There have been many stories in the media lately about surrogacy, the majority presenting a very rosy picture. In this webinar we’ll be balancing that lop-sided view with a feminist analysis and a look at the risks and abuses that can be involved. We’ll also provide a brief overview of the proposals the UK Law Commission put forward in its public consultation last year and consider what they might mean for women and children.

The presentations will last a little more than an hour in total and will be followed by a question and answer (Q&A) session. You can optionally send in questions in advance (see below).

Speakers

Heather Harvey: Heather is currently the research and development manager at Nia. She has worked on violence against women and girls both here in the UK and overseas in public and NGO sectors for over 20 years. A particular focus of her research has been on women’s experiences of prostitution.

Nia responded to the Law Commission’s consultation on surrogacy and looked at the range of actual and potential abuses and exploitation involved in existing and proposed surrogacy models and particularly the inequalities inherent in the proposals and this will form the body of her discussion.

Liz Purslow: Liz was a midwife for twenty years and now works as an NHS nurse. Instinctively against surrogacy – pregnancy and childbirth are a profound experience for women, emotional, physical, spiritual, painful – it changes you forever, body and mind. It is not a service to provide for others. And babies!!! They are special little individual people, not to be bought, sold or gift wrapped and handed to a best friend. Liz will be discussing the health risks to women, the implications for the NHS, dealing with complex pregnancies, and the potential for conflicts of interest and safeguarding problems.

Anna Fisher: Anna is the current chair of Nordic Model Now! and last year led the group’s project to provide template responses to the Law Commission’s surrogacy consultation with the aim of making it easier for people who were concerned to respond. She will give a brief overview of the proposals the Law Commission put forward in the consultation and the grave concerns they throw up.

Lexi: Lexi heard about the Law Commission’s proposed reforms through Mumsnet. After reading the proposals she decided to find out more and submitted a Freedom of Information request. Her presentation will talk through that process and what she found out.

Webinar joining details

The Webinar will be hosted in Zoom. We will email registered attendees shortly before the event with details of how to join. If you can’t see the email, please check your spam folders.

Q&A

There will be an option to submit questions during the event, but you are welcome to email in advance a question you would like the panel to consider. Please put ‘Webinar Question’ in the subject line and email it to nordicmodelnow@gmail.com. Time constraints mean we will be limited in how many questions we can address.

This is a mixed event

This event will include material that may be upsetting, including the exploitation of women, the selling of babies, birth injuries, and infertility. We ask everyone, but particularly men, to be mindful of this and of how both speakers and members of the audience may find it triggering because it resonates with their own experiences. We ask everyone to be open and respectful.

Capacity and sound quality

We apologise if you registered to attend our last webinar and weren’t able to get into it on Zoom. We believed we had sufficient capacity but it transpired that there was a limit of 100 (which we were unaware of). We will ensure that this time there is sufficient capacity for all those who register in advance. We are also aiming for better sound quality this time.

Hashtags

If you will be tweeting about the event, please include the hashtag: #WhatsWrongWithSurrogacy. You may also want to use the #Surrogacy hashtag.