Some say alternative birth practices like surrogacy and egg donation are a gift from heaven. Others believe we’re creating a new ‘stolen generation’ of children with overly complex and ‘un-natural’ parentage. Whatever you believe, more and more couples and singles are turning to surrogacy and sperm or egg donation to have a family when the regular way isn’t possible.

They might be gay. They might be single. They might have fertility problems. This subject, in all its incarnations, comes up often on Mamamia. We’ve heard from infertile women looking for eggs. We’ve heard from women who have donated their eggs. We’ve heard from a gay couple who have three beautiful children who were born via donor eggs and surrogates.

There was the controversy over Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban’s reference to the woman who carried their baby daughter as a ‘gestational carrier’. And in NSW, commercial surrogacy is now illegal. If you find someone who WANTS to carry your child or donate their eggs to you, that’s OK (after extensive counselling) but they cannot be paid.

This week, a story has come out about Queensland’s first surrogate mother who donated her eggs and carried a baby for two gay friends. She now regrets her decision. Not because they’re gay but because she feels like she’s given up her child. Tellingly, they never had counselling because at the time they were trying to conceive, surrogacy in Queensland was illegal. Now it’s not.

The Herald Sun reports:

The recent legalisation of surrogacy in Queensland and the publicity surrounding Conor’s birth and his mother’s regrets has predictably  provoked an independent group called Kid’s Rights Count (a branch of the Australian Christian Lobby) to release the following press release:

Ugh. My support for same-sex surrogacy remains. My support for surrogacy remains. And contrary to this farcical and plainly anti-gay agenda-driven press release, legal surrogacy would have PREVENTED the situation that happened above.

Conor’s biological mother did not have counselling. None of the individuals involved in this surrogacy arrangement did. Which is a disaster and has proven to be such. It simply proves to me that legislation cannot stop people from making decisions about their fertility. When abortion was illegal, women still had them. And they died or were horribly injured. If surrogacy is illegal, people will still do it but at a much higher emotional (and physical) risk because there is no independent infrastructure there to support them – with tests, with counselling and with expert advice.

What do you think about surrogacy and state governments becoming involved in decisions about how people can have children?