Queensland residents draws to the attention of the House:

·         that the Surrogacy Act 2010 allows single people or same sex couples to obtain a child by altruistic surrogacy, thereby depriving the child of either a mother or a father;

·         that it is an offence against a child to wilfully deprive that child of the knowledge and care of their own parents, as stated in the International Convention on the Rights of the Child: “The child shall, wherever possible, grow up in the care and under the responsibility of their parents … a child of tender years shall not, save in exceptional circumstances, be separated from their mother”;

·         that society has caused grave suffering to children in the past by depriving them of their right to both a mother and a father: whether by preventing knowledge of their origins (as with children of anonymous sperm donors) or by compelling them to live without their mother (as with babies removed from unwed mothers) or by the practice of the Aboriginal “stolen generations”;

·         that the “equal right” of every child to enter the world with both a mother and father must take priority over the alleged “equal right” of single people or same sex couples to obtain a child by surrogacy.

Your petitioners, therefore, request the House to repeal all laws and amend any regulations that allow a single person or a same sex couple to obtain a child by surrogacy.