Surrogacy

That is really shocking Barracker and I’m not shocked by much any more. Wow. How on earth can you go through that and have now qualms about inflicting it on others? That’s actually horrifying.

If a country quite rightly outlaws surrogacy, it has to allow it to go ahead if the children have already been conceived. Or provide lifelong support to the exploited mothers. Punishing those women and their babies is clearly appalling

A link to a radio 4 programme about the Cambodian surrogates. They outlawed surrogacy, recognising how women are exploited by wealthy couples seeking a baby gestator, but these women have been left in a terrible position.

Crossing Continents - A Stark Choice for Cambodia's Surrogates - @bbcradio4
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001bpp

There are plenty of women who have used surrogates.

Yep. I am part of a private FB group for women who have lifelong health problems, including subsequent infertility, entirely as a result of having catastrophically haemorrhaged post partum, resulting in permanent pituitary damage.

These women are pretty poorly, and entirely because of childbirth.
And yet, in a conversation about hiring surrogates for their next child, they all gushed about how great this was. I tried to raise the issue that they of all people understood the immense damage childbirth could wreak. Their condition is often fatal, and very life limiting. And to expect another woman to take on that risk on your behalf, knowing what you know, is just...well. I was shocked.

They told me to shut TF up in so many words. Some people will cheerfully let others take on horrible risks to get their needs met, and so much of that is society letting on that this is normal, everyone's doing it, its fine. If it's normalised by their own culture, people will wilfully blind themselves to a complete lack of ethical behaviour. And they'll shut up people who make them feel guilty about exploiting others.

C'est la vie.

Oh and Yotam Ottolenghi. Put me right off him.

I am definitely against commercial surrogacy.

As another poster on here said once - at what age does it become unacceptable to buy another human being?

While broadly speaking I agree with all the issues about potential harm to children born this way, I would be interested in what posters think about the babies born in Cambodia recently. Where the surrogate mothers arw being forced to keep the babies. Many of these babies now face lives of abject poverty, cultural isolation as they may look nothing like their "family" as they have no genetic connection. Some will be Caucasian some Chinese... The damage to them could be immeasurable. Instead they could be with their genetic families, living very different lives and the surrogate mother's lives and families lives transformed by the money?
This is what made me realise that surrogacy should just be stopped.. No exception

That list

Also Cristiano Ronaldo and Robbie Williams.

sorry bold fail!

The authorities try to prevent children from being adopted wherever possible. They provide enormous support because they recognise that it is best for a child to remain with their birth mother wherever possible.
That thinking logically can't change when a woman has a baby to order and yet it does. It's massive cognitive dissonance.

Exactly. It's because rich people are used to getting what they want, no matter the damage. But this is damage to a child. We have to fight any attempt to sell women and babies in this way.

What women do, that only women can do, is devalued in our culture. Yet all of us are here because of it.

This. And by devaluing it, and taking it away in the case of surrogacy, we simply don't know what the long term impacts on the child will be. They could be huge in terms of mental health. It's experimentation on children for what? For the entitled wants of rich people who want to own a baby. Not care for a baby, not do the best by a child, because if they did they could adopt children who really need help instead of use surrogacy. It's all about their wants and needs, with no thought for the child. In surrogacy you're starting out by doing something that could conceivably really harm a child. That is not a good sign for a parent.

The authorities try to prevent children from being adopted wherever possible. They provide enormous support because they recognise that it is best for a child to remain with their birth mother wherever possible.

That thinking logically can't change when a woman has a baby to order and yet it does. It's massive cognitive dissonance.

That column in the Times is distasteful reading... in fact I've stopped reading it because my blood pressure can't take it. As you say, it's just "me me me me me."

Carriemac
I'm glad you raised that column. I recall that she's a woman who had cancer so understand that she's encountered loss and challenges. But the focus of her column is unremittingly self absorbed and her "concerns" about her surrogates is all about her needs. I note the occasional challenge in the comments but they are repeatedly seen off by her supporters. No questioning comments allowed.

I now avoid reading it as it's unremittingly self absorbed and so uncaring / ignorant about the surrogates.

I don't really think surrogacy can be compared to removal at birth for child protection reasons. A baby removed from its mother at birth these days is highly likely to have been subjected to drugs, alcohol, smoking and/or poor nutrition, incest, and/or to have inherited one of a number of detrimental psychological conditions. Those factors are clearly going to contribute to a higher rate of developmental and emotional problems for the children.

