Does Germaine Greer have a point?

What a lot of fuss about an administration error. "whenim64* and those who agreed are quite right the forms should be updated and the administrators who need to do this should catch up with where we are now.

I have noticed that Germaine Greer seems to be losing the plot a little recently - very sad but I suppose old age affects many of us in the "turn back the clock" way at times, I just didn't expect it of her.

Nelliemoser - Elton and David's boys know who their surrogate mother is. Evidently, despite a fall out at some stage, they're now pals again.

I am not against gay men or lesbian women, indeed any one, becoming parents via surrogacy, adoption or other means. I wish there were safeguards in place to prevent potential child abusers exploiting this situation, but that's a whole other topic. I agree with comments above about the use of the term 'parent' on birth certificates seeming more sensible than mother for David Furnish for example.

Research around the emotional impact of adoption and family break down on children, suggests a basic need for humans to know who we are, where we came from. I haven't expressed that very well, but hope my meaning is clear enough.

In addition to emotional needs, there is the need for basic medical information about family history. Friends in the gransnet age group who were adopted know nothing about their genetic make up. Changes in the way we understand the needs of adopted children should ensure that doesn't happen now.

I'm unclear about the rights of children born as a result of sperm/egg doner to have information about their genetic parent. What happens to eggs donated to childless couples, that aren't used? Can those eggs be sold on to other childless individuals. What happens to protect the siblings from forming relationships with each other, unknowingly, later in life.

I'm not a huge fan of Germaine but she's raising the profile of this complicated situation.

What happens when/if those boys want to know who their genetic mother was?
Am I right in thinking these boys were born to the surrogate by a third party egg doner?

Were these boy's births registered here or in the USA?

Have these boys been officially adopted by DF & EJ as a couple are they the father of one each?
I do wonder how this works legally.

Thanks Merlot but already done it.
As you were everyone

Yes. I couldn't get my head round that bit - about the Abortion Act.

Feel free to stick it on here janea.

She also said according to the article that the 1967 Abortion Act was only brought into help the 'fertility industry'. Nothing to do with stopping women suffering the dreadful effects of insanitary, illegal abortions in the back streets, oviously, Germaine.
I think she's losing the plot.
I'm going to start another thread about her tiff with Jane Fonda, don't want to derail this one.

Elton John has always been a bit silly, Germaine Greer has always been a bit intense and, quite obviously, David Furnish is not a mother.

Yes, it's all very complicated. Sad for the children if they do wish they could track their ancestry in later years.

I gather Elton and David are friends with the biological mother in a sisterly sort of way so surely the children will already have contact with her but goodness knows what their understanding will be.

Years before IVF was possible, there was AID. The donor was usually anonymous but the husband of the mother was allowed by law to be named as the father on the birth certificate. Birth certificates have always had a proportion of them which were wishful thinking/ deliberately misleading or otherwise nothing to do with telling the full genetic story.

Will they be able to trace their donor mother when they are eighteen? Isn't that the law now? Or is that only sperm donors?

www.gov.uk/register-birth/who-can-register-a-birth

Presumably Elton John and David Furnish obtained a parental order from the Court before registering their children.

Surely your birth certificate is about who you are constructed out of, you genes. In this case then the mother should have been named. Maybe there should be space on the certificate for more than two parents, but going off genes then still a baby can only be made out of one man and one woman. And the child has a right to know who it is made up of, regardless of who is bringing that child up. Maybe an adoption certificate does that job, not the birth certificate.

There is no requirement to register a biological mother, is there? The law is only concerned with who the parents are, and they're Elton John and David Furnish in this case. Easily solved by the forms being brought into line with the legal position in the UK which allows same sex marriage and IVF babies by donor egg and/or sperm. Either two fathers on the form, or simply 'Parent (a) and Parent (b)'.

This is surely complicated by the fact that an egg donor is involved, so who would you put as the "biological" mother? I think the first parent and second parent idea would be ideal.

By the way they look like dear little boys!

Isn't that falsifying an official document? There's no way that Furnish can be the 'Mother'. Weird.

A friend's daughter has a child whom she had by (I assume ) artificial insemination while she was in a lesbian partnership so her daughter knows them both as "mummies", not one mummy and one daddy.

Yes. I think adjusting the forms would be the answer as when says.

Agree that calling him mother is inappropriate. Why not register both as fathers?
I noticed as we completed passport applications for 2 little DGs that details are requested for first parent and second parent. Seemed ok to me.

Germaine Greer is missing the point. About time the forms were adjusted to allow for these circumstances. In the end, it's about who the legal parents are - two dads who both need space on the forms. No-one needs to kick up a fuss about eggs until they are fertilised, viable and likely to be born.

So, yes, she has a point but I think her expression of it is a bit OTT.

I think it would be better to say the kids have two adoptive parents who are both men. Straight facts and no nonsense about concepts being deconstructed.

Don't get me wrong, all three of my children came from good eggs, but all the other eggs were just unfertilised eggs, like the chicken eggs we eat. Silly to get emotional about them.

Can't say I cared that much about my discarded eggs, you know, the ones that just flushed themselves out on a fairly regular basis all through my reproductive years.

I don't agree that the concept of motherhood has been deconstructed. I don't think it could be by a man simply calling himself a mother. Being a mother is more than a name, more than just a concept.