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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (31 August) . . Page.. 2783 ..
MS TUCKER (continuing):
Clearly you would hope that that was the case. You would hope that siblings could be kept together. But you cannot say that from this point in time that will always be the best result. The clear pressure on the commissioning parents is that it is all or nothing. Obviously the parentage order will not be successful unless everybody is in agreement. So because of this the pressure is on the commissioning parents that it is all or nothing.
It is those pressures that will exist within these relationships that need to be more teased out and sorted out, as well as their consequences. I do not share Mrs Carnell's total enthusiasm for what happens within a family. I know that there is an argument that there is love, and love will create a good outcome. I am sorry: If you look at what happens when someone dies in a family, where there is love, and you see what happens with a will, you can see that things can go very haywire in families.
Within families there are complex psychological relationships between sisters and brothers, between cousins-or within friendships; of course, it is not just within families. This is about altruistic surrogacy. There are complex psychological and human relationships there.
There is also, of course, altruistic surrogacy in other cultures, which, again, is another totally different issue, but one that I think would be interesting to look at. I have spoken recently to a woman from a culture in which, if there is a woman in the family who is barren, it is the responsibility of that woman's fertile sister to carry a child for her. (Extension of time granted.)
We have cultural issues within families where I do not believe it is about love. It is about culture. It may not be a good thing for that woman, and if that woman is living in Australia-as many more women from different cultures are-there are other issues to be teased out there.
I do not believe that the idea that altruistic surrogacy is going to be quite devoid of the possibility of exploitation is true. I think it is a naive statement. We know, as I said, it does not take long to look at the complications that have happened within families, and these things happen on an ongoing basis.
Mrs Carnell said she had never heard of any twins being split up. A lot of us have been lobbied on this, and there obviously have been cases where twins were born and the commissioning parent did not want both. That has actually happened.
Even aside from us knowing that it had happened, Mrs Carnell also said, "I cannot imagine something going wrong." I am afraid that when you are making law you need to do more than just think what you personally can imagine. It is not hard. You should not need to imagine. You just need to look at what is already happening around us to know that these are very complicated issues.
When I spoke with the doctor who was the provider in the ACT, I did ask that question: what if the child for some reason is not wanted by the commissioning parents, for whatever reason-the commissioning parents have split up, or the child has some characteristic that they do not like? The response from the provider was immediate: "Obviously it is the birth mother's child. That is a fact of life."
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