MN editorial on how wonderful surrogacy is

Some adoption is wrong IMO. I always found the film Juno really uncomfortable personally. The baby scoop era adoptions in the last century were also morally dubious.

Some of the arguments against surrogacy on here apply equally to adoption and also to pregnancy in general.

No they don’t.

You’re entitled to your views on surrogacy. But the comparisons you’re making are whataboutery as they’re entirely different things. ONLY surrogacy deliberately sets out to separate mother and child. That’s the point we are making and one of the main reasons people are against surrogacy. Comparing it to kids who end up in bad homes is nonsense. Not the same thing. At all.

I had fertility issues and we had to use IVF, so I understand how much you can long for children of your own, but if we hadn't succeeded with IVF we would have adopted. Not taken advantage of a woman's bad financial situation.

No. The difference is, you’re separating it from its mother, as part of the plan. You keep ignoring that part and engaging in whataboutery. Only surrogacy intends to separate mother and child from the outset.

It's not whataboutery, it's a discussion where people share different viewpoints.

I don't see it the same as you. That doesn't make your view more important or more right. It is an opinion.

Some of the arguments against surrogacy on here apply equally to adoption and also to pregnancy in general.

Yes, surrogacy is a deliberate act but so to is getting pregnant from a ONS and then bringing the baby into a chaotic home where its needs aren't met.

If it's a baby born as a result of an altruistic surrogate, loved and cared for I think that is less harmful than a child being dragged up in a terrible family situation.

For me, it's not a black and white choice

The ultimate red line is our own body.

Noone can or should ever have a claim over the inside of another person's body.
You can't reclaim a donated kidney, or blood, or egg. Once it is inside another person it is part of their body, their sovereignty, and all claims over it are forfeit. Forever.

If it's within my skin, it's mine.

@GreatestShowUnicorn
I would consider doing an AMA if @Mnhq asked me.

People often don’t want to hear the views of people like me though. They get angry and say I should just be grateful to be alive.

The cognitive dissonance needed to hold that:

In IVF, babies that are born from donor gametes are the children of the woman who carried them

AND simultaneously that

In surrogacy, babies that are born from donor gametes are the children of the gamete donors

is quite astonishing to me.

Both cannot be true.

Who created the page please YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet?

Because if this is Mumsnet's own copy I want to complain about the blatant pro-surrogacy bias.

But I did suspect this content has been placed by a third party.

Can you please confirm WHO created this copy?

All these people who approve of altruistic surrogacy and know people who have done it... do you know anyone who changed their mind? Like a sister that couldn’t do it and kept it? What happens to the entire family then?

But you could use that argument about all babies - no child asks to be born. They only exist because parents made a decision to have a baby.

No. The difference is, you’re separating it from its mother, as part of the plan. You keep ignoring that part and engaging in whataboutery. Only surrogacy intends to separate mother and child from the outset.

Who is the mother?
The one who carried created the foetus/baby

Yes. The one who created the baby. We don't 'carry' other people's babies like cantaloupes in a bag for life.
Babies are created FROM the body of the mother. The mother is the one who created the baby in her body, and from her body.

Otherwise, we'd be condoning third parties having legal claims to the inside of a woman.

Slavery is outlawed. Let's not reintroduce it.

^Re. Separating a mum from the child. Who is the mother? The one who carried the foetus/baby or the one who gave the egg?
What about IVF with donor egg?^

The mother is the one who grew that child from a few cells, for 10 months. Who's voice, and heartbeat that child felt from before it could feel, or was a child.

Buying babies is wrong. You shouldn't be able to commission a human like you would a painting for the living room.

I don't agree with surrogacy. I appreciate wanting a child and not being able to have one but when we were considering a second child, (major complications with 1st) we looked into adoption, surrogacy was never even an option.

With adoption there are strict regulations and a lot of assessment of potential parents, with suragacy there does not seem to be the same stringent checks.

Who paid you to recruit our wombs, MNHQ?

Babies aren’t objects. They have rights too. This is about intentionally creating it, using the body of the mother who is then separated from them at birth. Why the fuck would anyone want this situation?

But you could use that argument about all babies - no child asks to be born. They only exist because parents made a decision to have a baby.

I think that surrogacy can be done responsibly and sensitively. I feel that your objections are more to do with your fear that the surrogate is being exploited rather than the effects on the child.

I once offered to be a surrogate for my sister after she suffered multiple miscarriages. She turned me down.

Then I realised how fucked up and abusive her marriage was and I was relieved I didn't give away my baby to be raised in that environment. I'd never been supportive of commercial surrogacy, but that was what turned me against altruistic surrogacy as well. I realised that all I cared about was easing my sister's heartbreak, and not about the consequences for the baby.

Hmm I’m in two minds about that.

I know a woman who is a surrogate. She did that to help a couple having their own child. It was totally selfless, just like some people decide to give a kidney. I think that’s how it should be.

Re. Separating a mum from the child. Who is the mother? The one who carried the foetus/baby or the one who gave the egg?
What about IVF with donor egg?

There's a panel on surrogacy at FiLiA this year.

twitter.com/FiLiA_charity/status/1144878309148364801

@MNHQ is this a paid advertisement, and if so who is the advertiser?

Did you agree to receive money from a third party in exchange for them gaining the opportunity to pitch to women - yes, they seem to know which type of women to pitch to oddly - to use us as breeders?

I'm bloody appalled that a site for women with the most active women's rights forum on the internet is RECRUITING us for our female body parts.
Did you take money for this? Who from? To basically pitch our bodies as potential commodities to a lobbying organisation?

That clearly isn't a balanced discussion of surrogacy - it's an advert recruiting rented wombs.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, MNHQ?
Have you lost your minds?

• Equating an organ and a potential human life?... Really? I noticed that on the opt out list that one of the 'not for donation at present' list was also womb and feotus.... This 'at present' really worries me!*

No, of course not, I clearly expressed myself badly.

DD has been told uterine transplants are a "thing" (professor of gynaecology, highly respected in her field) and will escalate over the next 10/20 years. So in terms of organs absolutely nothing is off the table anymore.

If you support surrogacy do you support all surrogacy? What about social surrogacy - women who use surrogates because they don't want to impact their career, or lose their figure?

@LadyGardens it's a mistake to think that children from international adoptions will have fewer difficulties than children from the UK. I think you may have a slightly outdated picture of adoption.

But your argument, while correct (children who are going to need adoption should be adopted sooner), has not got much to do with surrogacy. It is also hard to raise a child born through surrogacy, you have many of the same issues to consider as adoptive parents, and the training should be the same, as should the approval process. Surrogacy shouldn't be an "easy option".

I was more referring to adoption being hard because we do not support international adoptions and uk adoptions often wait for a child to be really quite damaged before they are placed for adoption.

I am adopted myself. I wholeheartedly believe in the rigorous process for selecting adoptive parents. I am less comfortable with the damage we allow birth parents and temporary placements to inflict on young children before we place them in a permanent new family. But that’s another thread.