Page 3463 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 11 October 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
There is obviously a huge challenge faced by many people in our community, legislators included, from the fact that technology is profoundly altering the lives of all of us. A few weeks ago, for example, we considered the question of how to deal with the problems mounted by computer technology in respect of the control of violent or pornographic images. We acknowledged that the old laws dealing with the classification of films or videos were no longer adequate to deal with a world in which it is possible for a person to network with a computer on the other side of the world and to exchange messages with people all over the world, let alone all over a community, through those computers. The passing of images or messages between people is much less easy to regulate.
The same could be said in many ways about surrogacy. It is now possible, clearly, in one sense, for a person to have two mothers - a woman from whom one inherits genetic characteristics and a woman who actually carries and gives birth to that person. It is obviously a situation fraught which moral and ethical dilemmas which we need to consider very carefully. The ideal position, I suppose, similar perhaps to our position in respect of computer games, is to try to outlaw or ban those sorts of activities which we might consider to be undesirable. I think, Madam Speaker, that the general thrust of this legislation today is to attempt at least to discourage arrangements whereby people might engage in the process of bearing children for other people, particularly where that involves a commercial remuneration. Perhaps it is going too far to stigmatise or punish those involved in that process, particularly where no commercial element is involved; but it is certainly desirable, I believe, to discourage - and I welcome the legislation's emphasis on discouraging strongly - the bearing of children for other people on the basis of a commercial payment.
I think, however, Madam Speaker, it is in some ways wrong to focus excessively on the question of whether a commercial payment is a component of a surrogacy arrangement. In my view, that commercial/non-commercial dichotomy is perhaps the less important issue in this debate. The issue of perhaps as much importance is the attitude that we as a community and as an Assembly have towards a woman's childbearing potential. It is certainly repugnant to suggest that people should be able freely to bear other people's children for money, but I am not sure that it is really that much more palatable to say that that sort of thing should or could take place for love. Obviously, there are problems. Such arrangements, even in the case of doing so for love, involve a corruption of the simple traditional relationship between a mother and a child. It clearly cannot be what it was before.
I think it is also clear that such arrangements pose problems for a child's development. A child who has been adopted, regrettably, often faces difficult issues in his or her life. A child who has been the product of a surrogacy arrangement may face similar, different or greater problems. This may be only my view, but it seems to be faintly obscene that a woman's reproductive organs should be opened up for the use of others. This is an arrangement which, I think, is one which we as a community should attempt to avoid, if we can, without imposing restrictions or limitations which would be widely disregarded or rejected by those in the community who are intent on these sorts of arrangements.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .