Voices we don't hear from - a child of surrogacy

There is also at the current time and culture for women and children's rights, a number of situations in which a group who have a very deeply felt desire for something they want, are seeking for that situation to be met for them. To do that, there's an attempt to dismiss, or minimise or erase entirely the voices or considerations for other parties in the situation who also have skin in the game. It's more comfortable to do so, and the ones being minimised or told they're fine and it's not an issue for them, are the ones with less power and less voice. The socially responsible thing to do is to look at the needs equally for everyone involved, and to separate wants from needs. And not to facilitate more powerful people with wants meeting their wants through trying not to think about or recognise the harm being done to those they want to use for those wants.

Being 'nice' and being 'kind' in this situation would be to pretend that children will be fine, it will all be fine, how lovely for everyone to be happy. There are those in the situation who will experience that as kindness and niceness, and there are those in the situation who may experience that as being unheard, dismissed, erased. Who has the power? Who is most deserving of careful consideration, difficult questions taking place and additional support because of it?

Great post Elsiebear90

Elsiebear
How do you reconcile calling the situation not 'ideal' with understanding that the economic power differential (dare I say coercion?) to donating eggs (which by these videos has caused stroke, loss of ovaries etc) and carry babies (I have had my own doctor remind me that pregnancy is one of the most dangerous things a woman can do to their body)? When you think of the economic disparity between the women being reduced to service providers like this and the dangers that they potentially face, there really should not be any minimising of the risks to these women. There needs to be a whole lot of additional regulation to ensure that strokes/ovary loss and other major health issues do not happen.

There are obviously altruistic situations as you have also pointed out. But you really cannot ignore the commercial and transactional side of these procedures.

I think there's a difference between children born into naturally less than ideal circumstances, (the overwhelming majority of whom will remain in those circumstances with the parent who gave birth to them), and setting out to intentionally create a child. I'm also not sure that 'adoption' and 'less than ideal circumstances' are or should be considered as the same thing. This is adoption and it's setting out to create a child who will brought into existence for the purpose of adoption.

If this was subject to the exact same standards of adoption - the same high standards of vetting, training, passing a board to have the child placed, the best interests of the child always the centre of everything, I would be a lot happier about it. Although I'm still deeply uncomfortable about intentionally creating a human for adoption, for a number of reasons.

Children are born into “imperfect” situations every single day, if we are using “perfect” or “ideal” as criteria for who should be able to create children then where does it end? We have plenty of evidence about the negative effects of being born into all sort of circumstances or to all kinds of parents, why target just one kind of situation? Especially when there is next to no evidence children born in these circumstances suffer due to it. Just because a child is created “naturally” does not mean they will have a perfect life and will be raised in ideal circumstances by amazing parents. Should we take measures to prevent heterosexual people from procreating unless they are in ideal circumstances so they can’t harm children?

If you are arguing that people should not use surrogacy or donor sperm or eggs because the situation is not “ideal” (I’m sure in an perfect world these people wouldn’t choose to use these methods in the first place) and could potentially cause distress to the child then you could use that argument against all kinds of mothers and parents. It appears that only gay people and the infertile are being held to such high standards of parenting and procreation.

Interestingly the current status og the biotechnology law in Norway allows sperm donation but not egg donation, with the justification being that not knowing who the biological father is is something that happens anyway (the old "milkman" story) whereas it is "unnatural" to not know who the biological mother is.

I find these arguments so specious. While it's true this can happen and sometimes does - it's considered negative. It used to be we tried to avoid it by encouraging people to marry and remain faithful. Now we can track down fathers with technology and garnish their wages. And it's not just the material support element - we also generally think a father that materially supports a child but is personally unavailable or uninvolved is a shitty father. We see them as letting down their kids in a pretty basic way.

So the state is creating institutions that suggest that's an acceptable way of thinking about fathers, that they aren't particularly necessary? Is that what they really want people to think?

She feels that her bio mum basically sold her.

Well she did.

And we are going to get lots more stories like this in the future. It will turn into the modern equivalent of the adoption scandals of past decades.

Stinkyjellycat it sounds like you are prepared, but what support has been recommended to you to deal with the loss they may feel?

SapphosRock Again, no one is denying that there are problems arising from being raised by ‘biological’ parents. However, there does seem to be a disregard by some on this thread of the additional issues surrounding donor conception that need to be, it seems, even acknowledged before protections can be put into place. If they need to be.

And by the way, I have not intoned in my posts anything against same sex couples having children. However, I continue to point out that there is obviously a real need to properly look into whether changes on how donor conceived children are supported in the future. And how women are being treated (being dehumanized as service providers) in this process.

