• 24 hours until vote – Family Council of Qld says “Stop this assault on the rights of a child”

    Date: 2010.02.09 | Category: Children's Rights, Community, Parliament, Same Sex Parenting | Tags: ,,

    Media Release | 09 February 2009

     

    As the Surrogacy Bill 2009 comes before Parliament today or tomorrow, the Family Council of Queensland has stepped up its opposition, through its campaign Kids Rights Count (www.KidsRightsCount.org.au).

    Family doctor and FCQ spokesman, Dr David van Gend, with FCQ president Alan Baker, wrote to all MPs today saying:

    “This Bill should have been about altruistic surrogacy as a ‘last resort’ for an infertile couple. But no, under that respectable cloak this Bill smuggles in an oppressive proposal to deprive children of their birthright – their fundamental right to enter the world, as all of us did, with both a mother and a father.

    “By what authority does any government permit adults to deny a child her primal right and most profound emotional need: to have both a Mum and a Dad in her life?”

    Dr van Gend underlined that: “This Bill allows adults over 25 (including a single man or woman, or same-sex couples) to obtain a child ‘of their own’ using reproductive technology like IVF and a surrogate womb – and the birth certificate will be legally falsified to declare the single woman, or the two men, to be the baby’s ‘parents’.”

    The campaign website stresses how and why this is wrong.  It cites the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child which affirms that a child must not, “save in the most exceptional circumstances, be separated from his mother.”

    “And yet this Bill will do exactly that, in a premeditated way,” says Dr van Gend. “For example, a little girl or boy shall live without a mother, simply to satisfy the desire of two men to have a baby of their own. This Bill clearly despises the rights of this child; it is an assault on the heart and mind of a little child, and any MP who votes for this Bill is complicit in that assault.”

    WRONG – BUT ALSO UNNECESSARY

    The Kids Rights Count website presents videos of various experts including lawyers who underline how unnecessary this bill is. David Grace of Cooper Grace Ward recommends an alternative of an amendment to the existing Succession Act (to give surrogate children inheritance rights). Federal Court parenting orders already provide for the legal guardianship of the child.

    But, in an interview on ABC radio last week featuring the Attorney General, Mr Cameron Dick and Dr van Gend, Mr Dick argued that this Bill is necessary to remove the current penalty of imprisonment for “parents” who obtain a surrogate child.

    The Family Council of Queensland agrees that it’s not in the interests of an innocent child for his carers to be imprisoned, so we support that change, but not through this Bill. Change can be achieved by amending existing surrogacy laws rather than introducing this extreme piece of social engineering.

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    CONTACT: Alan Baker (President FCQ) ph: —; Dr David van Gend (Committee Member) ph: — Cath Smibert (media adviser) n—

    KEY QUOTE: Dr David van Gend of Kids Rights Count -

    “There is no necessity for the Surrogacy Bill 2009. There is a grave necessity – and duty – to reject a Bill that would, through normalizing same-sex and single surrogacy, intentionally and wantonly deprive a child of her birthright and her most profound psychological need: to have both a mother and a father.”

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