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

If separating a mother and child why is adoption any better? Adoption from birth surely leads to the exact same trauma?

Adoption is only considered as an option when there are serious issues with the mothers ability to care for their child. It is very much a last resort.

Surely that's obvious. But you have the gall to call other people's arguments badly thought out? 🤦‍♀️

I don't see adoption as a coverall, it is a very complex area. However, it is an avenue for a gay couple that is a lot less morally compromised than surrogacy.

Yes, I agree. It's why I'm campaigning for a law for where one parent in a straight relationship dies, the other parent is made to give them up for adoption so they can be in a happy loving home with a mother and a father.

Similarly where parents want to separate or divorce, I'm asking my MP to make it law that either they aren't allowed to do so, or that the parent who has custody of the child is required to immediately remarry so the child can live with two parents.

You see how nonsensical that sounds? Now compare to your idiotic and homophobic post.

Your post makes no sense. You’re making the arguments against surrogacy yourself.

If separating a mother and child why is adoption any better? Adoption from birth surely leads to the exact same trauma?

Yes they both lead to trauma. But in adoption it comes about as a result of significant unforeseen circumstances.

If you acknowledge that this process causes trauma,

these children have most likely endured trauma

and you accept that surrogacy causes the same trauma, why is it ok to deliberately create such a situation where this trauma will occur - surrogacy - instead of having to deal with a situation where it’s an unfortunate consequence of unforeseen circumstances - adoption?

Adoption is the solution to a problem. Surrogacy creates the problem.

In the UK women are generally no longer handing babies over at birth. The children available to adopt have mostly been removed by the courts because of serious safeguarding concerns.

But because we know how damaging it is not to know your birth mother, children adopted in the UK will have ongoing contact with her until adoption, which takes months. And afterwards, when the child is adopted, the new family is given life story information to share with the child and they are expected to have some kind of ongoing contact every year too, maybe in person or by letter.

And you are entitled to none of this if you are born from surrogacy. There will be no info on birth mother unless the purchasing parents decide to share this - why would they? Are they the kind of people who want to do this?

Personally, I think it is immoral, or at least very morally compromised, for any parent to simply cut off ties to the child. Even in cases where the mother has serious issues like addiction, most try to maintain contact of some kind, and there is a kind of responsibility toward their offspring.

It's not good for society as a whole to say, it's ok for one parent to just decide to be uninvolved. For money, or just generally. If you have a child, and that means your biological child, you have a significant responsibility that can only be removed for serious reasons.

The move away from recognising the reality of biology has been bad and is no small part of how we are now in a world where male and female are supposedly biologically meaningless.

I'm not entirely sure celebs (presumably) do this as often as they are 'accused" of it. I think sometimes they want to keep their medical details private and thats why they have to use a surrogate. I'm not sure it isn't male media who also invented 'too posh to push' , as if its something you can do in your lunch break!

I don't necessarily agree wholeheartedly with surrogacy but some of the arguments here are tenuous and not well thought out. It seems to be surrogacy = bad because of x y z, but x y z is OK to be overlooked or allowed in other cases.

If separating a mother and child why is adoption any better? Adoption from birth surely leads to the exact same trauma?

Also, suggesting 'adoption' as a cover-all for an easy way to make a family is naive and tone deaf. The go-to answer for people unable to convince a child of their own should NOT be adoption, certainly not as a booby prize or as a second choice. Adoption is incredibly rewarding but it's not a consolation prize - these children have most likely endured trauma, physical or emotional and parents choosing it should be doing it for the right reasons with their eyes wide open, not a quick route to matching Christmas pajama group shots and happy-ever-afters.

If donor egg and one of the commissioning parent's sperm is used then the whole 'biological' argument crumbles a bit.

‘Surrogacy isn’t buying and selling people’

But that is exactly what it is.

Nobody is talking about babies who need special care. Don’t be disingenuous. We are talking about two entirely separate things here. The issue is babies being ordered and sold.

No one here is shaming children. Jesus Christ 🤦‍♀️

God, what a dishonest rhetorical device. No one is shaming children ffs.

