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

People are not 'owed' a child.

Absolutely. The right to a family life is the right to not being prevented from having children. It is not the right to be supplied with children.

Why is it illegal to purchase a newborn baby?

Why can it be legal to purchase a newborn baby if the contract was signed before the mother became pregnant?

I mean, lesbians can't have children together either.

Some people have a problem with surrogacy, but not donation of gametes. Others object to both.

I really don't see what differernce it makes though, if something is in itself immoral, the fact that it means gay or lesbians could not have kids would be kind of irrelevant, wouldn't it?

If we found that infertile women could have children by removing the uterus of live women, resulting in their deaths, we wouldn't say that was ok because it fixed her infertility. What differernce would it make if we took that same scenario with a same sex couple?

Do immoral acts become moral because it promotes some kind of equality? (And where somehow biological reality is seen as a kind of inequality that is immoral? Surly that is a dystopian road to go down.)

So no, I think surrogacy is immoral, and I don't care if it means gay couples can't have kids. That is a fact of life, like many other facts.

They don't. Having a baby isn't a human right. If your biology doesn't let you have a baby, you don't have one.

The UDHR right to marry and start a family exists to prevent the State from forcibly sterilising people or denying them a civil marriage. It doesn't confer a right to have someone else make you a child if your body won't let you make one yourself.

It's illegal in France, Spain, Germany, Norway, Sweden and other countries, so I don't know why we can't ban it in the UK too.

There are many happy and thriving children of gay parents. I’m guessing you don’t have any gay friends?

Absolutely.

Buying and selling babies. Renting a woman's body. How progressive.

Although I disagree with surrogacy, largely because of reading more about it on these boards, I feel the same about it whoever the parents are- gay or straight.

I don't have a problem with gay men or lesbian women adopting children. Stats I've seen in the past (and I wouldn't claim to be an expert), suggest that children with two loving parents (or more in cases where there may be another non-resident parent) do well regardless of the sex of those parents. They certainly seem to do a lot better than children who spend their lives trapped in the care system.

I don’t buy that there are any significant numbers of women out there selflessly having a baby for infertile couples/gay men etc)

If there was no surrogate's offering themselves to help couples have children then there would be no demand for it. There is surrogate's around who are happy to do it and get paid. That's the reality.

As @AFishDoesntKnow has said, my post is not an anti gay men - it’s about the specific issue of gay men using surrogacy as a means to have a family being seen as something to be celebrated

Why shouldn't the arrival of a child into a family be celebrated?

Nope.

I am against all forms of exploitain of the human body, surrogacy, organ trade, prostitution.

With surrogacy there is the additional issue of selling a human baby.

Feminism isn't just choices for women.

Mother dies at birth. Tragedy. Awful for the baby to be deprived of its mother; acknowledging that mother-child relationship is a thing.

Baby deliberately deprived of its mother because cash has exchanged hands? All fine.

Agreed, human life shouldn't be a commodity.

You sound very judgemental and homophobic. Are you religious?

Couples where both parties are men shouldn't have kids. I don't care if that's controversial, I feel it strongly in my gut.

Why do you think that it is viewed as harmful to take puppies away from their mothers before they are a few weeks old, but it is acceptable to take human babies away from their mothers at birth? And even plan to do this before the child is even conceived?

Why do puppies have more rights than human babies to spend the first few weeks of their lives with their mothers?

Why is there no consideration of the trauma experienced by the child from being separated from its mother at birth?

Does it need an answer?

I agree with OP. I might have had a different opinion before I had a baby but having seen just how dependent that baby is on me - how instinctive and primal the mother-baby dyad is - I can't accept any morality that doesn't put that relationship at the centre of decision-making.

Lesbian couples who have their own babies don't cut that bond.

Gay male couples and infertile couples using surrogacy arrangements do cut that bond. Not just cut it, but the "morality" of the "best practices" they impose is legalistically flipped from what I believe: "immediately hand over the baby so that the baby latches onto its 'true parents' instead of the 'gestational carrier'" etc.

I'm opposed to surrogacy in general but I agree with OP that gay men are a special case. Naming it as an equal rights issue means we feel we have to design a solution where they get to have biological children, even if that means suspending what I see as a higher moral duty (to the child). Sometimes that's not the right choice.

Fair enough.

No.

A baby needs love and nurturing. Just as toddlers, children and teenagers need love and nurturing.

While 2 loving parents would be ideal, sometimes children only have one.

Thing is, I don’t see it as a gay men issue. I see it as a class/wealth issue: one where wealthy couples exploit poorer/disadvantaged women by hiring their wombs for 9m, buy their eggs, and then take receipt of the baby like a commodity. Yes, i do think there is a repugnant and deeply ingrained level of misogyny on the part of the wealthy gay men concerned…. But that is equally evident in wealth hetero couples who ‘buy’ their babies. They think these women are nothing and that their right to parenthood trumps the rights of women who are seduced into surrogacy out of financial need.

Every child has a mum and a dad of course, and huge numbers have been brought up successfully by a different combination, and huge numbers have had bad or neglectful parents of the male/female type. I’m not sure what your head-tilt homophobia has to do with surrogacy, which is a different issue.

I'm against surrogacy full stop; for gay, straight, whatever combination. But what particularly gets to me is the posed for photos, and I've seen several of these, where one of the males in the couple is lying in the hospital bed with the baby on his chest, as if he had given birth, and his partner beside him. Female no where to be seen. I think that is so insulting to the woman who gave birth and makes a mockery of it.

Adoption can be very difficult and isn't suitable for many people.

Well that's just too bad then isn't it. People are not 'owed' a child.

Thank goodness people like you don't get let anywhere near actual decision making, either.