It has been a busy week in the Dáil. The most significant development of this week for the majority of readers will have been the passing of the hugely controversial EU Migration and Asylum Pact, voted through by a slim margin on Wednesday night. While many continue to criticise the ushering through of a significant piece of legislation which received practically no media coverage up until recently, Wednesday also saw landmark surrogacy legislation complete its passage through the Seanad, after very minimal exposure.
The Bill, which sets up a framework for both domestic and international surrogacy, was subject to no real debate. That debate, essentially, seemed to be shut down because the media decided that a conversation on surrogacy and its rights and wrongs was not to be had.
It’s really as simple as that. The most obvious reason for the radio silence, I fear, was because to air those concerns would have been portrayed as insensitive or hurtful or even homophobic.
After all, the few dissenting critics who have questioned the legislation have been caricatured as all of those things. And who among us wants to be placed in the box of being a ‘bigot’? In the ‘Be Kind’ era, alleged bigotry is the worst offence. It is a nearly impossible box to get out of, and a fate none of us desire, meaning we will naturally avoid raising our heads above the parapet on issues, even as important as these, at all costs.
But avoiding facing up to certain truths for fear of hurting others’ feelings will not serve us well as a country or as a society.
I fear that honest, sensible conversation around this Bill and its many inevitable implications has been shut down in the name of politeness and social acceptability. It is not a high-status social position, or good social currency, shall we say, to have moral qualms about surrogacy. It is uncomfortable, but it’s also true to say that there are many unspoken misgivings about surrogacy as a practice.
After passing in the Dáil without as much as a vote, the hard questions were only asked by a few brave souls in the Seanad because it was clear that the high emotion attached to this legislation had run amok. But being so blindly and completely led by emotion, to the point where quite frankly it borders on hysterics, is no way to make laws.
I watched part of the rather haphazard, clearly rushed, debate on the Assisted Human Reproduction Bill on Wednesday, and was honestly taken aback by the deeply personal approach taken by Senators and Health Minister Stephen Donnelly. So much of the tone was on the offensive: scolding and lecturing the few who had the backbone to ask important questions regarding the Bill (Senators Sharon Keogan and Ronan Mullen).
The way in which Senators expressed their reservations, and the ‘language’ through which they framed concerns, took a front seat, rather than the substance of those concerns, concerns which are undoubtedly shared by at least a section of the Irish public judging by the reaction to this Bill.
Under one particular Fine Gael video, dozens jumped on the comments to decry the “disgraceful” and “shocking” legislation. For all of the jubilation in the media, it is obviously true that many people in Ireland see surrogacy as the buying of babies, and the renting of wombs.
A lot of what was being said regarding this Bill was loaded with hugely heightened emotion, select and raw individual experiences, and vested interests. The whole tone was so excessively emotional and over-the-top that I struggled to get through it. It was worrying to see such a clear lack of critique or willingness to tease out obvious issues so pertinent to the legislation.
Senator Mary Seery Kearney, who has earned huge acclaim in the media as an advocate for surrogacy as a parent of a child born through surrogacy appeared exasperated and livid, as she launched what I would describe as nothing more than an emotionally charged tirade on her opponents.
Instead of taking the concerns about the Bill and the ethics around surrogacy for what they are – views people are entitled to hold – it was clear that to Kearney, such views amounted to nothing more than a personal attack. From watching the debate, it was abundantly clear that the insistence on making this personal contributed to an appalling lack of democratic and legislative process around this Bill.
“I absolutely reject the characterisation we have heard of intending parents. They do not deserve it,” she said. “The Minister stood up for us valiantly last week, for which I am very grateful. We are human beings. We never dismiss motherhood. We never dismiss the amazing women who are our surrogates. Those women have a voice in all of this. They should not be dismissed as people who all are impoverished and helpless and who are used and exploited by us. None of that happens.”
The thing which Senator Seery Kearney does not seem to grasp is that the opinions of people like Senator Sharon Keogan are not directed at her personally, and shouldn’t be taken that way. Rights do have to be balanced, and it is an entirely legitimate point of view that proposals which regulate commercial surrogacy do not balance those rights.
It is not my intent, as someone who opposes surrogacy, to offend people like the Senator – and if that opinion does cause offence, that does not take away from the fact it is an honestly held conviction.
Senator Michael McDowell, seconding a failed amendment by Sharon Keogan to change the Order of Business to allow for more time to discuss the Bill, was a rare voice of common sense.
He admitted that while he did not share many of the views expressed by colleagues on in vitro fertilisation and some aspects of surrogacy (he asserts that the practice is justifiable), said it was “important that we have a constructive debate.”
His urging for a stripping back of emotion in favour of more reasoned consideration, hit the nail on the head, but was ultimately ignored.
“There should be no emotion, just simple discussion, because there are serious issues involved,” he said, adding: “Curtailing this debate without carefully thinking through all of the implications of what we are doing is wrong. The Bill would benefit from detailed consideration. It would be improved if we all listened to each other in a dispassionate and less emotional way.”
McDowell also rightly said the question of whether a single male person should be in a position to enter into a surrogacy contract was one which deserved further thought.
“Will a single male person be in a position to enter into a surrogacy contract and have a child by surrogacy in circumstances where that person would not be considered a suitable person to adopt a child? That is a fundamental question. We are walking straight into that without considering the implications carefully.”
Indeed, it caused a stir last week when Health Minister Stephen Donnelly told the Seanad that it would be “unacceptably discriminatory” to ban single men from accessing surrogacy.
But despite the public interest in his comments, and the fact he rejected a whole string of amendments – including one banning sex offenders from accessing surrogacy – put forward by Senator Keogan, the Bill has been passed with little regard to the Pandora’s Box it will open.
We have, I believe, been denied the chance to have a reasonable debate about surrogacy. This Bill treats the bond between mother and child as irrelevant. It opens the door to the creation of an industry where babies are commodities and women are vessels. It regulates commercial surrogacy by allowing big payments to surrogate mothers under “reasonable expenses” included in the legislation. While creating one of the most liberal surrogacy regimes in Europe, it also permits embryo research. It fundamentally and categorically alters how we see human life.
Commercial surrogacy is banned across most of the Western world because very many countries recognise that it commodifies children and makes it easy to exploit and manipulate low-income women. Yet we have taken the landmark step of legislating for surrogacy in all of its forms, without the media or the majority of politicians asking the hard questions.
It is clear that to this government, the end justifies the means. I am adamant that Ireland’s heavy-handed shut down of this debate will serve us very badly.