‘Our Baby: A Modern Miracle’ C4 10pm tonight

I agree it is exploitative and ethically unjustifiable.

I imagine they will try to compare it to organ donation etc.

Yeah, how is it 'equality' when you are using someone else's body and putting them in danger in order to gain that equality?

I would be interested in how many black women are surrogates in America. There has been a lot recently about how pregnancy and birth is particularly dangerous for black women?

The Fight for Fertility Equality
A movement has formed around the idea that one’s ability to build a family should not be determined by wealth, sexuality, gender or biology."

But wealth is an exclusion. Surrogacy is only for the rich. Pro surrogacy people shout about how it needs to be legal and commercial so gay men and infertile or single people can have babies - but apparently the right to have a baby through those means is only important for people with a spare £45k knocking about.

Plus there is no true equality in life and never can be. Some people can't have kids, it's not nice but life's not fair like that. Some people are born with duff hearts, doesn't give them the right to buy someone else's heart.

No one has a right to children. If you're lucky enough to have them then great. But you shouldn't be able to have them at the expense of others. Egg harvesting and surrogacy need to be banned.

Fertility Equality is the catch phrase. Totally ignoring that this can only be achieved through the blood, sweat, tears and occasional death of women via reproductive exploitation.

Exactly this. A lot of so-called ‘equality’ seems to mean men and women should have equal use of women’s bodies.

It's the exact same argument as prostitution and pornography isn't it? Women 'choose' to be surrogates ergo it's not exploitation.

Fertility Equality is the catch phrase.
Totally ignoring that this can only be achieved through the blood, sweat, tears and occasional death of women via reproductive exploitation.

"The Fight for Fertility Equality
A movement has formed around the idea that one’s ability to build a family should not be determined by wealth, sexuality, gender or biology."

www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/style/lgbtq-fertility-surrogacy-coverage.html

Sorry, link to Scottish couple
www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scotlands-first-gay-couple-access-21968033

It seems like no one is actually able to look into the psychology of transgenderisum and the different types.

We have to just accept the narrative of gender spirit or sole or essence not matching your biological sex.

It's clear some people are born with a deep feeling that they should be the oppersite sex and have the wrong biology. But there are so many out there that seem to have been influenced by their environment or sexualality.

Then of course the LGBT surrogacy lobby have been working very hard to reframe the concept of surrogacy as a civil right for all LGBT people almost as an addendum to marriage equality.

In Scotland gay men have already had surrogacy paid for by the NHS. They had to find surrogate themselves (and pay her expenses?) but all the proceedures have been at the cost of NHS Scotland. The couple in the article baulked at the cost of surrogacy paid fro entirely by themselves and reckon they deserve something out of the NHS since they pay in.

The CoVid pandemic has shown up how appalling the baby factories in the Ukraine and elsewhere are. Last year I read an article about gay couples in Israel (who go abroad for surrogates) who are lobbying for "more and greater access to wombs" at home. That said it all to me, women walking wombs, there for the convience of men.Chilling.

Yep, I have noticed transgender people take their new gender stereotype to the extreme.

I guess that's because they are playing a role. Theres probably also am element of trying too hard. They're probably paranoid as coming off as their biological sex, so act in the stereotypical way of their chosen gender more.

They definitely play into their new gender roles in the relationship.

Yep, I have noticed transgender people take their new gender stereotype to the extreme.

Just watching, does anyone else get the impression Jake became a man so he could be a total dickhead.

It's common for men to act in the way he does and be accepted (even though they shouldn't) but women would just not be tolerated acting in that way. She would be termed a battaleaxe or a bossy bitch.

Hannah comes off as really nice but maybe a bit of a push over. They definitely play into their new gender roles in the relationship.

I meant that's the accusation, not that I think they are.

Then of course the LGBT surrogacy lobby have been working very hard to reframe the concept of surrogacy as a civil right for all LGBT people almost as an addendum to marriage equality. It's framed as a 'right to family life' but by approaching that way it means that some people will have a legal right to access and commodification of women's bodies and this will end up being written in legislation.

In a way this makes any conversation difficult as it is immediately shut down with accusations of homophobia/transphobia. One cannot just be against surrogacy, they are against surrogacy because they are homophobic or transphobic.

Thanks for this thread. It's so messed up and if I talked about it in real life I would be hung out to dry and probably end up with a disciplinary

Am not at all interested in this. What is so miraculous about surrogacy?

The photo @Haworthia posted makes me feel so sad.

I didnt have time to see the documentary, but I already bet there was not much debate around the short and long term impacts on the baby? Probably just the usual 'all you need is love' BS?

It makes me so sad there is no public sphere where society can safely discuss the impact these fertility processes have on the baby and whether we as a society should allow it.

I started a thread on here loosely related to this topic yesterday (are certain procedures ethical). I got a ton of abuse and the thread was deleted as 'not in the spirit'.

It is like the days of the reformation we all have to gather in online hidey holes to be able to state our opinion..

@imwellardme I think surrogate mothers know that there’s no going back even if their instincts are screaming to call it all off. It’s not just not getting the money, it’s potential legal action, and the lifelong ramifications of being that evil surrogate who backtracked and refused to relinquish the baby to the poor distraught intended parents.

It’s especially true if the baby isn’t genetically theirs - the baby is almost always seen as the property of the genetic mother. I think that’s why couples who can’t provide their own egg choose to implant a donor egg into a surrogate mother - just to really make sure that the surrogate has no claim to the baby.

Oh the background of people who transition, there does seem to be a correlation between a tech and/or military career and coming out as a transwoman.

imwellardme - that is one of the things the proposed changes in U.K. surrogacy is looking to address. Right now, the mother can indeed refuse to hand over the baby because she is the legal mother.

chatty - wolf did start a thread but it was deleted fairly swiftly after some rather unpleasant POVs were shared.

Yes Anna it's hugely frustrating. Especially as the vast majority of the time those advocating for it won't be at the sharp end just as the majority of sex work champions will never walk the streets or work in a brothel.

It's vulnerable women, like the single mother from Belfast for whom 15k probably seems like a fortune, that will end up fulfilling these roles.

I know that when you say some of these things you sound like a conspiracy nut but I can't help but think that some of this major change is being driven by tech nerds in California.

@OvaHere - yes Ova, I always think you are so eloquent on these sites, I wish I could call you when I debate this with my family - debate being the operative word as we are one of those debate at the kitchen table families.

I am also saddened that I did so much work alongside so many women for so many years on the Repeal the 8th campaign in Ireland (long before it was even known as Repeal and even before many of the activists were born) and yet those self same people have now taken up the cause of Trans rights and Surrogacy rights for gay men in Ireland and I despair for the future of our own bodily integrity rights and those of our daughters (and none of them see the irony).