Gay men and surrogacy - the new “be kind”?

Yes. They seem to downplay the health risks to the mum even though many types of surrogate pregnancies are more dangerous than even a normal pregnancy.

An industry has sprung up around convincing women to do something that INCREASES their risk of death and downplays that risk to them. Why would they do that?

Normal policy is try to make things safer for people.

From this article about a mum that died having a surrogate baby:

The maternal mortality rate in the USA has been steadily rising—the only developed country where this is true. The USA maternal mortality rate more than doubled from 1991 to 2014, and American women have the greatest risk of dying from pregnancy complications among 11 high-income countries. Over 700 women die of complications related to pregnancy each year in the USA, and an additional 50,000 American women suffer from life-threatening complications of pregnancy. Black women in the USA are three to four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women.

In the mean time, surrogacy pregnancies, which we know to be far more dangerous than traditional pregnancies, are continuing to rapidly increase. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine reported a 30% increase in surrogate births in the USA between 2004 and 2006, for a total of 1,059 live births in 2006.

www.legalizesurrogacywhynot.com/michelle-reaves-story

Um - she just said that gay men are the same as straight men in terms of their attitude to women.

Not sure how that's homophobic.

Reading comprehension is useful.

So are you suggesting that the mother/baby bond, both psychological and physical, with the transfer of antibodies to the baby etc is completely without value and not to be prioritised in any way? It can’t be effectively replaced by another person, especially men.

But the issue when discussed on here vilifies intended parents

I very much do vilify parents who use surrogates to grow and birth their biological children.

A woman posted on a neighborhood FB group that she and DH were searching for a "gestational surrogate" outside the "constrictions of an agency" after giving her sob story of a previous painful pregnancy. They offered to pay surrogate mother for her services.

Of course, the moderator left all the gushing comments, and critical comments removed, even some that were very mild like, "surrogate mothers deserve to have legal representation to protect them."

I have absolute contempt for those intended parents. They want to take advantage of a financially desperate or vulnerable woman.

Quite. My children's birth parent set fire to a public building before his age was in double figures. One of his siblings was a convicted murderer before he was old enough to vote. Not a chance these people are getting my phone number!

And to bring it back to the topic of the thread, either of those deeply dangerous men would be able to buy a baby via surrogacy, if he had the money. There are literally no safeguards on surrogacy, and babies have been purchased by paedophiles, violent criminals, and other unstable people, as well as recently a couple in their 70s when the baby was born. It's indefensible.

The majority of commercial surrogate pregnancies are from donated eggs.

The complications like pre-eclampsia, post- partum haemorrhages are roughly double for IVF pregnancies compared to not IVF pregnancies.

IVF with donor eggs complications is higher again, roughly triple typical pregnancies.

Yes, you're right, sorry, i meant to say they might use their own eggs - of course this isn't possible with gay or single men.

Going through social services for ongoing contact is one thing - what you are suggesting is potentially very dangerous.

In my situation the birth father turned out to be highly dangerous and there was a court case and he was sent to prison - imagine if he had our phone number!!

We did set up contact with birth family members when the girls turned 18 (and letterbox stopped). This was facilitated by social services, with counselling for everyone involved. We had to set out our expectations and agree to rules. When things were going well, social services stepped away and we dealt direct.

And it has not been remotely easy. Quite the opposite in fact.

The child is given away, or more usually, sold, by the mother after it is born.

Would you really argue it would be ok for me to seel my child as long as I made the contract before she was born?

Having access to parents, extended family, and culture are rights of every child, the fundamentals are laid out by the UN on this.

Of course sometimes circumstances outside human control mean we have to try and just do what is best in the situation.

But there is no special class of person who can have contracts made about them before birth which somehow invalidates their basic human rights. That's the logic of chattel slavery.

Parental orders are only applicable for surrogacy.

https://todaysfamilylawyer.co.uk/rise-in-foreign-surrogacy-sparks-calls-for-uk-legal-crackdown/

https://todaysfamilylawyer.co.uk/twofold-increase-in-the-number-of-parental-order-applications-for-older-surrogates/

Def agree. On the issue of surrogacy tho, it's worth noting that sometimes egg donors are used, so it's not even the mother's egg.

Terrible. That must have been really horrible for you

I do think contact for those who want it should be supported, but it does seem that their voices are the only ones being heard. And obvs there are many issues to consider, given that birth parents have to have had serious issues for the children to be removed in the first place

I too am an adopter and it is because of the sorrow of losing a parent that i am anti surrogacy. And my girls are not even interested in contact with their birth parents (girls are mid 20s now). They were removed due to severe neglect - they both nearly died - so in many respects it is reasonable to not want to chat to these people as if nothing happened.

But I do get the point about the loss and sorrow of being removed from one life and plopped into another. My girls moved from one part of the country to another. They lost cultural links, their accent, as well as a extended family and neighbours etc.

And I don't think you have to be a proponent of the Primal wound theory to work out that it might not actually be that great to lose your mother for no good reason.

It doesn't impact at all how I feel about my girlsbor how they feel about me. This is separate.

Anyway, for me, removing a child is
something that shouldn't be done lightly. And also imo, it IS done lightly in surrogacy. Men in particular can just send in a sperm sample, choose the egg donor from a catalogue, pay the agency, then go pick up their baby a while later, very few questions asked. They don't have any requirement to tell the child anything about their mother(s) - at least in straight couples the woman is using her own eggs.

There are definitely extra issues around men using surrogacy imo but equally, I don't understand why regulators are not learning from adoption practice and insisting on bio info being given to these children.

