A surrogate mother has lost custody of an 18-month-old child she agreed to bear for a gay couple after a judge ruled that ‘his identity needs as a child of gay intended parents’ would be better fulfilled if he lived with the couple.
Clearly the gay couple’s ‘identity needs’ trump the child’s, and even if the woman was the genetic mother she might still be at risk of losing him, as in adoption cases where gay couples are prioritised over grandmothers. Now, a man in a sexual relationship with another man is seen as a better mother than Some Woman who just happens to have given birth to the child, aptly known as a ‘surrogate’. No wonder sexual diversity campaigners are trying to airbrush ‘mother’ out of the lexicon.
Lord Justice McFarlane warned of the risks involved when parties agree to conceive a child, because if it goes wrong it can cause huge distress. Something did go horribly wrong – the mother came to love the child, which should have been handed over to the purchaser like any other commodity. Surrogacy is wrong even when it ‘goes right’.
