Please write an email in your own words, even if it is just a sentence or two. This will go the Upper House Members in WA State Parliament.

IMPORTANT: Please also commence your email saying that the you are opposed to expanding the existing surrogacy eligibility criteria and arrangements in Western Australia.

You might like to mention IN YOUR OWN WORDS one to three of the following issues:

• That you sympathise with childless couples who have been unable to conceive or bear children through natural means.
• Your concerns about vulnerable women being used and children being treated like commodities.
• Children to be born to single parents by choice rather than necessity. Research over decades shows that children generally thrive better when raised by two parents, a mother and a father. Public support for these single parenting also puts a huge cost on the taxpayer. While children find themselves motherless or fatherless, mainly due to tragic or undesirable events in their lives or the lives of their parents, this does not mean that we as a society should not strive to ensure that they are afforded every opportunity to have a mother and a father.
• That all children should know and have ongoing contact with their birth and biological parents. Also surrogacy intentionally deprives children of their biological parents breaks the natural bond between mother and child. It is against the best interests of the child to break this bond. Article 9 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child says Australia shall ensure that a child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will.
• that the ARTS Bill offers no protections against children being obtained by paedophiles under surrogacy arrangements. Despite previous cases of this happening in Australia, there are not even minimal checks and balances required in this Bill, such as a Working with Children Check.
• that the best interests of the child should be top priority, not the desires of parents who want to become parents. The wishes of same-sex parents and single people should not be put above the interests of children.
• That despite commercial surrogacy being illegal in Australia, many babies are born and brought into WA each year through international and commercial surrogacy arrangements and no legal action is taken and their adoption is legally recognised. WA should enforce the existing laws to stop this illegal trade in babies.