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

Here's the evidence of one woman who was taken from her mother shortly after birth. I'm sure there's a lot more out there, since it was quite a common practice in the middle of the 20th century.

https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/9955/html/

Why create children with the intent to inflict trauma on them shortly after birth, which may last their entire lives?

What a weird take. There is of course reams of evidence of the impact of alcohol on driving safety. If that evidence didn’t exist and there was no indication that driving after drinking was no more dangerous than driving after, say, coffee then of course we should not criminalise drunk driving.

But that evidence does exist, so…

Legally it depends on the jurisdiction. But my view is that parental rights should only be capable of being ceded after birth. If the birth mother changes her mind then my preference would be that she can do that and the situation should be treated the same as any other custody dispute between parents.

In an ideal world we would have proper international legal regulation around surrogacy so that there is a common framework for countries to operate under which these issues could be treated in a consistent manner way. The unrealistic ‘ban it’ crowd would never accept proper regulation these days.

Old style adoption and surrogacy aren't different, as I said up thread. Those children were "desperately wanted and go to their lifelong parents at birth". And look at their stories, thousands of them.

No one said it's an "absolute truth " that "all surrogate children are screwed up", that's a straw man. But there's plenty of evidence from children who were removed from their birth mothers and given to people who desperately wanted them, in old style adoption, that those children struggled with attachment and identity. That's why we don't do it like that anymore. But what is acknowledged as bad practice in adoption is apparently fine in surrogacy.

What happens if the mother changes her mind after giving birth and decides she wants to keep the baby? Is she still compelled to give the baby to the purchasers?

I'm still waiting for the research that proves these children are emotionally damaged by surrogacy and show separation trauma and attachment trauma for the rest of their lives.

I'm still waiting for the research that proves that drunk drivers cause a car accident every time they drink and drive. Oh that research doesn't exist? Well then let's just allow drink driving.

How can I clarify if you keep refusing to say what you mean by importance?

Do you mean for legal purposes? Social purposes? Identity purposes?

Your question on importance needs to be more specific.

But your last question on how we can justify removing a baby from its birth mother is simple - whenever a mother wants to relinquish her parental rights and responsibilities we respect that decision and we don’t compel her to parent a child she does not want to.

Adoption and surrogacy are clearly different in that adopted children were given up by their birth parents because they weren't wanted or removed because their parents could not care for them adequately and both of these things don't happen right at birth most of the time

That may be the case now, but it hasn't always been like that. In the quite recent past, babies were routinely removed from their mothers for no better reason than that the mother wasn't married. So there's actually quite a lot of evidence about the effect on both mother and baby of removing a child from its mother shortly after birth.

Here, for example.

The Violation of Family Life: Adoption of Children of Unmarried Women 1949–1976

I am asking YOU to clarify those things. Where do you view the importance of the birth mother? You acknowledge she’s the mother, acknowledge the baby is removed from its mother, but then you said:

The 'standing and importance' of specific mothers isn't really some universal thing. It will largely depend on how the child views it as they grow up.

I want to know if you value the importance of the mother, to gauge how you can therefore justify the separation of the baby from her.

You’re asking questions that are inherently subjective. When you talk about a birth mother’s importance, ‘standing’ I don’t know what you mean. Are you talking about legal rights? Are you talking about importance to the child and their identity? If the latter that’s highly subjective and really individual to each child.

When you talk about ‘lesser importance’, lesser than who?

But on your last point - we never compel mothers to take parental responsibility if they do not wish to. That is the case in surrogacy, and it’s the case in any other situation where a mother wants to place a baby for adoption or to be raised by the father or someone else.

So your claim that we ‘remove’ a baby from its mother in surrogacy cases when we wouldn’t in any other case is wrong - in any scenario where a mother does not want to exercise parental responsibility, the child will be removed and placed with someone who can exercise parental responsibility.

You think the birth mother to be the baby’s mother. Or one of them. You acknowledge that the baby is removed from its mother. So I’d like to understand a bit more.

What do you mean by the importance of “specific mothers” isn’t really a universal thing?

The only thing I can infer from that is you think the birth mother is of lesser importance in a surrogacy arrangement. Is this correct?

And if it’s not correct, and you think the birth mother is of equal importance, why is it ok to remove a baby from its important mother in surrogacy but not ok in non-surrogacy situations?

The 'standing and importance' of specific mothers isn't really some universal thing. It will largely depend on how the child views it as they grow up.

