Famous men and surrogacy

Just pondering on the famous men do it part of this thread, I can't think of a single famous woman who has done it. Single as in, not in a relationship.

Charlie's Theron
Sandra Bullock
Angelina Jolie

...have all adopted (and Jolie has had her own babies, has breastfed a malnourished child in Angola and her adopted kids are from warm torn countries).

Guilana Rancic and her husband had a surrogate mother and I remember the woman's face when she was asked to do it again.

The only case I can think of, of a single person using surrogacy as a method to make a family is that Japanese man with the baby factory in Thailand. 13 kids with 24 hour nannies, will these kids ever know their mothers?

www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/20/japanese-man-custody-13-surrogate-children-thai-court

Not so much making a point as having a ponder...

Go and read one of the other dozens of threads on surrogacy here then. This one is more specific than the overall subject - as OP titled it.

The average, casual browser sees this thread. They aren't going to search for other threads. To an average, casual browser it looks anti- male and anti- gay men. That really helps your case.

To turn that view into shilling for "happy hooking" or supporting surrogacy is an impressive straw man.

JFC. As this rich person push towards commercial baby buying ramps up, we're going to get shills on every thread, aren't we? Just like we do on sex work.

Yup. From 'happy hooker' to 'happy surro'.

And we're the evil harpies for taking away their choice. Because every good feminist knows that the buying and selling of women and babies is a simple matter of choice, like deciding if you want a latte or a macchiato this morning.

At what age does it become not acceptable to sell/gift a child?

There was a segment on Ryan Tubridy a few weeks ago about surrogacy. I missed the beginning but it was a woman in her 50s who already had (I think) grownup kids who had twins by surrogacy in India. RT was gushing (of course), I was shouting at the radio! We're so keen to be woke here, it's painful!

I saw a documentary on this couple - at least I think it was them - a few years ago. They came across as nice enough, if a bit dim. But I kept thinking to myself that they needed counselling more than they needed a baby. They had between them 3 adult sons from previous marriages, so why the desperate need to spend their life's saving - they were not wealthy - to go to India and purchase a baby, or in this case 2 babies? In their 50s? It seemed very unhealthy to me, and that's not even getting into the ethics of paying a very poor woman to go through pregnancy - confined to basically house arrest for 9 months - and childbirth for their benefit.

It was really rather disturbing.

I can't see any justification for limiting this thread to men or famous men. If ever there was a justification for but women do it too the exploitation of surrogates by people is it.

Go and read one of the other dozens of threads on surrogacy here then. This one is more specific than the overall subject - as OP titled it.

Why would you have a problem with that?

JFC. As this rich person push towards commercial baby buying ramps up, we're going to get shills on every thread, aren't we? Just like we do on sex work.

I can't see any justification for limiting this thread to men or famous men. If ever there was a justification for but women do it too the exploitation of surrogates by people is it.

To be honest it does come across as anti- male. I don't suppose this board cares of course.

Gardenman's original comment was that it was homophobic to be against surrogacy, and that was the context the comment above was made in.

I've also made the point on this thread that its also heterosexual couples who are doing this, but never a rich women who is the surrogate only the beneficary and that it was primarily something that was about rich people benefitting from and those without resources were at a disadvantage.

Kim and Kanye are a famous couple exploiting women Deus but this thread is about famous men who have done it, hence the focus.

For balance I did include a link to Gardenman of you tube clip of a woman who was deeply affected by not knowing her father as she was conceived with a sperm donor.

Let me spell this out in simple terms: No man (straight or gay) has ever died because they weren't able to have a surrogate child

Let me spell this out in simple terms: No man or woman (straight or gay) has ever died because they weren't able to have a surrogate child.

Women have died being surrogates.

GardenMan does have a sort of a point that this thread is fixated on men. Lesbian and heterosexual women exploit surrogates too. Some of the women doing it are even women who have given birth to children naturally - Kim Kardashian and Sarah-Jessica Parker for example. They are every bit as bad.

