MIC Ollie Locke & husband on their Brazilian surrogate

I saw one specifying that the surrogate mother was obliged to terminate the pregnancy if her antenatal screening tested positive for a particular list disabilities. If that wasn't bad enough, the list of disabilities specified cerebral palsy.

You can't even do antenatal testing for cerebral palsy! It's most commonly caused by a birth injury to the baby during labour, and it can take years to diagnose. Are they going to hand the baby or toddler back to the surrogate mother and ask her to go back in time to have a termination?

Sadly, yes. For anyone who needs it, the UK Modern Slavery and Exploitation Hotline is 08000 121 700.

You can learn more at https://www.unseenuk.org

Exactly. You can’t have a contract that protects all three parties equally. Someone has to forgo rights if a legal contract is created. And look who it usually is.

with future related disability of the birth woman and protection against future legal action.

Not the rich lawyered up intended parents that’s for sure.

Yes actually I’d forgotten that part but he confirmed that was one of the questions, along with future related disability of the birth woman and protection against future legal action.

The birth mother in question was clearly poor as she qualified for public health insurance in the US. Their paths would never have crossed even if they lived in the same area, never mind country.

A man I know went through the US system and said the legal framework was pretty rigorous. Before a surrogacy is agreed, the clinic ask you questions like “what happens to a disabled child with X or Y conditions” and it’s drawn up into a contract.

It is not possible to cover every possible eventuality. It just isn’t. Surely they must know they can’t cover everything.

And these contracts: I’ll never forget the example of one where the intended parents were to be given power of attorney over end of life decisions should the pregnant woman end up on life support. Basically to allow them to keep the woman warm as an actual incubator to allow the baby to be delivered at a viable age. Just sickening.

@NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision that article from the Human Trafficking Hotline and forced surrogacy is very concerning indeed as that is in the UK I assume.

Countries are shutting down surrogacy actively as we know so I truly believe this will become less common over time. The Wikipedia page is interesting.

A man I know went through the US system and said the legal framework was pretty rigorous. Before a surrogacy is agreed, the clinic ask you questions like “what happens to a disabled child with X or Y conditions” and it’s drawn up into a contract.

Of the 2 surrogacy arrangements I know personally and well enough to know for sure, neither are in touch with the birth mother at all.

Quite.

It’s the international commercial reproductive exploitation of women industry that will be making the money.

The women that the international commercial reproductive exploitation of women industry utilises will be the ones paying the price.

Given how much we paid (€11,000), I really don't think there's much money to be made by donors.

“We used an egg donor (Spain). We were told that the donor was 28 and taking advantage of a service offered by the clinic. They freeze half the eggs for future use by the donor as an insurance against future fertility issues (e.g. having a family later in life due to career priorities).”

It’s useful to hear the sales pitch that the international commercial reproductive exploitation of women industry will be deploying in its lobbying of government and its efforts to control the media narrative relating to the sale of human eggs and embryos.

“Assuming for the moment that everyone in your friends' situation is truly happy, exactly what percentage of unhappy outcomes are you willing to turn a blind eye to, for that one family's happiness? How many people's health and wellbeing can be destroyed for theirs?”

This.

We used an egg donor (Spain). We were told that the donor was 28 and taking advantage of a service offered by the clinic. They freeze half the eggs for future use by the donor as an insurance against future fertility issues (e.g. having a family later in life due to career priorities).

I don't think it's as simple as saying young, poor donors are exploited.

I'm most relieved to hear it. Perhaps in future you might avoid implying that trafficking and modern slavery are exclusively international issues? The charity Unseen gives very good talks, and their speakers make sure to include local data. It's a live issue in 21st century Britain, and it happens all around us, because people don't recognise the signs as their preconceptions of what forced labour looks like get in the way.

Assuming for the moment that everyone in your friends' situation is truly happy, exactly what percentage of unhappy outcomes are you willing to turn a blind eye to, for that one family's happiness? How many people's health and wellbeing can be destroyed for theirs?

Incidentally, I am very well-acquainted with the results of a situation with amazing parallels, also involving alternative parents who lived in 80s squats. The eventual adoptive parents who brought my school-friend up gave the child an amazing upbringing. Nevertheless, in retrospect, I think the signs are there that they suffered consequences of disrupted attachment in infancy, and it's led on to lifelong mental health issues in their adult life. Will any of the parents and other adults involved admit the link? Never in a month of Sundays. They and their friends from the time are rather biased, aren't they?

Also, I must say, I am perplexed by your reply to NotBadConsidering. You are a regular user on this board, so why post a variant on "bad things happen, so why shouldn't we knowingly and deliberately create avoidable situations with increased risks x, y and z, if it will make some people happy?"

Have you not seen how we respond to trans activists posting, "women get raped any way, so we might as well let men access areas where women are undressed or vulnerable, as it will make the men happy"? Did you envisage a different result?

There’s a chasm between misfortune occurring accidentally and by design.

The misfortune is being ‘designed in’ to this innocent child’s life. The exploitation of the mother’s body is designed in.

