#best interests of the child

[coochiequeens]

It is reasonable to think a man saying he wants to be a single father because he doesn’t want a relationship should prompt some investigation by someone expert in child welfare about his emotional capability to parent alone.“

Infertility can be deeply painful. There is a lot a compassionate society can – and should – do to make fertility treatment available to those who can be assisted to have a child with medical intervention. Few would disagree though that there are ethical boundaries to this, shaped by children’s interests, not just adult desires.

Last week, the Law Commission drove a coach and horses through that moral frontier – which it framed as an overdue modernisation of the law – by publishing draft proposals to reform the UK’s surrogacy framework. Implicit in them is the, I suspect controversial, assumption that a single man seeking to have a child alone through surrogacy, because he doesn’t want or can’t maintain a committed relationship, presents no greater moral quandary than a couple seeking IVF. How controversial is anyone’s guess: the Law Commission hasn’t canvassed public attitudes.

Surrogacy is the practice of a woman conceiving, gestating and giving birth to a baby – using her own or donor eggs – for another couple or individual who can’t do so themselves. The UK is one of few countries in which it is lawful. There are important safeguards intended to guard against exploitation: surrogates can only be compensated for reasonable expenses, to try to ensure their motivations are altruistic, not financial. The surrogate is legally the child’s mother until the intended parents are granted a parenting order by the family courts, if and only if they deem it is in the child’s best interests.

Surrogacy remains small-scale in the UK: just 300-400 orders are granted a year, limited by the number of women who want to become surrogates. But in countries like the US and Georgia, where commercial surrogacy is legal – where economically vulnerable women can be paid to carry a baby and surrogacy is governed by legally enforceable contracts that the UN special rapporteur on child exploitation says constitute the sale of children – it is bigger business. In contrast, the UK legal framework tolerates surrogacy but does not actively encourage it.

The Law Commission has recommended wholesale reform that makes the surrogacy process more akin to IVF. It proposes a new “pre-conception” pathway, governed by a surrogacy agreement, in which the intended parents automatically become the legal parents of the child at birth unless the surrogate withdraws consent before birth. The family courts will no longer oversee these arrangements unless the surrogate applies for a parental order in the first six weeks after birth. Instead, surrogacy will be pre-approved by surrogacy agencies, in the same way fertility clinics sign off on IVF. The commission makes sweeping – but unevidenced – claims that this is in the best interests of children and that because it reduces uncertainty, it will increase the amount of surrogacy that happens in the UK by discouraging people from making use of more exploitative regimes abroad.

There are some positive aspects to the proposals: tighter regulation of expense payments to avoid surrogacy being commercialised through the back door; everyone involved would have to undergo counselling. Children would have the right to access information about their surrogate in the same way as those conceived using donor sperm or eggs.

But in adopting a starting point that surrogacy is just another form of assisted conception, the Law Commission has gone beyond its remit. It reduces pregnancy to a process, a transactional exchange of body fluid between a woman and a foetus rather than a relationship between a mother and the life she is nurturing physically and emotionally, that there are ethical considerations involved in breaking at birth, regardless of the desires of the individual adults involved. It is for us as a society to decide whether we want the law to actively encourage rather than tolerate this, not for the Law Commission to make recommendations without even exploring public attitudes.

The Law Commission report is peppered with imagined case studies that invoke sympathy: straight couples where a woman can’t carry a pregnancy and gay male couples who see surrogacy as their only way to have a biological child. But a better ethical test is the men who openly say they want to become fathers through surrogacy because they would rather be single parents. There would be few barriers to them doing so.

This encapsulates the extent to which the Law Commission proposals are catering to the desires of adults with a vested interest in surrogacy – however valid their reasons – over and above child welfare. It proposes a light-touch welfare check as part of the pre-conception pathway, but this would rely in the main on potential parents self-declaring issues of concern and would be carried out by surrogacy agencies that though not-for-profit would still have an interest in making surrogacy happen; the Law Commission itself suggeststhat private fertility clinics can set up not-for-profit “arms” to act as surrogacy agencies. It explicitly declines to say that the person legally responsible for these checks should have knowledge or experience of child safeguarding. These surrogacy agencies would supposedly be regulated by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which lacks meaningful expertise in child welfare. It is all jaw-droppingly naive.