Well, hopefully 'surro' will come on to tell us who the baby's 'mummy' is, because apparently the woman who gestates and gives birth to it is not. Oh sorry I forgot: 'there is no mummy'.

They are same sex & the boys deserve to be Daddies as much as all us women on here.

How can women be 'daddies'? Anyhow, noone - male or female - 'deserves' to be a parent.

I am the oven that is cooking the baby.

What an absolutely appalling, dehumanising way to refer to a mother.

The baby will be going home with their Daddies, there is no Mummy.

Every human being that has ever existed has had a mother. No exceptions.

If you are not this child's 'mummy' then who is?

Brilliant post Barbara

Top post, Barbara!

Bravo Barbara

there is no Mummy

I bet there will be on the birth certificate.

..

Exactly what @BernardBlacksWineIceLolly said

I am the oven that is cooking the baby

Referring to yourself as an object

there is no Mummy
There is, it’s you, the woman who gestated the child

Ewwww to 'the boys' makes it sound like you're providing them a doll to play dress up with

It's an unfortunate impact of their biology that gay men can't easily produce their own children. Many of us face limitations due to our biology. I don't feel the answer is to exploit women's bodies.

I was ok with the idea of altruistic surrogacy until I came under pressure to be a living organ donor for a family member and could see first hand how family dynamics put pressure on and minimise risks. That's why living donors have a confidential opt out. Not having children when you want to is terribly sad but it is not life threatening. Pregnancy and childbirth can be.

Barbara says what I was trying to say in a better way.

Interesting pincer movement going on here. On the one hand, we're over emotional harridans who hate men, on the other we're unempathetic harridans who just don't understand the purity of the motives of surrogates.

When in fact what we're actually talking about here are changes in the law.

We don't frame possible changes to laws around assisted suicide, for example, round clear cut case scenarios only. (Lovely granddad dying of incurable, rapidly advancing degenerative disease, wants to go out at time of his choosing before suffering becomes too much, surrounded by loved ones). We take all possible cases into consideration (Neglected granddad who happens to live in house in home counties worth 3/4 of a million, suffering from slowly progressing chronic condition which can be managed with decent nursing, who is under pressure from offspring who don't want to see the proceeds from that 3/4 million house spent on nursing).

Likewise with surrogacy. A happy auntie prepared to step in for her dearly loved brother and his partner is not the only woman, nor is the child she's carrying (or "cooking in her oven" according to taste and tweeness threshold) the only scenario the law has to cover. It has to cover the woman in poverty who might be taken advantage of. It has to cover the rights and needs of the existing children where a surrogate dies, unpredictably and suddenly, from a placental abruption. It has to cover the child who is unwanted by the commissioning couple because the child is born with complex health needs.

We don't frame legislation round Mary Poppins best case scenarios, we frame it round the whole range of possible scenarios to make sure everyone in society receives protection.

We should not allow the process of framing new laws to be hijacked by wealthy, powerful interest groups (in this case, comfortably off people with multiple thousands of pounds to throw at surrogacy) with no concern for the impact on all potential host mothers (not just the happy altruistically minded ones) or all potential children (the ones with complex health needs, the ones who grow up and say "you know what, I would have liked to know about my host mother", as well as the happy ones).

I find it worrying any time a woman is referred to as 'simply an incubator', and that isn't lessened by it being a woman who does this herself.

Its dehumanising. That language has implications and it removes women from the context of having human rights whilst being pregnant.

It makes women MORE not less vulnerable to potential exploitation.

And as is the case with all these things, just because one woman finds it fine, it doesn't mean that its ok for a vulnerable woman. The point is the law should be there to protect the most vulnerable in a situation and play to that as a baseless rather than the able, well off and 'educated' woman as the baseless.

As for the infantilisation of language... jesus wept.

No one DESERVES to be a parent or has a RIGHT to be a parent.

I always say that when we get into euphamisms and language distortion you should be wary and ask about what is being sanitised and for what reason.

Euphamisms are rarely done for no reason. You should identify WHY its being done.