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

Do also think we should regulate rather than ban anything else which can't be 100% prevented then? Some things are considered wrong by society, and even though they can't be 100% prevented they're still illegal.

It's not "Criminalising someone for exercising their fertility in a particular way" it's criminalising human trafficking. Which is already illegal, except for new born babies made to order.

Sounds like a really good argument for proper regulation rather than pretend that we can ban our way out of the various ways in which people are exploited.

I think what matters is that the principle.

I do not think we can criminalise people for the manner in which they consensually conceive a child because we've formed a view that the child will be born into suboptimal conditions.

We don't criminalise a woman who gets pregnant even after having all of her children placed in care - and rightly so. We don't criminalise someone with a serious and inheritable illness for getting pregnant.

Criminalising someone for exercising their fertility in a particular way is a really dangerous and wrong thing for a free society to do.

OK, from an evaluation of policy perspective then.

I have read your posts with inters (although i don't agree with most of them, you make some interesting points)

I'm not talking about disapproval. I'm talking about whether something should be prevented, at a policy level, on the grounds that it has the potential to do more harm than good.

You seem to be arguing that we have to allow surrogacy at a policy level given that some mothers give up their babies for adoption (willingly or otherwise).

I was questioning that assumption given that, there is a big difference between allowing something and actively encouraging it - the scale of it for starters is likely to be massively different. Does that matter? I think that it does.

I was asking whether you also see that difference, or whether you think one is OK because the other happens anyway?

We don't let people sell their body parts, and many would like to do so. Why is it ok to sell a baby?

There are next to no checks on the purchasers. Surrogates mostly can't change their minds. They are often coerced into it by fathers or brothers who take all the money. Many surrogates have learning disabilities and don't properly understand what is going on. Or they are so desperate they think this is the only option.

They are rarely told of the risks involved in a surrogate pregnancy and left to deal with everything that happens on their own.

The idea that women happily become surrogates is a fiction.

The point surely is that women should not be getting pregnant with the intention to give away their baby.

Another poster on here spoke about how she used a donor eggs but absolutely considers herself to be the child's mother. She is in the same situation as a surrogate who is carrying a baby made from another woman's egg. The difference is the intent - and the payments of course.

Why should we encourage women to get pregnant to give their baby away? It is purely for the benefit of demanding adults.

You and I both adopted - we didn't go and pay a woman to give us a baby. For me, seeing the impact that losing their birth mother has had has convinced me that no one should lose her unless absolutely necessary.

These wannabee parents could do the right thing and adopt orvuse their lives in some other way for the good. I'm not some saint who was particularly well equipped to parent traumatised children but l learned how to do it. I simply don't think you should just be using your superior income to commission a baby. It becomes so much more than that as the users of donor eggs use eugenics to choose a great set of genes. Not for them the hardships of parenting a child with sen or development trauma.

I mean my main interest here is in the legal and public policy position. Individuals can disapprove of whatever they like. The question for me is should it be banned or not.

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

100% this.

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

100% this.

The actual numbers aren't the point really.

The point is that the state cannot and should not foist parenthood on someone who doesn't want it.

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.

I know there are absolutely cases where vulnerable women from very poor countries are used in these scenarios and feel they have no choice. But that's not the case for all and it seems you're suggesting that those who choose to go through surrogacy for purely financial or altruistic reasons are somehow not able to make their own decisions, like they're children who don't know what's good for them? Why do you feel sorry for them, like they've been tricked into something and don't understand what they're doing?

To clarify, I think that unrelated men pose a risk to the children who live with them and the figures support this.

I understand that this is your point. I just think it's really bizarre to call a male donor child's parent and unrelated male. If a heterosexual couple needed a sperm donor due to make factor infertility, I would call that man the child's father, not an unrelated male. And I think the majority of people would.

In the same vein I wouldn't call a gay man who chose to have his own child an unrelated male just because his sperm wasn't used to create the child.

Is there a difference in 'allowing' something, and 'encouraging/ normalising' something?

In this case, a mother giving up her baby.

I would say that there is a massive difference, which is part of the problem.

Something that would have happened once in a blue moon is being encouraged and financially incentivised.