The counter is that there are only light checks for women and couples conceiving through IVF and nothing for people who become parents naturally. But surrogacy is the only route through which a single man as a sole parent can create a biological child.

Gestation is a natural if not fail-safe form of safeguarding in a world where a minority of men are responsible for almost all physical and sexual violence and men on average pose a different risk to children than women. This isn’t to say some single men who want to go it alone might not make good fathers – single men can and do adopt successfully after robust welfare checks – but that it should be harder than getting signed off for IVF.

It is reasonable to think a man saying he wants to be a single father because he doesn’t want a relationship should prompt some investigation by someone expert in child welfare about his emotional capability to parent alone.

At the heart of the Law Commission proposals is the assumption that surrogacy should be made cleaner to the benefit of the adults involved. But surrogacy is inherently messy, uncertain and ethically complex, because no one has a claim to a baby they haven’t given birth to purely on the basis of genetics and pregnancy cannot be reduced to a transaction.

The Law Commission loftily calls for the government to “endorse these essential reforms”. But on an ethical issue such as this it is vital that politicians consult the public rather than taking direction from a legal body that has grossly overstepped its remit.

 Sonia Sodha is an Observer columnist

 This article was amended on 5 April 2023. In an earlier version the writer commented that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) “has no expertise in child welfare”. This has been amended to “lacks meaningful expertise” to make clearer that, while the HFEA has a statutory function in overseeing “welfare of the child” assessments required of fertility clinics, this is the writer’s assessment of the agency’s overall expertise in child welfare and safeguarding. The name of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has also been corrected.

[gothsuguru]

thinking abt how satoru is one of the only adults in the jjk universe who can separate the child from the situation/cards they are dealt with… yuji took in sukuna as a host and he’s the only adult who sees yuji as a child/his own human being while other adults see him simply as “sukuna’s host” who needs to die. thinking abt how satoru was also one of the only adults who stepped up for yuuta and that’s one of the reasons yuuta appreciates him so much… same with when he took in megumi. at the end of the day gojo satoru is the only one in the universe that knows what it’s like to be used/seen as a weapon or Entity rather than a person and he won’t let his kids feel the same way/he’ll do everything in his power to make them feel better & actually LET them be children!

[daily-sifloop]

Day 44: Little Goody Two Shoes (game by AstralShift) AU

Spoilers for Ending No. 1 - Moira under cut

[ruler-of-thorns]

Malleus having older sibling trauma. Malleus resenting how Lilia is able to openly express being Silver's parent but had to keep Malleus at arms length because of their roles. Malleus having to know someone who was presumably initially very cold and softened only as he was growing older while Silver had a very openly loving father immediately. Malleus being the child who taught Lilia how to parent and love. Malleus never feeling like Lilia truly loved him after seeing how he was able to love Silver. Malleus loving Silver because they're brothers and at the same time resenting him for having the father he always wanted.

[youngpettyqueen]

truly a crime we didnt get to see more of Miles' reaction to Julian being augmented because I think he should've punched Richard Bashir in the face

[natelia-aldelliz]

1 : Soap never had any idea that woman wanted him carnally, he's not the most observant on that front (he never noticed Ghost flirting with him and thought his love was one-sided for the longest time, but tbf Ghost was also very discreet about it)

2 : He sewed the hat, eyepatch and hook himself, because he's the best uncle and then got distracted as he was wrapping it up, so now he's watching a tutorial on youtube about how to build a voice box. Honestly how hard could it be, he builds explosive devices as a hobby (listen, Price doesn't have to know)

3 : He is out to his family, but doesn't want his mum to know he has a boyfriend because he knows she'll insist on meeting him and welcoming him to the family and making a big deal out of this, and he knows that Ghost isn't ready for that.

