Radio 4 now - Surrogacy/Gay couples

What is it with the use of egg donors?

Is it for some legal purpose or does a woman giving birth really feel differently about their baby because it is genetically different? I somehow doubt it.

She may well have disassociated from the baby but the baby hasn't from her.

Well said Happy.

Deliberately causing a baby the trauma of loss of the birth mother is not good parenting. Also, the rights of the baby seem to be nowhere in this discussion (unlike in other countries, particularly those who've banned surrogacy).

The real contract takes place between the buyer and the leasing agent, and the contract stipulates how the factory is to perform in order to produce the quality object the buyer is contracting for.

It is the leasing agent and buyer who have rights. The factory only has duties to perform.

Because the mother isn’t a person, she is a factory.

Marx said it: women are the means of reproduction, just as factories are the means of production.

I’ve just looked at the Rumplestiltskin thread and what strikes me is that if you look to America, the “buyers” seem to have far more rights than in other areas.

For example, over here, if someone is selling a pedigree puppy, they set all the rules. They say when you can pick the puppy up, they can insist you get the puppy neutered or breed it once it’s mature, they can rule that you can never sell the dog on or give it up without coming back to them first. The buyer doesn’t get to waltz in at the moment of the puppy’s birth and take it, the buyer doesn’t get to insist on how the puppy is raised prior to taking it home. We have these rules in place in the dogs best interest.

So why do mothers, who grow the baby, who nurture the baby, who give birth to the baby, seem to have less rights, less of a voice, than someone selling puppies? Why is the “buyer” the one setting all the rules rather than the mother?

I don’t think the powers that be actually care all that much about the needs of gay men.

I think that, just as with the T, the G provides a convenient Means to further the backlash against women.

There is a concerted pincer movement taking place against women, from both the right and the left, with the glorification of porn and prostitution as “work” for women, the removal of private space for women in public, the threats in the US to reproductive control, and the push for paid surrogacy — ALL of it works to drive women out of the labour force at a time when economists are predicting 50% unemployment rates in developed countries within the next 1-2 generations.

It’s very clear, from a bird’s eye view, how men of varying political persuasions want more women to receive economic support: as wives with no control of their own over reproduction, as prostitutes, as surrogates. NOT in direct competition with them.

Another relevant thread The Rumplestiltskin Law
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3606313-The-Rumplestiltskin-Law

Relevant recent thread:

Carriers v Spurters
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3638362-carriers-v-spurters

Another impact on the NHS is NICU cot availability. Always in short supply at the best of times, my hospital in SW had to send a baby to Edinburgh a little while ago.

But these pregnancies have a higher rate of twins and higher risk so likely this will be another problem for the NHS to accommodate.

Suggestions for questions welcome.

"After an introduction to our proposals or questions on each topic, there will be time for questions and discussion."

Will have to think of the single most important question as I doubt there will be a chance for two bites of the cherry.

I'm thinking of sticking with impact on the NHS/costs to the state.

Link to more details about the event I plan to go to.

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/building-families-through-surrogacy-a-new-law-a-consultation-event-cardiff-tickets-64662961659

Excellent post CatherineofAragon

I have thought too how much validation must play a part, not to mention a sprinkle of cast off celebrity fairy dust for surrogates if celebs. Imagine having the Kardashians as your clients.

Also agree about the normalisation of gay's needs being met as you say Goosefoot

Any word of objection is shot down with accusations of homophobia no matter how much you point out an objection to surrogacy for anyone.

I'm against surrogacy for many of the reasons listed here but I'm also a lesbian parent to children born using donor sperm. For me the desire to have children was so strong that I'd have had them with a man if that was the only way. I'm not saying it would have ended well but that need was far stronger than anything sexual at that point in my life. I didn't have to because I could access other options. So I suppose my point is that if you give people options they will use them. The urge to procreate is very strong.