I agree it's better to have supported contact early rather than unsupported later. An ounce of prevention etc.
We can't wait and see which preteens will want to find birth family on social media when they are teens.

I'm not sure that lots of adoptees want it. Some want it and they have been vociferous in saying so. And the situation is so very different from say 25 years ago when I adopted - social media means that contact is often happening unsupported on line and causing lots of issues. So managing a relationship with birth family from the beginning makes sense in many ways; however it remains to be seen how this works in practice. There is no funding to support any of the parties involved and this is a potentially fraught area.

For example, my girls' birth mother scapegoated one of the two girls. This was detailed in the reports and she kept it up in the few letters we received (she then stopped communication completely). Imagine if we had been ordered by the courts to have face to face contact with her!!

Some adoptees do yearn for contact but many do not. But the latter don't campaign and their wishes are ignored.

I am being honest but not revealing the extent of her difficulties.
This type of contact is as I say extremely common (and I've never said it's universal) in US adopters who have adopted from foster care. There is no reason why this model couldn't be followed in the UK, except that social workers don't think it's possible and adoptive parents tell each other it's dangerous.

I never got this idea of gay men being ‘nicer’ than other men, I knew plenty of gay men growing up and they seemed to dislike and disrespect women more than the average man in my opinion, women have nothing that they want so why would they be nicer to them?

I read it. I disagreed with it. Why are you now repeatedly trying to derail with spurious accusations of ‘homophobia’ while berating us for not engaging with your other point?

You appear to dismiss the damage done to babies separated permanently from their mother at birth. What about the accounts from adoptees who spend their lives looking for their mother and wanting to find the lost connection? Does their harm not count?

Even if it doesn’t happen to every baby, why are we risking it happening to some? The risk of a baby being bought for purposes of sexual abuse is also there. Why are we risking that happening to some? How many babies bought for sexual abuse purposes is too many?

Yep that is all right. I 100% guarantee that if we asked our post adoption team to pass on a number to our sons BM they would 100% refuse. As much because of her wellbeing as ours.

If we wanted to arrange a face to face meeting they may be willing to discuss putting it forward but it would entirely depend on what we had in mind and what happens next.

I think the poster is either not being entirely honest or had very unique circumstances that made this possible. It is 100% not possible for most adopters.

“Where do people think these babies come from? Do you think people delude themselves that all these gay men just have kind, altruistic female friends who happily have a baby for them? As opposed to exploiting vulnerable and desperate women in India, Mexico and the like.”

I had a vague memory that commercial surrogacy was no longer possible in India so did some checking. Commercial is legal in:
Russia
Ukraine
Some US states. Of these, some have state level surrogacy regulation, some don’t. Of those that do, none require background checks on the commissioning parents.

Basically, if you have enough money, you can commission a baby in the US. More checks are run on people trying to adopt a pet from a shelter. As long as they pay up, as soon as the baby is born they have full legal parentage, a birth certificate (baby is US citizen) and can get a US passport and leave the country. If they go to their home country, other laws about parental orders kick in, varying by country. If they don’t go home, nothing would trigger any scrutiny, because they have a birth certificate and a passport for the child.

Even in the most heavily regulated state, NY, long term health consequences for the surrogate are not covered. So depending on the State, the commissioning parent’s obligations to the surrogate are what’s in the contract. No legal requirement for healthcare, life insurance, coverage of expenses, different lawyer for the surrogate, nothing.

I would like the following steps to be taken:

(1) Criminalising all use of overseas surrogates.

(2) In any situation where a birth mother is giving up her parental rights voluntarily, the new parents should go through exactly the same process of assessment as adoptive parents, EVEN IF one of the intended parents is the biological father of the child.
Women and men are not interchangeable. Gay couples or single men choosing to raise babies without the presence of a of a mother should expect intense scrutiny. (I also don't think gay men should be allowed to adopt babies or young children.)

(3) In any situation where a woman is carrying a baby with the intention for someone else to raise the child, it should be a criminal offence for the intended parents to give her any money, EVEN EXPENSES, or substantial non-pecuniary gifts.
If a woman wants to risk her own life to create a child for a beloved, infertile sister or friend, she can bear any financial costs of pregnancy herself, which for most people are trivial.

He's very sensible.

And surprised me with how measured he is about a few things.

Ah I see. He sounds sensible, thank you for clarifying. I agree it's not a direct opposition, they're 2 different things which should be judged on their own terms.

Bisexual groups shouldn't be grouped together either. Separate spaces for bi women and lesbians, for one, are important. But bi men & women have v different experiences & from what I've seen in bi forums (I'm bi) bi men often make sexist comments or talk like being DL is OK.

There has been a long problem of gay men dominating LGB groups. I think Julie Bindel has talked about that, among others. It's definitely important for feminists to be aware.

They behave completely differently sexually and you couldn't compare them as opposes, just different.

He wasn't remotely derogatory about lesbians sexual habits. Indeed it was quite the opposite.

I'm not going to give any more details of our family but suffice to say you have mentioned many things that apply and it's still possible to have phone and in person contact. In general birth parents with few resources who live at a distance are unable to find your home based just on a mobile number that's only used for them, anyway.

If you have a family member (your own biological family) who has substance abuse problems, generally you'd have occasional polite and mildly informative phone calls, and meet them with firm boundaries. At the time we adopted , one of my close family members was just recovered from mental health problems that meant we'd have been cautious about leaving children in their sole care. Their children are older than ours but if ours had been older by say 10 years it would have been a very similar set of risk assessments.

Many US adopters with very similar issues in their children's birth families have far more extensive contact than we do.