The use of the term 'surrogate' rather than 'birth mother' is a deliberate choice to depersonalization her.

I'm not avoiding the issue at all. You asked me who I thought was more important to a baby's welfare and I explained to you: the parents who actually raise a child day in day out are.

I've also answered your question.

The reason it should end as soon as the baby is born is because that is what the birth mother wants. And we do not, and should not, compel parental responsibility in those who want to relinquish it.

That is a matter of personal freedom for adults - compelling someone to be a parent even when they do not wish to be is unconscionable. But it is also a matter of child welfare - a child is almost never better off being raised by a parent who does not want to be a parent.

That could be because most people who object to surrogacy on the basis of the interests of the baby seem to judge the outcome for the baby versus a world where the baby remains with their birth mother and lives happily ever after. But in reality, the counterfactual for a baby born through surrogacy is not 'be raised by biological/gestational mum or by biological Dad and adoptive dad', it is 'not exist, or exist and be raised by biological Dad and adoptive dad'.

I can't imagine ever looking at a child and thinking that they would be better off not existing than existing in a scenario I found less optimal.

My son was born into an environment which was far worse than just suboptimal. I can't ever imagine thinking that a better outcome for the world, or for him, would have been to simply not exist. Of course the ideal world counterfactual would be that he could have been raised by stable, loving and safe biological parents and avoided the challenges his early life posed. But that wasn't on the table - so in a choice between existing with challenging circumstances or not existing, it is far far better that he exists.

Same question to you.

Should mothers be allowed to relinquish parental responsibility or not?

Sorry this is nonsense.

The whole point about the trauma of immediate separation is that it is a physiological thing. It is the impact of heightened cortisol in utero and immediately after birth, as well as the lack of personal/physical connections and the impact that has on neural development. It's like you're arguing for the primal wound theory without having read or understood it.

Same question to you.

Should mothers be allowed to relinquish parental responsibility or not?

So on the traumatic separation, there is obviously a difference between a child being forcibly removed from a mother who does not wish her to be taken away and is incredibly distressed as a result in terms of the trauma and stress involved for both the mother and the baby; and a baby being removed from a mother who is calm and voluntarily choosing to relinquish parental responsibility, done in a managed way.

If a child is born and immediately removed from the mother, there is no difference. If the mother is distressed and doesn't want the baby to be taken, the baby is not aware if this if it is immediately taken away.

Fundamentally surrogacy is an exercise in making decisions around one's own fertility. A woman gets to decide whether she wishes to be impregnated or not, a man decides if he wishes to impregnate a woman or not, and an egg donor decides if she wishes to be an egg donor or not. These are all decisions where the starting point should favour liberty over one's body. It is on those arguing to interfere with that autonomy that need to demonstrate that there is a justification for such a state interference in personal freedom over our own bodies.

I notice that there is no consideration of the child in any of this talk of liberty and freedom. So the child is just a by-product of people exercising their freedoms. Interesting.

All of this is a fantasy constructed to say that humans are perfectly independent except for contractural relationships. I suppose it should not be a surprise this ideology comes from the US, a country which believes the relations of the citizens to each other and the government and the law are a kind of abstract contractual arrangement.

In reality motherhood and fatherhood are fundamentally material biological relations that exist whether or not the people involved "agree". The state doesn't impose parenthood on anyway, any more than they impose gravity on anyone.

And most importantly in this context, the relation of the infant to the birth mother isn't some kind of abstract relation based on consent, it's a material reality based on flesh and chemistry; the mother infant dyad and fourth trimester are real and important things as anyone who has had a child knows.

"consent" has fuck all to do with it and trying to create a society where that is all there is to such important human relationships is morally reprehensible.

I really hope people who believe this shit are not condemning fathers who don't bother to pay for or be involved with their offspring.

There is a big difference between one person and 22 people, and there is also a big difference in a single quote from that one persona and a 20 year long study conducted by professionals.

@PlanetJanette has done a great job of describing the difference between forced adoption and surrogacy in terms of the immediate after birth experience of a child. Also surrogate born children are related to their intended parents, they know where they come from. They're not just whisked off and given to strangers like in forced adoption. It is completely different.