voters do remember this on polling day.”
