AUSTRALIAN PRAYER NETWORK NEWSLETTER

SURROGACY THE NEXT MORAL AND ETHICAL MINEFIELD

The birth of a baby girl to Victorian Labor Senator Stephen Conroy and his wife Paula Benson last week highlights again how medical science is pushing conventional moral ethics to the limit and shaping Government responses by default before society as a whole has been given the chance to debate and form guidelines on issues which are fundamental to family life as we have known it.

The Christian contribution to the debate is being left behind by the pace of change, the complexity of the issues involved, and a battle weariness brought on by the number of fronts on which the attack on traditional values is advancing. As the Proverb says “Where there is no fresh revelation from God, the people caste off restraint and do as they please” (Paraphrase of Proverbs 29:18 – NIV) The baby Isabella Conroy, is different from most in that she has one father and three mothers. This raises legal question of who exactly her mother is. The mother who has claimed her as her daughter did not in fact play any biological part in her creation nor birth. She began as an egg of one women which was fertilised by her father and then implanted and brought to birth by a third woman. Isabella’s birth is now the subject of a debate which will influence the law on surrogate motherhood in Australia.Her birth has exposed a mishmash of legislation across different States with some having strict provisions for surrogacy, whilst others try to pretend it doesn’t exist. State attorney generals will meet to discuss this matter next week.Isabella doesn’t yet know it but she has become part of a round of discussions which could change the entire legal outlook on parents’ rights in Australia. Isabella will be a precious addition to their family. However, when she returns to the family home in Melbourne, the law might insist that she is not the child of Conroy and Benson.Victorian law does not recognise surrogate arrangements under its Status of Children Act. Under this act at present the birth mother remains the legal mother and her husband is the father, even though he might have had nothing to do with the process. Conroy and Benson might have to make a case to the Federal Court to be considered formally as Isabella’s parents.Isabella was born in Sydney because NSW law doesn’t touch on surrogate motherhood – not even to ban commercial surrogacy, as does Victoria. Medical director of IVF Australia Peter Illingworth said NSW law ruled that the legal mother of any child was the woman who gave birth to that child. “Therefore, if a woman wishes somebody else to be a gestational carrier, or surrogate mother, for her, she then has to adopt the baby back again.” Dr Illingworth said.Separate, but influential, will be the ethical debate over whether commissioning couples have the right to demand a child produced by a surrogate mother.The legal position therefore is quite confused. That is one thing, but what about the moral and ethical issues that arise from such an action. Well very few have even begun to come to grips with that one. So as man attempts to usurp the natural processes instigated by God for the procreation of the human race, what a tangled web of emotional and relational issues will be left behind for the children of such human experiments to work through in generations to come.

Source: Compiled by APN from different media reports