4 : Christmas is obviously a very hard time for Ghost, but he is very very in love with Soap and some days still can't believe that it's mutual, but then his Johnny does something like that and his head gets quieter while he's melting a bit.

5 : For the people that didn't see my other post : the bird is a Caique parrot, and they're supposedly very energetic, a bit loud, medium sized, unintelligible, very friendly to what they consider their family, adventurous and danger prone, with an explosive personality and a hate of boredom, so basically the adhd bird.

[bonefall]

Bones someone did a "Worst Parents" poll over on Twitter and it's going about as well as you'd expect.

"God people will do anything to hate on mentally ill male characters" and it's the guy who hits and yells at his son.

"Crowfeather's only crime was being a bit mean" hitting and humiliating your son= bit mean.

Yes these are things I've actually read

I'm not saying Curlfeather (who was pitted against him in the poll) is better or worse than Crowfeather, but I've seen a lot of people downplaying his abuse towards Breezepaw and acting like people are crazy for thinking Curlfeather was better

It's really wild to see it in action, isn't it? When a dad manipulates (Po3 book 2) and smacks his son (Po3 book 3) for absolutely no benefit besides his own ego, it's "mental illness" and ergo not a big deal. As if they think mental illness is a get-out-of-jail free card for child abuse.

The "Crowfeather Mental Illness" Crowd couldn't HANDLE the kind of mentally ill characters that I stan. They are weak and will not survive the winter.

When they say "stop being mean to boys with a disorder" they mean "stop holding an abusive father accountable for teaching his son slurs so he could get back at the ex-girlfriend who dumped him." When I say "stop being mean to boys with a disorder" I mean that I want to give Breezepelt a gun so he can enforce it himself. We are not the same.

[trappedinafantasy37]

The last DeVir and the forgotten Baenre. Two noble drow forever exiled from their homes and abandoned by Lolth.

[svtskneecaps]

see everyone worried and fretted and panicked and yet quesadilla island looked at pepito and went

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

"distant relative" i assume you are referring to my father?

[melisusthewee]

Rafael Federman as Eduardo Strauch in La Sociedad de la Nieve/Society of the Snow (2023)

requested by Anon

[randombook4idk]

people when they (finally) realize that younger siblings are human beings with their own problems and also experience struggles that stem from their birth order, and aren't these spoiled brats who only exist to make their older siblings lives worse

[indecisive-dizzy]

Hmmmmmm,,,, I wanna kiss Howdy Pillar,,,,,,

Just mwah mwah his forehead a little,,,,,,

*Insert Daisey with a thought bubble thinking about this lol*

Daisey can go right ahead lol I'm after his brother <3

I will not apologize for old memes. I love them and I laughed

[thorinlandscaping]

waaaaa they took away my male lead in the Only Straights Show from 2-3 seasons from now and made him a girl for some sort of WOKE AGENDA they're changing my badly written misogynist book series woe is me we need more straight rep!!! this is because i like their story not for any other reason!!! i'm bi as well!!! more straight romance!!!! no nonconformity!!!! the books!!!!!!!

[dollya-robinprotector]

PC can enter Robin's room naked and I think this should be taken to the next logical step where both of you are sitting naked and PC just casually cockwarms him the whole day. And they are playing games <3

You know what? Exactly my point, but since PC doesn't really come to school too often anymore cuz she's been busy fooling around with Wren, smashing stuffs in Remy's estate, go hunt the Ivory Wraith,... She'd prefer reading some books stolen from Sydney to maintain her school performance than playing games all day.

*Sigh* I wish PC and the school kids could graduate. School performance's such a pain to maintain when there are too many other things to do.

[carlottastudios]

Every day I get closer to making an unhinged behemoth of a post listing all of the things about Kaeya and his possible connections to mythology & stuff that I notice but NOBODY ELSE SEEMS TO BRING UP IN THEIR THEORIES

(edit: OMG I reached the tag limit I'm so sorry)