I hope you are consistent and are supportive of families created by forced adoption as well. I doubt it though.

This case illustrates some of the concerns.

Sir Andrew McFarlane P:

'Some months ago, I determined applications for the adoption of two four-year-old children, Y and Z. This further judgment is now being handed down and made public in order to draw attention, in entirely anonymous terms, to the circumstances of the case which are likely to be a matter of public interest and concern, and to offer some advice for those who may, in future, unwisely seek to follow the path taken by the two applicants in this case by engaging in an unlawful, commercial, foreign surrogacy arrangement.

The two children who were the subject of the application were born on the same day and each is the full genetic sibling of the other, having been conceived in embryo form as a result of a donation by an anonymous donor of eggs and an anonymous donor of sperm. They are not, however, fully twins as the embryos that resulted in the birth of Y, and separately of Z, were carried by two different surrogate mothers. A surrogacy arrangement had been commissioned by the two applicants, Ms W and Ms X, who were in a long-established and enduring relationship and who were resident here in the United Kingdom. In addition, Ms X was domiciled here and had been a UK resident effectively all of her life. A significant feature of the case was that, by the time of the hearing before me, one of the applicants was over 70 years old and her partner was fast approaching that age.

The couple had decided to investigate the possibility of having children some years ago. Both of them, by then, were well into their middle age and beyond child-bearing years. They considered adoption and they considered other arrangements that could be made in this jurisdiction. However, none of these enquiries led to any firm plan and thus they found themselves investigating other options and, in some way, established a connection with a foreign surrogacy clinic, which they had understood, was based in Southern Cyprus.

It was only after the arrangements had been advanced to a significant degree that they came to understand that the clinic was in fact operating in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, where surrogacy, on my understanding, is unlawful and where the placement of children with same-sex couples is also not permitted by law.

The clinic, on the information this court had, seemingly operated on some scale and used women from Ukraine as surrogate mothers. The court papers contained an article from an American magazine published in 2020, which described some dozen or more Ukrainian women at the clinic who were engaged in surrogacy. Assuming that article to be broadly accurate, it gave some idea of the scale of the operation.

The two individuals who donated gametes to create the embryos had been chosen by Ms W and Ms X to replicate their own racial characteristics. The two embryos were successfully implanted and pregnancies became established in the two surrogate mothers. The contracts signed by the two applicants and the clinic show that a significant sum of money was paid for the creation of these two children. The court was told by the solicitor now acting for the applicants that it was in the region of £120,000.'

Continues here:

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2025/339.html

Sure.

And the fact is, some people never find someone to have kids with, it just doesn't work out. I have three friends I can think of off the top of my head who wanted to be parents but never married.

In the more long ago past, before the modern idea of being homosexual existed, people didn't really see procreating as being necessarily tightly attached to romantic love at all. People often married for very pragmatic reasons, including having children.

This is an exceptionally good article about gay men and how they view access to surrogacy

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/oct/01/how-gay-parenthood-through-surrogacy-became-a-battleground

Thing is, yes straight couples use surrogacy too. But this is different. Never before have men, gay or single, found it so easy to get hold of a child with no mother. Mothers are not an irrelevance. It used to be regarded as a profound loss to not have one. Children lost their mothers mainly due to death. Never before did we set out to create motherless children.

The arguments for gay and single men using surrogacy are all about them and their needs. They have nothing to do with the needs of the children.

In the UK a surrogate born child or child born from a donor egg or sperm can get info on this person at 18. In other countries this doesn't happen, and most British people using surrogacy are going overseas.

In some US states the purchasing parents can get their names put directly onto the birth certificate. In others the original birth certificate is sealed. So the child never knows who sold their egg or carried them.

And if these men cared so much about their child, why wouldn't they allow the child to know their mother?

Just imagine if you didn't know who your mother was. We stopped all that in adoption years ago because it was so damaging and unfair. But somehow with surrogacy it's ok? I don't think do.

I have two adopted children and the loss of birth mother is profound, something that never goes away. They were neglected and had to be removed for their safety. They weren't removed on a whim or because money changed hands. And we had ongoing contact with the birth family - because it is crucial that people know their biological roots.

