Surrogacy summed up in one photo

Women who use donor eggs are not the mother. They are the birth giver. The child's mother will always biologically be the egg donor. That is who's genetic imprint and history that child will carry.

Yes, but women who gestate a baby are also a mother, the embryo is implanted and cannot grow without the woman's body. Any pregnant woman who gives birth is a mother.

Women who use donor eggs are not the mother. They are the birth giver. The child's mother will always biologically be the egg donor. That is who's genetic imprint and history that child will carry.

Egg donation and use of donor eggs is just as awful as this type of surrogacy.

My body, my choice!

Not everything you do with your body is your choice, and it wouldn't just be about you. I think all surrogacy should be banned because altruistic surrogacy could be coerced. No one has the guaranteed right to have children if they cannot conceive them naturally. There is adoption if fertility treatment doesn't work.

That is entirely different from renting out your uterus as an incubator for two men and an egg donor.

You need kidneys to live so it is a bit different.

You don't need both.

Most posters are assuming the “womb person” is also the “mother

She is the mother, like any woman who has donor egg IVF is the mother. She's not an incubator, and not a "womb person" whatever the fuck that means.

If she's so insignificant why have her in the photo at all?

And what if she'd died in childbirth? Or she'd had to decide whether to terminate the pregnancy to save her own life? Or she hates the way her sister is raising her child?

And I say her child because under U.K. law, the woman who gestates the child is that baby's mother.

It is a terrible thing to ask any woman to do. For cash or otherwise. For most women, having children is the most dangerous thing we will ever do.

What’s more shocking is the decision in America will also impact IVF pregnancies, and therefore surrogacy.

if you can’t have IVF how TF do you think these rich people are going to impregnate their slaves??

I don’t think altruistic surrogacy should be banned - I have a family member whose sister carried her baby (family member’s egg and partner’s sperm, but carried by the sister) because she couldn’t and I think it’s a lovely thing to do for someone and would do it for any of my sisters in a heartbeat. My body, my choice!

Sickeningly like the Hand Maids Tale. So wrong in so many levels. How the hell is surrogacy legal?

Sickening. Typical of increased misogyny in recent years.

Ugh, that's awful. I might disagree with their seeming "perfectly nice".

Yes you do only need one but it is nice to have back up isn't it. I know someone who had a kidney donated by their father, it was very upsetting as it was rejected so father was left with one kidney and son still desperately ill.

If being a surrogate is such a great gift and it's all about 'choice', then how come it's not wealthy women gifting their babies to other people?

If the child is going to it's father is it selling the baby or just compensation for what the mother has done?

You need kidneys to live so it is a bit different.

You only need one kidney to live, so why not the freedom to sell the other one, if its 'your body, your choice'?

You get paid for donating blood in America, and there are a lot of concerns that poor people who need the money are donating too often and it's impacting their health.

Where do we draw the line on that? Paid kidney donation? Or living cornea donations? We know that pregnancy and birth take a major toll on the mother, almost without exception. There's plenty of evidence that almost all surrogates are already mothers, with other children who are at risk if they lose a parent.

What about a parent who does a dangerous job and takes money (wages) for doing it. Do you think it is OK for their children? I mean anyone from a firefighter to racing car driver is taking a risk. My husband was a police officer, he was permanently disabled in the line of duty when I was pregnant, it has had a big impact on our children, he could never carry them round, never have a game of football with them. I because his carer as well bringing up 4 kids.

It is hard to know where to draw the line isn't it. Particularly hard with DH who was a rank who could have been happily sat at his desk but decided to be out there with his unit.

Possibly @ancientgran but who knows. Men have paid women before to have babies for them to abuse (I'm not saying these men are abusive).

The point is that buying and selling other human beings is wrong. No matter what age they are. Inflicting a profound trauma on a baby by removing it from its mother immediately after birth is wrong.

We treat puppies better.

You need kidneys to live so it is a bit different.

This is an interesting post in view of the story earlier in the week about a Nigerian teen allegedly trafficked to London to be used as a living kidney donor for a wealthy and influential family. I think most people reading that story would have felt sickened and horrified, yet surrogacy is accepted . Hard to see the difference really especially when it seems that what actually drives the trade is who has money and who doesn’t.

Isn't one of the men likely to be the baby's father? It's not like it's been put up for sale in a slave auction.

I wonder how the person these men are commissioning will feel about this photograph in years to come?

When they're past the cute awww baby and toddler stage, the decade or two that they'll be providing an experience for those men and have a life of their own to live. Many adoptive adults explain how difficult it is to live with being a desired acquisition of parents, and supposed to share in their parents' view of this being lovely, and the role of their biological mother being subordinated and minimised as inconvenient. And that woman, whether her body is growing her own genetic material or not, is the child's biological mother.

If it's okay to sell your babies, why isn't it okay to sell your children?