The training begins flat out from the point of 'adoption is rooted in loss on both sides' and 'adoption is no one's first choice

I am an adoptive parent and adoption was very much my first choice. This is true of more adopters than you may think. I have no sense of loss in terms of not having a biological child. I am, however, acutely aware of the loss of my DC may have to deal with.

By the way I don't have kids, not sure if I am fertile. Not sure i have a vested interest in terms of parenthood at this moment in time. Hopefully then i'm allowed an opinion although I have a suspicion that it might not be the right kind of opinion for some...

Do you not think that the people who have voicing their pain about being a donor conceived child on these videos are real?

Do you not think people conceived to heterosexual couples experience ever pain at how they were brought into the world? How about those conceived by mistake who were unwanted? How much more pain has this caused compared with the very planned and very loved children of gay parents?

May as well ban all unprotected sex too if you think all people conceived in a less than 'perfect' heterosexual, married circumstances should never be born at all.

Yes I agree, having a baby in the traditional way is about the parents desires. However, the differences with surrogacy are many. Firstly, the intentional creation of trauma for both child and mother. Separating a baby from it's mother is a trauma. Then the abuse of womens' bodies including risking their death and if not death potential life long physiological problems. Then the psychological trauma of childbirth and giving away the baby. Then the psychological trauma the child potentially has coming to terms with the fact that they were created as a commodity. That they don't know their birth mother, all the pain explained by Jess in the video near the top of this thread. You don't get that with usual parenting. I'm not saying children of surrogacy arrangements can never be happy, far from it. But some aren't. Some do experience this pain. And by permitting surrogacy, we are saying that we are ok with creating this situation and that all this pain is worth it because the intended parents are also in pain.

Interesting about the law in Norway Mendingfences I'm not sure I buy "it's always happened so what the hell" as justification! Especially when compared to the more obvious issue of the health issues for egg "donors" versus the minor inconvenience for sperm donors of having to have a wank .

This woman had surrogate twins for her brother. It's not a heart warming story. In fact Renate Klein has stated that she thinks altruistic surrogacy between friends and family is almost worse than contract commercial surrogacy because the strains this puts on family relationships, the devastation when things go wrong are so much more hurtful and unexpected.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/apr/27/secret-diary-of-a-surrogate-mother

I'm also adding this podcast which people may find interesting.

Nick Isel was conceived as part of a eugenic experiment using "genius" sperm. There are lots of interesting looking links added in the details.

Listen to Podcast #011 - Nick Isel from Venus Rising in Podcasts. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/venus-rising/id1481872967?i=1000464660205

I agree user, but I didn't make that comment in isolation. It was that adopted children experience trauma due to being separated from their birth mother. Children born of surrogates will also experience this. One of these situations is society attempting to do the best for a child in difficult circumstances, the other is a child being born specifically to be given away by the mother.

@testing987654321 isn’t this true of anyone who chooses to reproduce:

“To bring children into the world via surrogacy is not about the children's well-being at all, it's entirely about the parents.”

No one gets pregnant for the benefit of the child that doesn’t even exist yet.

Interestingly the current status og the biotechnology law in Norway allows sperm donation but not egg donation, with the justification being that not knowing who the biological father is is something that happens anyway (the old "milkman" story) whereas it is "unnatural" to not know who the biological mother is. I used to think it was sexist to allow this treatment for male infertility but not to allow the equivalent treatment for female infertility. Since i've had kids i've changed my opinion- i no longer see donation as a treatment for infertility, i see it as a means of providing a child and that puts a different spin on things for me.

what grounds for banning them do you have other than your own moral outrage? I don’t believe anyone on this thread has objected to a sister carrying an implanted embryo for their brother as you have stated.

However, there are so many reasons for ‘moral outrage’ against the commercialization of using women’s bodies for producing children- egg donation and gestation. Your posts seem to be dramatically minimising of any risk.

Do you have any actual evidence that children created this way are harmed or disadvantaged in any way? Do you not think that the people who have voicing their pain about being a donor conceived child on these videos are real?

If there are enough people coming out and saying ‘we experienced this ....’ that should be enough push back on the ‘there is no disadvantage ‘ to a child conceived, delivered and brought up this way to raise questions about any study not picking this up, surely.

That's the whole problem (or one of them) with surrogacy though, howtoenforce. On one hand you have genetics and on the other side you have a woman that has literally grown a baby with her own body. Providing everything that foetus needs to become a viable little human being. That matters too. Women aren't just incubators - it's a constant regulated exchange for the duration. If it was simple they'd just be popping them into males willy nilly.

Rather than decide who would "own" the baby (yuck) in a dispute, it would be much better just to acknowledge the issue as a good reason not to do it in the first place.