Surrogacy is popular with very powerful people - they are already pushing for it to be made easier and for more rights to accrue to the purchasers. Women in poorer countries are not the ones benefiting from these moves. A lot of these women are coerced, often by their fathers or husbands, who take the money. Some don't understand that they will never see the child again.

And we leave children with people who would impose this loss on a child, this exploitation of women. It is awful never mind if the purchasers are gay, straight or single.

I posted this upthread. Due warning, it is a truly horrendous read.

www.wired.com/story/the-baby-died-whose-fault-is-it-surrogate-pregnancy/

archive.ph/Wh7Rv

This is a very extreme example, but it brought home to me what can happen if we treat human life like any other commodity to be bought and sold. There was no shortage of regulation in this case, it was regulated within an inch of its life. Now it's being pursued through the courts, layering pain on top of pain.

I don't think there is a way of doing surrogacy that mitigates against vulnerable women being taken advantage of. Or that puts the babies needs first. For that reason, I don't think it should be an option for anyone.

Nice talking to you too - have fun with the ironing! I’m starving as going out for ‘breakfast’. 🤣

I think pp meant nuclear family as in two parents raising their children - the point wasn’t about the involvement or not about extended family.

Children are traditionally raised by their parents as part of an extended family within a wider community.

You admit that traditionally children have always been raised by the two parents that made them.

PPs claim Adoption agencies actually did studies and found gay couples made better parents than average.. I find extremely questionable and, no shade on gay parents, but unlikely.

I’m not offering a converse opinion as I have no idea but I find the claim that a same sex couples are better parents than heterosexual couples extremely bold and unlikely to be backed by actual data.

Ahh, but why acknowledge that when you can demonise gay men?

Perhaps you're right, maybe if it's ungovernable then it shouldn't be allowed. But I do think if someone is genuinely willing and know and accept the risks, they should have that option. Like I said, now I have children of my own I wouldn't be willing to take those risks, but had I not, I wouldn't be against doing it for a sister or cousin.

Either way, it was nice to have a civilised discussion with yourself and a couple of others on here who can consider alternative viewpoints from their own. It's no fun talking to an echo chamber all the time! Thank you.

I better go and actually do my ironing now 🤣🤣

What irritates me is that you seem to think that women have no agency and are simpletons, not able to make decisions about their own bodies.

For me it’s more about the children. It’s immoral and exploitative to buy and sell human beings and particularly to produce babies for profit. I can’t understand how this can be a thing even if the mother does have agency she is not the only consideration once the child is born how is it possible they can be sold? It’s bizarre.

Plenty of children waiting to be adopted into a loving home without ordering a baby in an exploitative transaction.

Also consider the cruelty to the child of allowing them to be born to very old parents - there have been a couple of surrogacy cases recently where the age of the commissioning parents was ridiculous, one where the mother was in a care home by the time the baby was born.

If you commodify babies, it becomes very difficult to stop this kind of situation - you can say "oh we just have to have rules about age" but we all know that where there's money to be made, there will always be people willing to do the unthinkable to make it.

Tbf, I was far more inclined to agree with your views a few years ago before I found out more information about the surrogacy industry. But now I know more of the facts I feel very differently.

A lot of surrogates are willing family members who want to help.

This proportion is somewhere between 18% and 30%. The higher figure of 30% family surrogates was from 2014, the lower figure of 18% is from 2024 and presumably reflects the vast move of the industry from an rare but altruistic family favour to a multi million dollar industry exploiting poor women in countries with laws that allow human trafficking.

It is hard to describe it as anything other than buying and selling people when you have babies produced to order and there’s money involved. Even in this county, ‘expenses’ are payable to the surrogate mother.

There’s even been cases when the purchasing parents have wanted to return a baby because it was disabled. There’s a famous case in Australia where a twin with Downs was rejected and the surrogate mother has had to bring him up.

Some women may be doing it for altruistic reasons but that doesn’t negate the cold hard cash exchange.