Surrogacy: who needs a mother, anyway?

The Queensland opposition had tabled its own Bill to separate the question of same-sex surrogacy from the question of surrogacy for an infertile couple, but Premier Anna Bligh has rejected their position, and says that all adults - even single adults and same-sex couples - have the same right as a married couple to “the opportunity to be a parent”. Her attitude trashes marriage, and tramples on the genuine right of a child to have both a mother and father; I can only hope she does not understand the harm she is doing.

As to the nature of this harm, evidence from social science is of only secondary importance. Certainly the best-designed studies confirm the obvious - that a child does best in every objective respect when raised by his or her own parents, or in the nearest equivalent context of an adopting mother and father. In the light of this research, the American College of Pediatricians in 2004 concluded:

The environment in which children are reared is absolutely critical to their development. Given the current body of research, the American College of Pediatricians believes it is inappropriate, potentially hazardous to children, and dangerously irresponsible to change the age-old prohibition on homosexual parenting, whether by adoption, foster care, or by reproductive manipulation. This position is rooted in the best available science.

However, nobody needs to resort to "the best available science" to defend the obvious insight that a little child needs both a mother and a father. The judgment of anyone who cannot see this as a self-evident fact of life, as the most primal and necessary condition of a child’s wellbeing, is suspect.

The government knows - because we have told them - that the denial of a child’s right to have both a mother and father through open-slather surrogacy is an issue upon which groups like the Family Council of Queensland, of which I am a committee member, will go to the barricades.

Yet there points of agreement with the Government on aspects of our laws on surrogacy that should be amended. In an interview (7MB, QuickTime) I had with the Attorney-General, Cameron Dick, on ABC radio, he argued that this Bill is necessary to remove the current penalty of imprisonment for couples who obtain a surrogate child. We agree that it is not in the interests of an innocent child for his carers to be imprisoned, and so we support that change, but not through this Bill: change can be achieved by amending existing surrogacy laws.

Likewise the only other two valid motives in this Bill are to give a surrogate child the same certainty as other children regarding inheritance rights - but this can be achieved by amending the Succession Act - and to give legal certainty of guardianship - but that is provided for already through Family Court parentage orders.

There is no necessity for the Surrogacy Bill 2009. There is a grave necessity - and duty - to reject Bills like this around the country that would, through normalising same-sex and single surrogacy, intentionally and wantonly deprive a child of her birthright and her most profound psychological need: to have both a mother and a father.