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Surrogacy: who needs a mother, anyway? : Comments
By David van Gend, published 12/2/2010By what authority does any government permit adults to deny a child a mother AND a father?
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Posted by Peter Hume, Friday, 12 February 2010 9:19:27 AM
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"I can advise the House that same-sex parents will be included among those who will be affected by the decriminalisation of surrogacy, because everyone - regardless of their sexual status or their gender -should be afforded the privileges of parenthood," Ms Bligh said.
But Ms Bligh says she does not believe allowing gay and lesbian couples to adopt would have community support." ABC News Wed Aug 19, 2009 Why would the Premier expect the community to support same-sex and single parents having a child through surrogacy but not support same-sex and single parents adopting a child? Posted by blairbar, Friday, 12 February 2010 9:25:04 AM
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children need unconditional love and care, what gender they get it from is completely irrelevant it seems to me.
the evils of the homosexual community eh? denying birthrights, forcing other people into their world view, sexually and physically abusing children in their trust time and time again and again and again...oh sorry..my mistake..that's the church community. pardon me ;-) Posted by E.Sykes, Friday, 12 February 2010 9:55:30 AM
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Like everyone, Dr van Gend is entitled to his opinions. However it's appropriate to point out that in this continuation of his campaign against families headed by same-sex couples http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_insanity_of_same-sex_parenting/ , he is shamelessly attempting to mislead us.
First, he chooses to ignore the 60,000 http://www.aap.org/member/faqPublic.htm#question11 U.S. pediatric health professionals who follow evidence-based practice, represented by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) http://www.aap.org/ Instead he quotes from the American College of Paediatricians (ACP), a breakaway handful of wingnuts, established in 2002 in response to the AAP's refusal to engage in anti-gay lobbying: http://www.americancollegeofpediatricians.org/ The report that so enraged the ACP culture warriors can be found here: http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;109/2/341 In the ACP's literature, "the best available science" refers to the dodgy studies that meet their ideological, not scientific, criteria. One measure of the authority of a website is the number and quality of other sites linking to it. Here are the links to the ACP: http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&num=50&q=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.americancollegeofpediatricians.org%2F++&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq= and here are the links to the AAP: http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&num=50&q=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.aap.org&btnG=Search&meta= Dr van Gend, medical practitioner and writer of "Charlatans of science" http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4821 actually prefers the claims of charlatans to those of evidence-based practitioners. Second, oblivious to van Gend's indignation, the peer-reviewed studies are showing that the children of same-sex couples develop in exactly the same way, and experience exactly the same level of advantage and disadvantage as the children of opposite-sex couples: "two systematic reviews of outcomes for children in lesbian and gay families have been conducted that used similar standardized and validated criteria to evaluate the methodological strength (still restricted to quantitative, comparative studies) and identified 23 and 8 studies, respectively (Anderssen et al., 2002; Hunfeld et al., 2002). All studies reviewed were found to be methodologically rigorous, and both reviews found that the children in lesbian families fared at least as well as those in heterosexual families and those with single parents." http://lawfam.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/23/1/110 (subscription) (Continues) Posted by woulfe, Friday, 12 February 2010 9:56:19 AM
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(Continued from previous)
The AAP report (see link in previous post) makes it clear that most important for children are happy, loving, supportive parents. Parental gender makes no difference: "children are rated as better adjusted when their parents report greater relationship satisfaction, higher levels of love, and lower interparental conflict regardless of their parents’ sexual orientation. Children apparently are more powerfully influenced by family processes and relationships than by family structure." The AAP report concludes with an important message for van Gend and others who malign families led by same-sex couples: "Although gay and lesbian parents may not, despite their best efforts, be able to protect their children fully from the effects of stigmatization and discrimination, parents’ sexual orientation is not a variable that, in itself, predicts their ability to provide a home environment that supports children’s development." http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;109/2/341#SEC3 Third, we need to be deeply suspicious of van Gend's reliance on "obvious insight" and "a self-evident fact of life". Human civilisation has brought us beyond self-evident facts like 'the earth is flat' and 'the stars revolve around the earth'. Evidence-based practice makes intelligent individuals capable of replacing simple truisms like "a child needs a mother and a father" with nuanced knowledge about the capability of all humans to provide a loving and nurturing environment for their children. Posted by woulfe, Friday, 12 February 2010 9:59:00 AM
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woulfe,
Excellent stuff. Thanks. Posted by rstuart, Friday, 12 February 2010 11:37:37 AM
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Those who have been raised without a father-figure might say they would prefer to have been raised with one, but they do not and cannot speak for others who might prefer being alive to not.
I think the author has mis-identified the issues. The question is not whether you think single-parent or same-sex surrogacy is bad, it is whether you are justified in using force to prevent other people who don’t agree with you from bringing people into the world in this way.
You are right that it is vain to appeal to ‘social science’. The issue is the ethical one. But the fact that Margot Somerville fancies herself justified to go poking her nose into other people’s business doesn’t somehow raise her ethical values above those of others who, in bringing new life into the world to love, cannot be said to be doing more harm to it than those who want to use force to stop them.
It is also completely fallacious to identify society with the state, as if only the state has the competence or the goodness to decide what society’s values are or should be. If people decide to do something you don't like, that doesn't mean the state is somehow complicit in it merely because it doesn’t ban it. Your ethics are completely back-to-front.
You haven’t established that the issues you are concerned about are any business of yours or government’s.