If people set out to abuse, abandon, kill their own children, the ideal is that social services get wind of this and remove the child for its own sake. So it should be if people set about to bring misfortune upon a child by entering into this wicked bargain. The child should be removed and go through normal adoption channels.

I find it fascinating that it’s illegal to remove puppies from their mothers until 8 weeks old…

Nobody having a child.. even a child that is naturally their own in every way.....can be be protected from everything. Children are abandoned, abused and even killed by their birth parents; women are abandoned by men during their pregnancy; many children do not have the name of a father on their birth certificate. There are many people who were adopted as babies ( especially in the years up to the 1970's) who have no idea about their birth families, or when they find out it brings them no closure at all, and so on.

This is so very very true.

I keep thinking about the woman who nearly died in delivery, ended up paralysed I believe, giving birth to her sister's child. The result was that the woman's own child/ren ended up effectively without their mother in their daily lives, all because a couple exploited a female's body to add to their family.

Dressing up the language around such an arrangement, highlighting relationships, does not negate the fact that this arrangement has the potential to cause a woman to die to deliver a child for another person's benefit. And as neighbourhood points out, the child is never considered at all. Because how can it be, it was created specifically for this purpose and consent in these cases cannot be retrospective. Whatever gloss gets put on this transaction, it is a transaction involving a human as the outcome.

You can’t produce a framework, legal or moral, that protects all three parties from accident, misadventure, ill fortune, development of animosity, breakdown of relationships or possible trauma.

What you propose - that there are some circumstances where it’s not necessarily a bad thing - can only be successful by sheer luck; the pregnancy gods shine good fortune, nothing bad happens, no one falls out, and the child doesn’t suffer trauma from the events of its birth at any stage of its life.

I'm not, and wasn't, mocking anything.

As i said I do think there are issues with commercial surrogacy, but I don't necessarily think that a woman having a bay for another woman, or for a couple, is always necessarily a bad thing to do. It depends on the circumstances.

Agree with this.

I overheard a hairdresser in the salon I use talking to a client about his surrogate "journey". They bought their baby via a Cypriot agency and while it was unclear from trying to earwig under my highlight foils, it sounded like the birth mother was based on anime country (not UK). He was talking about how they were able to choose appearance characteristics (unsure if this is actually true).

But yes, the fucking fawning over it ("Wow, that's such a lovely story/you'll make such amazing parents, gush gush") was quite gross

1. did the baby consent to be traded?
2. selling yourself into indentured slavery was also slavery.

While you were making mocking comments, ridiculing the idea of surrogacy being trafficking, the charity Unseen got some media coverage of a report about the number of calls to their helpline. I emphasise again that trafficking happens within the UK.

Excerpt from an article yesterday.

Calls made to an anti-slavery helpline have reached a record high, with the number of potential victims in the care sector rising by almost a third.
According to anti-slavery charity Unseen, the number of calls to the Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline in 2023 increased by more than 19%, up from 9,779 in 2022 to 11,700 last year.

Labour abuse remained the main form of exploitation up by 11% from 464 cases in 2022 to 516 in 2023.
Potential victims indicated in the care sector went up by 30% from 708 in 2022 to 918.
There was also a 21% increase in potential victims of criminal exploitation to 385 in 2023.

Justine Carter, director of Unseen and co-author of the report, said: "Modern slavery and exploitation are heinous crimes that have no place in a modern, progressive UK that cares about human rights.

"It is encouraging that we are continuing to see rising numbers of calls and contacts to the Helpline, indicating that we are succeeding in raising awareness of the issue and mobilising more people to act."

Forced surrogacy was reported for the first time last year, with three potential victims indicated.

Continues at Modern slavery helpline receives record number of calls in 2023, report finds | UK News | Sky News

I suppose that's not trafficking either, right?

The irony is that Ollie is too stupid (or too arrogant and entitled) to realise that the moral and ethical implications of what he is describing are grotesque. You see him for what he is - a gay man buying a baby. To publicly admit that you spent £££ to ensure that your egg donor meets certain criterium of looks and brains strips the transaction back to what it really is: consumerism. Fucking disgusting.

Some decades ago I had a couple of friends( in the alternative squatting movement in 1980's London), one of whom was not able to have children with her new husband, but who was the very definition of Mother Duck - for whom motherhood was the whole purpose and point of life. Her close friend ( who already had a child of her own) offered to carry a pregnancy for her. She did. They paid her living expenses. And when the much wanted child was born she was referred to as 'Aunty'.

Was this trafficking too?

I find quite incredible / totally unbelievable. As IF that happened! Nothing happens to Ollie Locke by chance

Also ‘carry’ a baby means - ‘to pick up a baby and take it from one place to another’.

This woman offered to gestate a baby to term.

This means she offered to be a baby’s birth mother but also agreed to reject the child at birth and ‘give’ it away, circumventing normal, legal adoption procedures. I assume she took payment of some kind, so she also sold her baby. Just because such a woman might try to dissociate from the terrible deal she has entered into, bargaining over an innocent baby’s life with thoughts of ‘it’s not really mine’ and ‘I am only carrying the baby’, she is still the baby’s mother and she is still rejecting her baby to give to other people like it is an object, not a person.