Babies removed at birth are rarely given straight to their adopters, either. They usually spend at least 3 months or so with a foster carer, before being moved to their adoptive family. That's much more likely to cause attachment problems, IMO, than if they were able to be with the same loving adoptive parents from birth.

I've just watched the TV shows on the Drewitt-Barlow family, as was interested to learn more about them. I am now decidedly against surrogacy....it is not remotely in the childs best interest to be 'made to order' for anyone....I know that sucks for gay men, but having children is not a human right-there is the option of adopting or fostering.

That list

www.parents.com/parenting/celebrity-parents/moms-dads/celebrities-who-used-surrogates/

Four of these women had given birth but still went down the surrogacy route.

For me though the view that is being pushed is so utterly male

Only a man can think that removing a baby from it's mother immediately after birth is OK

There are plenty of women who have used surrogates.

Do babies taken into nicu immediately after birth, sometimes for months, also suffer from not being with their mothers?

Yes. That’s why mothers are encouraged to do as much of the non-medical care as possible (nappy changes, feeds etc) as well as offering skin to skin (kangaroo care) as much as possible.

That column in the times on saturday about a search for a surrogate in the US is so unpleasant. Sophie Beresiner - its all 'me me me' and she is so callous about the surrogae and her health. last week was one of the worst - when she decided she was so speacia; to be a suurogate herself...

'the space in my head freed up by not dwelling on the medical process has been neatly taken up by something else. The big questions: Why be a surrogate? What does it take? And the soul-searching — because it’s amazing what experiencing someone else’s altruism will do to you.

I have concluded that . . . I categorically couldn’t do it. Nope, absolutely not. Not even for a hefty wedge of cash. I’m pretty sure I’m too emotional; definitely sensitive, not selfless enough.'

Do babies taken into nicu immediately after birth, sometimes for months, also suffer from not being with their mothers?

Menuplanet... You articulated better than I did. When I said it must seem easy... I didnt mean it superficially but I do believe that these uneducated unsupported women in desparate situations do not have the intellectual ability to look at the rational arguments and decide.
They don't critical weigh up risks vs benefits.
If I was in that position and offered a huge sum I'd think this seems easy way out of poverty

I’m glad to see that someone bought up adoption as a comparative issue. The idea that only the most at risk babies are taken from their mothers because of the known and established links between bonding and attachment. How does that reconcile with the idea that a child can be removed from its birth mother, the woman who gestated him/her with no consideration of the emotional impact on the infant.

I knew a girl who was adopted at birth. Lifelong issues with attachment and fear of abandonment attributed to the separation from her mother at birth.

If pro surrogacy supporters do not give a damn about women’s bodies being used as commodities (let’s look to history for endless proof of this), maybe they could bring themselves to give a shit about the lifelong welfare issues potentially faced by a newborn baby.

I dream of a world where subjective concepts of what constitutes a ‘human right’ do not override the actual rights of women and children.

I doubt it seems easy and it's not to do with critical thinking.

The women are desperate.
It feels like a lot of money vs the risks.
From something I read it's not uncommon for the husband to be the one who decides. The woman does as she's told.

It's awful.Extraordinarily exploitative.

In less poor countries you still have women who are poor. You still have women who are desperate. You still have abusive relationships.

For me though the view that is being pushed is so utterly male.

The idea is that if you use donated egg then the surrogate is not "related" to the baby in any way. This is bollocks. It is male idea > their only contribution is DNA. For women's contribution it's twofold. The egg (DNA). But ALSO carrying the baby. The woman grows the baby from her own body > that will have massive impact. In fact this is recognised in that women who are surrogates have a massive "must not" list. It is accepted that what she does, how healthy she is etc impacts the foetus. But it ignores that the child is built of her, that it knows her heartbeat above all else, recognises her voice. That it will be affected by her emotions. To take that out and say that genetic contributors are the ONLY ones with relationship to baby is a totally male perspective. It is also misogynist, it sees the woman as a vessel, just a bag to grow a baby in with no link to it, no interaction, which every woman knows (and every human knows, really) is not how it is.

Only a man can think that removing a baby from it's mother immediately after birth is OK.

When you see a nature prog and the baby is apart from mother this is a cause for concern worry upset. We are animals, mammals, and this is instinctive.

To throw all this away to enable babies to be bought by mainly men but women too is appalling.

The people who should be consulted into whether this is OK or not are mothers. We know better than anyone the risks and so on. I didn't know before I had kids.

Of course mothers are not worth talking to about anything so let's go ask a load of gay men whether it's a good idea instead.