Another gushing story in The Times about surrogacy

Superb comment from Benny Blanco:

This article is no better than the one the other day with a complete glossing over of any of the negatives with surrogacy. No one - gay, straight, single or couple - has a right to a baby. 99.99% of surrogacy is hugely exploitative - wealthy people paying poor women in the Ukraine for the use of their bodies mostly. Cosy altruistic arrangements just distract from this and avoid being challenged. Maybe these questions could be answered:

1. what gives anyone the right to hire the use of a woman’s body? Even if it’s “just expenses” it’s still a transaction. If I hire a car from Hertz and through their generosity they decide I only have to pay for petrol, I’m still hiring a car from them. In surrogacy women are seen as just that - a mode of transport, incubation, to get the baby into the arms of those who demand one.
2. why are babies now seen as commodities that can be acquired when desired? I can’t pay the expenses of a woman to get her to hand over her 5 year old child, but it’s ok with a newborn?
3. there is no way to cover all eventualities of pregnancy, and any changes to circumstances of any party involved, which is why contracts aren’t binding. How is it ethical to enter into an arrangement in which all three parties have no legal recourse should they be aggrieved?
4. women have died as surrogates and suffered major complications. How can this be acceptable to allow people to put women they don’t know at risk for their own wants?
5. it is well recognised that, in other circumstances, to remove a baby from its mother is at best suboptimal - if baby or mother is critically unwell for example - and at worst, traumatic. This is why if social services want to remove a newborn baby from its mother it usually involves a judge. Why then are we creating situations where babies are immediately being removed from their mothers, then celebrating the fact?
6. how do you determine true altruism? There is no way of ever being 100% sure that someone isn’t being coerced in some way or profiting in another.

Essentially, surrogacy is only successful through sheer blind luck - that all the parties are in agreement and remain so, nothing serious happens to the mother or baby, nothing happens to any of the relationships involved, and the child grows up without being mentally impacted by it all. The many, many cases of surrogacy gone wrong seem to do little to deter people from making an ethical decision to not proceed, they just say “that won’t happen to us” then secretly prey it won’t.

it should be banned worldwide.

What a disgrace the Times are. They had a gushing article about this man just a week ago and now another. They have set themselves up as a pro surrogacy lobbyists. It will only get worse.

From the article:

"Yet the single dad by choice movement is just beginning."

Men demanding their right to a baby.

So the law allows a single man to commission an egg from an anonymous donor and commission a surrogate mother to bear the child. The father can then take sole responsibility for the child from baby to age 18.

No checks in the same way that you would get in the adoption process.

I can see this having very serious consequences in the future.

And another one:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7926f2fa-64c1-11eb-908c-00b0fcb974f6?shareToken=f9f05bbfddeae12734291e0e862dfc70

Jennifer Lahl has just posted this interview on CBC YouTube channel.

Jennifer Lahl interviews Veronica, a California surrogate about her nightmare surrogacy experience.

"When Veronica agreed to be a surrogate, she never imagined that the intended father would be caught luring a minor to his hotel room, to film himself having sex with her and posting the video.

When the FBI showed up at her door, she learned that the intended father was also involved in a baby-trafficking ring."

I haven't listened to it yet, will be on it after supper, it sounds appalling. I wonder if the surrogate mother decided to keep the baby - if she was allowed to.

If I was Sophie B's daughter I'd like to know about the 8 egg donors (and I genuinely can't remember how many other surrogate mothers, it might just have been the one in America, maybe she cost too much?).

Also...We're the egg donors from Russia? I'll have to go check now.

I'd also like to know how many siblings I had.

I'm not without sympathy for Sophie's situation with cancer but it's not a get out of jail free card that excuses you from all other narc behaviour.

Something about how she jokes about not having cracked nipples and not getting the chance of a baby shower is so superficial and somehow gloating. I don't know, I read it every week and I haven't changed my mind about her.

The self-absorption and lack of self-awareness of this guy and of Sophie B are staggering. Do they not realise that, in about a decade, their kids are going be reading these articles, which show no concern - or even thought - for their needs as children? It literally does not seem to have occurred to either of them that it might not be in a newborn's best interests to be removed from its biological mother. Imagine the psychological impact on the children, once they are old enough to understand this

Well done Lone! I will try to conjure up the strength over the weekend to do the same.

I have emailed the editor to complain about the uncritical reporting and moderation of the comments.

“just like an extreme form of babysitting”

An often-used phrased in the surrogacy 'community'. I don't know where to begin with it either, except perhaps to compare it to slavery.

That article came complete with credits where the clothes were from and who did the make up Flavia

Or this perhaps Flavia

In the Daily Mail piece he says that using a surrogate was “just like an extreme form of babysitting”. I don’t even know where to begin with that statement tbh.

Reminded me. Autocorrect...

I saw the picture for this on the times Facebook page with two men in suits standing and a baby in a nappy sitting at their feet.

It remained me of the photos of men standing beside status objects like cars. I don't know what whoever set up the photo was thinking.

That seems highly likely talesofginza

They have let through more critical comments now. Sometimes I wonder if they keep some comments suspended so that they get buried, resulting in fewer 'likes' when they finally get let through...

My comment was moderated until someone sensible realised I was only stating facts.

I’ve really started to fall for the daily mash of late. Nice to read some common sense.

Another one whose comments seem to be instantly deleted.

Certain sycophants in the comments were encouraging her to push the birth mother to have SB and SB's husband at the birth even if that meant the woman's own husband couldn't attend (because of Covid limits).

The attitudes of some of the cheer leaders are very telling. After all, you hire a woman (sorry, she doing it for free of course because it's all lovely and altruistic) and having had her kindly offer the use of her body you get to call the shots and treat her like a servant. How very Gilead.

Here is the Facebook link where comments are currently switched on.

www.facebook.com/147384458624178/posts/4261511973878052/?d=n

Mine has suddenly appeared.

I don't see the issue with non profit surrogacy. SB seems to be quickly discovering that parenting is a shit load harder than having a baby. She's annoying and self absorbed, but I don't begrudge her the baby or the reasons she wanted that rather than adoption. Also no issue with gay men having surrogates. After all, how would equal opportunities ever progress if men aren't given the opportunity to do the caring part of parenting? Obviously paid surrogacy is rather more questionable and SB never really went into why she thought it was fine.