NSW Surrogacy Ban

They have recently outlaw commercial surrogacy in my home state. What's your opinion on this?

edited 31st Jan '11 4:09:15 PM by joeyjojo

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Meh. Sounds like a bad law.

Fight smart, not fair.

That's as stupid as the law forbidding you from being paid for giving blood.

Course, making compensation for blood illegal does eliminate the chance of shifty-looking folk showing up to a blood blank carrying containers filled with blood obtained through questionable means.

That's all ready illegal here.

edited 31st Jan '11 6:33:14 PM by joeyjojo

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That's stupid too. I seriously doubt you can just show up with a pouch of blood and get paid. If it's anything like selling plasma, they'll extract it themselves.

Fight smart, not fair.

Question: if the woman isn't allowed to get paid for it, what possible reason would she have to carry someone else's baby? I mean, pregnancy isn't exactly a picnic, now you're saying she's not even going to be compensated for going through this for someone else's benefit?

I am kind of wondering how they will know if the person had a surrogate overseas as opposed to just plain adoption at birth. Also, I think jail is a bit extreme, maybe just a fine?

While I sympathize with the people who argue that ultimately it devalues life because it could turn into poor people getting pregnant to get paid for the fetus, as a libertarian it strikes me as stupid, and as a pro - life sympathizer who opposes making abortion illegal, selling children to parents who want to raise a child seems a lot better than paying parents to abort children unnecessarily or selling them into, er, other activities.

Also a lot of homeless people earn money for food, etc. by selling blood, recyclable trash, etc. However, giving too much blood is dangerous to your health which may be what that law is alluding to.

I'm fine with that. I'm not a libertarian so I don't have to care that much about economic freedom :)

It's a law to protect poor people from being abused. It's illegal to sell blood and pay for surrogate mothers here already.

Well, last time we had a thread on surrogacy, there was a big debate about whether it was ethical to force the surrogate mother to honor the contract to give up the baby at the end of the pregnancy if she decides she doesn't want to. If you decide you're not going to actually enforce the contracts, outlawing it makes sense.

...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.

This is silly. I'd have banned surrogacy altogether.

Yeah why is that?

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Part of me can't help but wonder if the real reason is to make it more difficult for gay couples to have children through surrogacy arrangements.

I wonder if commercial surrogacy is cheaper than IVF. If it is, we are out of our fucking minds to ban it when IVF is subsidised by medicare.

I think it kind of makes sense to make commercial surrogacy illegal. There is so much opportunity for things to go wrong. If we agree that surrogacy is a good thing, surely it would be better if you can find a surrogate mother who knows the couple and is doing it out of the goodness of her heart, not from mercenary goals or just desperation.

Be not afraid...

Well If someone becomes pregnant, gives birth and hands over a child for money they are all intents and purposes selling a child. That's morally hazy at best.

edited 1st Feb '11 1:20:12 PM by joeyjojo

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^^That brings up government regulation. If it's a career path, it'll need more serious scrutiny.

That being said, I don't think it's a good career path.

Charlie Tunoku is a lover and a fighter.

Well you can make a reasonable parable with prostitution. If your going to pay a woman for use of her sex organs. It's better off legal and regulated then having people going to the 3rd world to do it.

Although the big difference is that prostitution (hopefully) only involves interactions between consenting adults. The same can't be said about surrogacy.

edited 3rd Feb '11 2:13:18 AM by joeyjojo

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I would say that the big difference is that prostitution doesn't hijack a woman's whole body for over nine months.

Be not afraid...

Some johns like to get their money's worth ;-)

edited 3rd Feb '11 5:03:57 AM by joeyjojo

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See my first paragraph here.

I took the liberty of posting it.

I must admit i'm uncomfortable with means of artificial reproductive technology. but you seem to be more bothered with the ends. Giving a childless couple a baby.

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I think that very few things should government restricted, and this is one thing that, although debatable, I think the government shouldn't be regulating currently.

Inanity in 140 characters or more

Both surrogacy (had to look it up) and selling your blood/organs are illegal here already.

In fact, for the organs one, it's forbidden to donate specifically*

to anybody else than your family, to prevent people from selling.

Looks like it's more about "giving childless couples a new baby while there are already thousands of them waiting for a home".

edited 19th Nov '11 9:20:54 AM by Medinoc

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

But is that actually protecting the poor? After all, apparently the poor decided not getting the money is even worse than going through the pregnancy. So what the law does is forcing the poor to go with the situation they have deemed even worse.

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

(hmm... didn't think I would see this thread again)

On paper, yes it does. It's intended to discourages people under economic pressure from endangering their mental and biological health through pregnancy, ensuring that only those prepared for the physical and emotional strain of carrying a child to term can apply.

It is however doubtful that such lofty goals are actually achievable.

On a personal note I find the whole idea of outsourcing pregnancy more then a little creepy on several levels :S, but clearly many people are fine with it enough to go through with it even with out financial incentives.

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