Dr. Joanna Rose:

In terms of surrogacy, it is fascinating in a way. There has been quite a lot of emphasis on the importance of the people who are the intended parents being genetic parents. All of a sudden that is important but for the donor offspring it does not really matter. This is a very interesting change in emphasis. In the case of surrogacy where there is IVF treatment, often the surrogate mother can, by accident, become the genetic parent so there is a need to legislate to have testing of that child to check whether he or she was conceived from the surrogacy of a donor egg. When there is discussion about the best interests of the child, I am fascinated to hear about stress for the child. I refer to things such as separation from the mother who carried that child. That matter has not yet been discussed.

When we look at adoption, for example, we have information from Nancy Verrier in The Primal Woundon the significance of the child being removed from the mother. She is only person the child has known during gestation, and that includes things such as the food eaten by the mother and the sounds and the music listened to by the mother. When a child is born - and I know this from experience - the only person that child really wants is the mother who gave birth to him or her. This provides an example of the sheer lack of understanding about the types of emotional impacts for those children produced that there is no discussion at all yet about the stress caused to a child by being separated at birth - in the car park perhaps or wherever it is legally - through surrogacy. I refer to the fragmentation of the sense of motherhood.