Page 3458 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 11 October 1994
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SUBSTITUTE PARENT AGREEMENTS BILL 1994
[COGNATE BILL AND PAPER:
SUBSTITUTE PARENT AGREEMENTS
(CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS) BILL 1994
SURROGACY AGREEMENTS - DISCUSSION PAPER]
Debate resumed from 19 May 1994, on motion by Mr Connolly:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MADAM SPEAKER: Is it the wish of the Assembly to debate this order of the day concurrently with the Substitute Parent Agreements (Consequential Amendments) Bill 1994 and the discussion paper on surrogacy agreements? There being no objection, that course will be followed. I remind members that, in debating order of the day No. 3, they may also address their remarks to orders of the day Nos 4 and 5.
MRS CARNELL (Leader of the Opposition) (10.00): Madam Speaker, the effect of these Bills as they now stand is to make all forms of surrogacy either illegal or impossible. Commercial surrogacy is banned outright, and I think everybody would support that. I do not think anyone would accept under any circumstances a situation in which babies could be bought and sold.
Mr Connolly: There are some in the community who differ, but none of us here does.
MRS CARNELL: Nobody here does. I was suggesting that nobody here would accept that, Mr Connolly. Also, though, this Bill makes non-commercial surrogacy virtually impossible. It cannot take place because it cannot be facilitated by people with the necessary skills or experience. Clause 8 of the Bill makes it an offence for a medical practitioner to provide any professional or technical services for non-commercial surrogacy. This effective banning of all surrogacy arrangements reflects the fact that the Bill may be a bit out of touch with current, and certainly emerging, medical technology.
Until recently most couples who were infertile and wanted children could adopt them; but the rapid decrease in the number of children available for adoption over the past 10 years has made that means of having a family very difficult, and in many cases impossible. At the same time, there have been successful developments in reproductive technology which mean that at least some couples are able to achieve alternative methods of having children. It is now technically possible for a couple to arrange for a third person to bear a child for them, the advantage over adoption being that the child is the genetic offspring of the couple and more factors, such as knowing the condition of the pregnancy, et cetera, are controllable. Like most technology, surrogacy is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. What matters is the way the technology is used. A knife, for example, can be used for good or evil. Pharmaceutical products can be used to save lives or to kill.
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