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

Those of us against surrogacy are so because it’s not really informed consent and nobody thinks of the baby is these situations

I don't know who it is but I'm against surrogacy. It's human traficking and there are plenty of children to adopt/foster in the world.

That’s not how it works. A baby will know its mother’s voice. And sometimes its fathers. Visitors - no. Also, unless you see the parents very regularly it’s entirely inappropriate to always be hanging around your surrogate. They’re a human not a doll

Nobody deserves children. nOt me, not you. But being able to have one yourself with your consent is entirely different to using the body of another person.

And actually there are so many well informed anti-surrogacy posters on MN who see a person desire to have “a baby of their own” does never ever tell the rights of another woman, her health or her life

Everyone is thinking of the baby in a surrogacy!

The woman who wants a baby.
The woman who can carry the baby for someone else for "living expenses"

The baby is the end result, granted, it's all a bit transactional for some.

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”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Good point!

How about the baby?

Yabu to use the word barren

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