MIC Ollie Locke & husband on their Brazilian surrogate

If someone in your local area approaches you with an offer of a human being, it's still trafficking.

I've been on a few anti-trafficking seminars now. Never did anyone say "it doesn't count as trafficking if someone else cold-calls you to initiate the transaction". Nor did anyone say, "it can't qualify as trafficking if it solely involves people in your local area". Quite the reverse on that one, actually. They were at pains to emphasise that UK residents are trafficked within the UK.

If you don't think it's trafficking, you can say that, but not with those justifications.

They didn't " traffic" the babies. They were approached by a woman who lives in Chester who said she'd read about their plight and who offered to carry a baby for them. She was in close contact with them throughout the pregnancy and she is now, after their birth, apparently still in their lives.

Whether or not you agree or not with surrogacy, and personally I do think there are issues - at least get your facts straight.

I’d prefer it if the Pope had been explicit that the word ‘gift’ was more akin to ‘blessing’ rather than like an object that can be ‘re-gifted’ or sold on Ebay.

As somebody said recently-
" I deem deplorable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs. A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract. Consequently, I express my hope for an effort by the international community to prohibit this practice universally.”

The 'somebody' was actually none other than the Pope! Summed it up neatly, didn't he?
Declaration “Dignitas Infinita” on Human Dignity (2 April 2024) (vatican.va)

They say it is a bit 'prostitutey' but main concern is she's hot...

That awkward moment when someone says the quiet part out loud

Off topic but I'm always slightly fascinated by the need some straight women seem to have to 'minimise' or metaphorically neuter gay men by characterising them as 'sweet' and 'lovely'. So patronising.

Also, finding a 'hot' woman to be your surrogate a la prostitution is neither sweet nor lovely

It's all giving me Owen Jones 'must find a broody lesbian' vibes

Yes, it’s true. The ‘ivy league supermodels’ are likely looking for a quick way to be free of their huge debt from paying for their college fees.

I feel though, that the women in the UK who are the birth mothers, have other stuff going on because of women’s low status in a sexist world, so they can be more easily manipulated/coerced to do this objectively terrible thing, by the idea they are doing something ‘worthwhile’.

Maybe they won’t but I believe we will collectively look back on surrogacy with horror.

Money is just one way to coerce women,

These men were saying that the chose Ivy League educated ‘supermodels’ which is why the eggs are expensive. You need money to get an Ivy League education.

There seems to be some British women who come here and talk about human beings being objects that you can ‘gift’ to others, and to them it is all a very beautiful experience ‘giving’ a living, breathing, extremely vulnerable, commoditised and unconsenting person away. Although I doubt these women are wealthy, they are not poor like the exploited Ukrainian and Mexican women that are popular with British child-buyers.

This has been said many times about people who exploit the fertility of others to add to their family. Unfortunately, some people don’t see it.

Absolutely. Also, the arrogance of having twins on the off. One baby is hard enough, twins is really full-on. They clearly think that motherhood is a fucking doddle.

Why do you think no wealthy women do this?

I also question how any man can be a good parent to a girl when he has such a misogynist dehumanising attitude to women.

Also, the woman selling her eggs - ie - selling her future babies, and the woman agreeing to reject the baby she bears at birth for money are not much better either.

Anyone who trafficks children and designs to take them away from their mother at birth is not a loving responsible parent.

It’s sickening. Men using financial might to farm a human and traffic a human being, to separate and baby from its mother and separate a child from its genetic heritage.

It’s grubby, cruel, selfish, misogynistic, objectifying - both women and children - commoditising them and their important, psychologically fundamental relationship with one-another, and vain.

Poor motherless child. It’s sickening that they are engaging in a publicity campaign to normalise this unnatural and exploitative practice.

Good people think human beings can be bought? That it is OK to deprive a child of its mother? Before these babies were even born they were cheated out of half their birthright
I see no love or cherishing there, only two self indulgent men playing a role and having enough money to make it easy for themselves.

It’s very sad isn’t it. God help the child if they have the temerity to be average looking and not too clever.

Holy Fuck

The entitlement of those spoilt idiots is breathtaking.

But as I'm sure we'll be told they will make great parents (except they won't with such twattish views) who are we to judge, live and let live and other such absolute bollocks

Yes.

However I have trouble with this and I cannot shake it.

"Again, I don’t doubt the love and devotion these two will pour upon the twins but I can’t help but be deeply unsettled by their attitude towards the commercial process they instigated."

They put 4 humans at risk for this transaction. And it is a transaction. The reality is 'what kind of person puts 2 women and 2 infants at such high risk'? An extremely selfish one. I cannot reconcile this narrative of 'they are so loving' with the extreme selfishness and lack of respect of another human being that surrogacy is based on. It doesn't matter that that other human being has 'consented'. The exploitation is very real and is regardless of whether the donor or the woman carrying those children consented to be exploited. It is exploitation.

Exploiting others in this way is very contradictory to love.

Most baby-buyers seem to prefer a separate egg donor and surrogate mother.

A mother carrying her own biological child is considered too much of a risk for refusing to relinquish her child at birth.

Plus, luxury baby-buyers tend to want eggs from young, pretty, intelligent women (hence college students being targeted by predatory ads) but they want the surrogate mother to be old enough to have a proven track record of carrying at least one child to term and to live a low-risk life where the paid pregnancy will be the priority, not a career or a university course (or a social life).

In the US, Military wives with deployed husbands are targeted, as they are often stay at home mums for their own children living off one modest wage.
Plus they aren’t having sex because their husbands are away and lots of baby-buyers want surrogate mothers to sign contracts stating no sex.

Alternatively, a white, college student egg donor and a poor black or brown woman in a developing country is a way to buy a luxury baby on a smaller budget (plus laxer laws mean more embryos can be implanted eg the Irish men who commissioned triplet girls in Kenya)

I have a suspicion that the woman who carried their babies was probably swayed by the indirect celebrity she would gain from this. I wonder whether the couple would have considered her eggs of a sufficient standard or was she just sufficient as a ‘gestator’ of the ‘smokin’ hot’ donator’s eggs? What saddens me is that there was a risky twin pregnancy that ended in a very premature birth. And both of the men involved were bystanders as 4 human beings risked bodily harm, or worse, to cater for their desires. Again, I don’t doubt the love and devotion these two will pour upon the twins but I can’t help but be deeply unsettled by their attitude towards the commercial process they instigated.

It’s remarkable and sad to me that a smoking hot Ivy League-educated supermodel sees having a babies for men on demand as the best career option right now. You’d think there would be more stable, long-term lucrative and less dangerous career paths on offer. Unless all is not what it seems.

I wonder how the woman they're 'commissioning' will feel hearing that they consider what she's doing as a "bit prostitute-y".
I'm sure all concerned have convinced themselves it's a kind, altruistic 'gift' that she's bestowing upon them, so to find out that they do, in fact, consider her in the same light as a lowly prostitute could be incredibly hurtful.

Smoking hot, Ivy League supermodel surrogate is what she's marketing. Prostitute is what these men see.

Really disturbing