Getup! considers campaigning against ban against overseas commercial surrogacy clinics
Monday, November 29, 2010
Community activist group Getup! is considering campaigning against the ban (now in Qld and the ACT and soon to be in NSW) on Aussies accessing overseas commercial surrogacy clinics. This is what the original posting said:
On 11 November 2010, the NSW Parliament passed legislation banning NSW residents from engaging in commercial surrogacy arrangements overseas.
The effect of this legislation is that consenting residents of NSW cannot travel to another country and participate in legal activities with other consenting adults.
The argument for the ban is based on the “best interests of the children born through commercial surrogacy”, while no reputable evidence that it is not in the child’s best interests or the children are disadvantaged in anyway has been presented.
Additionally, it is argued that women are exploited in commercial surrogacy arrangement, while the case of the California Supreme Court Johnson v Calvert (1993) in the USA stated:
“The argument that a woman cannot knowingly and intelligently agree to gestate and deliver a baby for intending parents carried overtones of the reasoning that for centuries prevented women from attaining equal economic rights and professional status under law. To resurrect this view is both to foreclose a personal and economic choice on the part of the surrogate mother, and to deny intending parents what may be their only means of procreating a child of their own genetic stock”
The NSW Government must remove this ban.
Various respondents have said that the laws are “archaic”, “cruel”, “ill-thought”, “highly discriminatory”, “implicitly racist”, “preposterous”, “ridiculous” and “a major step backwards”.
For the thread, click here.