It suits the narrative to say that the woman suffers no harm, that she is doing it altruistically, that she even takes joy from it, but feels no personal pain, be it physical or psychological. To me, it goes hand in hand with the normalisation of sex work.
Yes, it's woman as passive, non-corrosive vessel, like a boat or a vase: I am both unchanged and validated by what you put in me and what you get out of me. There is no sense of something being used up, or requiring maintanance, care, replenishment.
But if you were a casual listener, if you weren't listening to what she is not allowed to say, if you hadn't thought about the issue, then it would be, "Ahh, bless them all." Yes! Aww, babies What's better than woman and baby? Man and baby of course.
Yet a cursory glance at MN will reveal the tumult behind pregnancy, and of course there's the small matter that we're not fully empowered to end our own pregnancy if we want to.

I don't understand how you can get a lot of joy from an experience that you've also described as not belonging to you

I remember watching an interview with a surrogate who had done it 6 times so. She also claimed to feel totally detached whilst simultaneously describing the joy of the prospective parents. They lavished her with attention during the pregnancy, daily phonecalls, constant reminders that she 'was giving them the best gift ever' massive gratitude, coffee and lunch dates, cards, gifts, personal validation.

It struck me that it was similar in a way to Munchusens. During the pregnancy the surrogate is lavished with attention, including medical attention for those with extra funds. As soon as the baby arrives the empty feeling starts, so they sign up again. No woman would go through all that for strangers unless there was a payoff. I understand in the USA there is financial redress so maybe different, but not in the UK so you have to question their motives and the state of their mental health.

I think the thing that strikes me particularly with male gay couples is the extent to which it's being implied that opposing this kind of surrogacy is an affront to their right to be a parent, just like straight couples. Sometimes it's said right out, and other times implied. And I've seen the same thing with sperm donation for lesbian couples - if you oppose it, it is homophobic.

I think the reason that it's gained some traction might be because recent marriage equality campaigns have made that language acceptable. It's similar to the love is love idea, it was widely used here and people now are very comfortable with it. And we see it suddenly being used to justify all kinds of weird shit.
In this case, a lot of people have gotten used to thinking, we have to treat gay couples just like straight ones, in marriage and also adoption, and somehow that sense is used to say, we need to allow them to use whatever reproductive tech they need as well.

It's a logical leap, but I have become increasingly depressed about how easy it seems to get people to make these leaps as long as you use the right slogans. It's a clear pattern, establish the slogan, or just the woke idea we all need to believe, and then you can use it for whatever you want.

Shame privacy and doesn't extend to the mother and child.

www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/06/her-name-is-monroe-christine

OP the non disclosure contracts are interesting. Now you mention it, we have never heard a whisper from the surrogates of the rich and famous as far as I know. They must be pretty draconian and watertight I would think.

SirVixifVixHall

The Cardiff event is one of several public consultation events. I'm expecting to be told how wonderful the brave new world is, it says a chance to discuss but I think you may have to submit questions in advance.

Anyway I have the afternoon off that day and thought I would go along to see and hear. Think I'll wear my "Hands off my rights " T shirt.

Excellent twitter thread regarding the situation in India where they have passes laws to shut down the international surrogacy trade. (Which then moves on to another impoverished country).

twitter.com/matthewgreenf11/status/1150826082687442944?s=12

Here is a really good programme on the subject.

Despite the title being in Spanish, it only has Spanish subtitles.

It really annoys me that women are being closed out of the surrogacy debate around the world by gay men. Gay men have decided that what they want (a baby), a biological impossibility, is what they get and those of us who object to the commodification of women are shut down with the "homophobic" chant.

What is is that people are so afraid of the gay lobby now that they have to tip toe around all of this and be seen as supporting it, even to the detriment of their own sex, their own bodies, their own daughters?

When did we stop saying no to people - you are a gay couple, you can marry, you can live openly as a gay couple but no, you cannot have children. You cannot pay a woman, anywhere in this world, to take your sperm and make you a baby. That's biology.

Oh, and I also feel the same for all other surrogacy, it's just the media focus seems to be on this type.