To not be surprised a 35 year old with a history of eating disorder would struggle to get pregnant (lily Collins)

I am willing to bet that the surrogate is poor though. If it were a family member they would have said so.

Lily has spoken publicly before of her previous EDs, how she wanted to be open about it and how she was worried it might affect her ability to have children. So it’s reasonable to assume that her use of a surrogate is related to that.
If so, it’s very sad and highlights the awful long lasting side effects of EDs. Very likely she would much rather have been able to carry the pregnancy herself.

I don't like this post. None of us knows her and her circumstances. It's ugly tittle tattle.

This is interesting as we don’t hear about the trauma when a premature baby is separated from its mother and they then are in incubators with sometimes no human touch as they are too fragile. I saw a thread once where it was said that volunteers often go to nicu units to cuddle babies with nobody there and how it helps them massively - these would be strangers to those babies and there’s a huge benefit - so in the case of a surrogate giving birth and that healthy baby being handed straight to the intended parents for immediate and prolonged touch warmth and comfort surely they will be fine ?

inknew you were going to mention breastfeeding.

my sister gavr birth to twin at 7 months instead of 9. They went straight to icu she didnt even get a cuddle.
one of them had to stay in there for 3 months has got jaundice.

both we never breastfed. One of them never hold in arms for the first 3 months of his life.

fast forward to now. He is 25, mega tall and strong, totally handsome, very very happy and very close to his mum. He has no mental health issues or attachment issues to any of his parents, siblings, aunties and uncles, grandparents.

so moo point yo you

@gahla Maybe she wanted to increase her audience, more followers = more revenue.
People go to crazy lengths to keep influencing their followers.

@Biffbaff but this baby is purposely being created to not be with its birth mother.

Yabu to use the word barren

How about the baby?

Good point!

Celebrities normalising surrogacy is so horrible. They may have treated their birth mother (although they’ll never refer to her as that) well and paid her handsomely and proffered thanks on Instagram. But it is not like that for all surrogates. The reason it was outlawed in places like India is because very poor, uneducated, desperate women were doing it over and over, putting their bodies through hell for a wage and handing their babies over to rich Westeners who sometimes didn’t even take the babies at the end if there were birth defects. There were unlicensed, unregulated clinics popping up everywhere. Sex selection. It was an unholy racket and was rightly banned.

Not to mention the confused effects on children born this way. People forget that supplying an egg and sperm merely provides the blueprint for a human. The actual baby is grown and created from the birth mother’s blood and tissue. It is her child - as I’m sure all women who become pregnant from a donor egg would agree. The child is entirely from and of her body.

Creating every cell of an entire baby with your body from the microscopic embryo, and giving life and birth to that baby, is of far more importance and gravitas than donating an egg or a sperm, which is meaningless on its own.

How on earth do you know that, unless you’ve adopted and welcomed a surrogate child. I don’t think this is any of our business but how the actual f do you know it’s not the same. I’m a mum of biological and adopted children, your comment is disgusting.

These women are not in "handmaid's tale" circumstances, they've volunteered, not been coerced etc.
That's naively thought out.
They're not volunteering out of love, it's usually to support their existing children, desperation and poverty.
Do some research on surrogate accommodation in Ukraine, many women praying the time will pass for the payout, many hiding for months so the children at home won't know they're pregnant.
It's not living expenses covered, it's a wage for the job.

I dont think you should be so judgemental until you've been a surrogate living in poverty, or a child that has been sold. How strange you think we only have to see it from the view of the most privileged person in the situation.

Wow I didn't have "surrogacy is human trafficking" on my Mumsnet bingo card but I guess life is full of surprises!

While I agree that it is optimal for a baby to thrive alongside its birth mother, human babies have adapted to being fostered by wider circles of other humans over centuries. The maternal death rate would have seen to that. Many, many babies have been raised by people who didn't give birth to them, probably not too far back in your own lineage if you looked into it.

I don’t see how Lily’s surrogacy is comparable to a surrogacy where the surrogate is doing it for purely money. I suspect Lily has used a used a high-end agency who will only select surrogate that are not doing it for money, who live on a farms, eat organic, practices yoga in the California sun and has had 5 children. It’s like comparing a woman who has been kidnapped and forced into prostitution, to a woman who has had a good supportive upbringing and yet chooses to become a sex worker.

Surrogacy can be a really positive thing when done in the right environment; right legislation that offers protection to everyone which means the right surrogate candidate (high end US surrogate agencies don’t use 20 year old girls they tend to go for women who have had their families), the right support for the surrogate, the right match between surrogate and mother (again high end surrogate agencies match them so that they have common interests so that they form a friendship). Also the US surrogates that celebrities tend to use will be highly educated women.

I think your points are baseless and vague. And you’re trying to encapsulate so many different circumstances and motivations surrounding surrogacy as though it’s a one size fits all type of subject. And such an approach actually perpetuates the very thing that you say you are against.

Surely it’s better to have open decisions to find ways to surrogacy that protects the baby, and all involved. I think there’s a lot that governments can learn from the high end surrogate market when legislating surrogacy.

The result is a baby purposely taken away from its birth mother

OK, your view, you're allowed to have it.
My view is different.

It’s a sore point because I’m sick to death of women’s rights and autonomy being trampled over in the interest of other people

Lilly Collins probably used an agency who pay poor women to risk their lives for strangers. Many bio parents never even meet their surrogate, they literally hire a womb. Either way IMO, for good reasons, its unacceptable

This, for some reason, is a real sore point for you and, as I said, we are allowed to have a difference of opinions on this.

I dont think Lily Collins chased some random stranger round the supermarket screaming "have my baby", nor did find the local crackhead who wants money for her next fix, there's obviously a process. A woman put herself forward for the part of bun baking. These 2 women came together and the end result is a baby with loving parents.

But if a woman wants to be a surrogate, then that's none of yours or anyone's else business.

Again, would you support the selling of human organs?

We often prevent people doing something that they might otherwise be willing to do. Surrogacy should be banned as it is in many countries and I am appalled by the recent attempts to reduce the rights of surrogates.

It depends how you define coerced. I think being tempted into putting yourself at risk because you need money or feel beholden to give “a gift” to a couple is a form of coercion.

Do you think people should be allowed to sell their organs? It’s theirs afterall!

But if a woman wants to be a surrogate, then that's none of yours or anyone's else business.
These women are not in "handmaid's tale" circumstances, they've volunteered, not been coerced etc.

Yes, people might not agree with it but I don't think it's the worst thing in world.

We differ in opinion and that's ok.

You could say it’s you bunch of judgemental women that ‘don’t deserve children’
This is a human rights problem.
No one deserves children.

If these people were thinking of the baby they wouldn’t treat them like they are a pet to be collected from a pet shop.

Its selfish, exploitative and surrogates who are well off don’t exist because they don’t need “living expenses”