Motherhood deals risk deeper anguish

In 1997 “Evelyn” became Australia’s first litigated surrogacy case when her surrogate mother couldn’t give her up.

We now accept that mothers who have relinquished their child for adoption - once told to forget any attachment to their child - can suffer terrible grief. We cannot make this central human experience "disappear."

Children born from donor egg or sperm can also suffer from a severing of the genetic parental bond. Writes Joanna Rose, originally from the UK but now living in Queensland, “I have spent my life living with the consequences of short sighted solutions to infertility. This solution has given me and others like me life-long burdens of our own. With third party conception there is an intentional trading away and fracturing of the child’s parental kinship.”

For the egg donor, surrogacy also involves health risks which should not be glossed over: ovaries swollen to the size of grapefruit from the super ovulatory drugs used to hyper stimulate the ovaries to produce as many eggs as possible, stroke, organ failure, ovarian cysts and, in the long term, infertility and cancer. Some women have died. Many women are surprised at how intrusive and stressful the process is.

In the US commodification of a child has become an art form. A journalist, Bill Wyndham, pretending to be a single, HIV-positive gay man, was told by a surrogacy company he’d make a perfect dad and that arrangements could be made immediately for “insemination and delivery” of a baby. He was, however, not allowed to adopt a puppy from the dog pound.

The national trend in Australia has been against the legal recognition of surrogate motherhood for a reason. Of course we want the senator and his family to thrive. But we cannot deny that for many surrogate mothers and their children there is no happy ever after.