Commercial surrogacy as an “industry” is relatively young, and is growing rapidly. The resulting children will therefore be young, few of them adults yet, and possibly less likely to acknowledge the absence of a relationship with their biological mothers (genetic and gestational).

Friends of mine, who were adopted (from unmarried mothers) in the early 1970s, tended to seek out their biological family as they themselves had children, in their 30s and 40s. In which case, data on the anticipated trauma of the children of surrogates will not be available for another 10-20 years. The surrogacy agencies will not be actively researching it as the results are likely to compromise their business model.

I conceived our son through IVF and fleetingly considered surrogacy because of multiple miscarriages. Knowing what I now know, I wouldn’t consider surrogacy. Two friends have used donor eggs and have been, with their children, to donor conception network meet ups. They are completely open with them about this.

Adoption and surrogacy are clearly different in that adopted children were given up by their birth parents because they weren't wanted or removed because their parents could not care for them adequately and both of these things don't happen right at birth most of the time. Children born from surrogacy are not desperately wanted and go to their lifelong parents at birth.

We can all find heartbreaking anecdotes for all types of families and social situations, they have no place in an evidence based debate. It is obviously sad that this little girl feels this way, but that doesn't mean that all surrogate children are screwed up. And yes, you still need evidence to claim this is an absolute truth, an anecdote will not suffice.

So do the multiple mothers carry equal standing and equal importance in your view?

You do know that commercial surrogacy as we see it today has only been happening st scale for 10-15 years. There were only 83 surrogate births registered in 2010 so there hasn’t yet been time for the full emotional impact to manifest.

We do know however, the impacts on children of adoption. You don’t seem to have explained how it will be any different with surrogacy.

Nice casual dismissal of a little girl deprived of her mother and clearly upset about it btw.

One of its mothers, yes.

If you look for surrogacy research, it's very much tiny sample sizes and limited follow up. No one wants to discover that it harms any of the participants. It is a huge industry and it suits everyone to say there are no drawbacks. The studies also tend to look at relationships between the children and their parents rather than the child's feelings.

That’s heartbreaking.

Two boys at dds school were born of a surrogate mother(s) for two gay dads.

Well as heartbreaking as your single anecdote is, thankfully there is actually real research into the psychological wellbeing of children born from gamete donation and surrogacy and the findings were that if the families were open with the children about their birth stories there was no negative affect on their emotional wellbeing or the bond with their parents and there was no statistical difference between these children and naturally conceived children. Here is the research.

APA PsycNet FullTextHTML page https://share.google/LcCAuXUlFIWB1aNIL

I'm still waiting for the research that proves these children are emotionally damaged by surrogacy and show separation trauma and attachment trauma for the rest of their lives.

Of course no one who is making money from surrogacy, or who wants to obtain a baby via surrogacy, is at all interested in drawing those parallels, why would they be?

Exactly. It’s an industry. The fact the word industry is applied to the exchange of human beings is bad enough, but no industry is ever remotely interested in self-regulation or research that might impair its own interests.

Or a woman from an Indian baby farm who likely no one even bothered to note the name of.

A girl at my DD’s school has two male parents and was from a surrogate in India. When she was little, she used to tell her school friends that when she grows up, she is going to go to India to meet her mother. She doesn’t mention it now ☹️

Nobody has said that every single child born from surrogacy is permanently emotionally disabled though, have they?

But the evidence from several decades worth of children who were removed from their mothers at or very soon after birth, taken by another family who very much wanted them, and brought up with no knowledge of or contact with their birth family, is pretty relevant to the discussion of what surrogacy does to the children involved. What happened to children in old style adoption is, from the child's point of view, what happens to children in surrogacy now. Babies don't know about egg donors or who provided their sperm, they only know about being removed from their birth mother, so that information is pertinent. And we know that it caused trauma to a lot of those children. Not every single one, but enough of them for it to have been recognised and steps taken to try to avoid and to address it in adoption practice.

Of course no one who is making money from surrogacy, or who wants to obtain a baby via surrogacy, is at all interested in drawing those parallels, why would they be? Still valid nevertheless.

Obviously it would be impolite to go around pointing out to these men that they are unrelated males.

However, with regard to the statistical analysis, they are unrelated males. They are not men that are biologically related to the children are they?

We don’t remove puppies from their mother at birth yet we do this with babies.

There are likely to be *reasons why there is little funding for research into a £multi million industry that may show undesirable facts like poor outcomes for children.

We know adoption hurts children emotionally, the onus should be on the surrogacy industry to prove that its broadly similar (but with less safeguarding) practice does not.