The first step towards an international instrument to abolish surrogacy.

But they can, and have. They don’t want to risk it for a second.

Thats semantics, they can't have a baby fullstop.

Sperm donation is absolutely not exploitative.

There altruistic surrogates, especially in the UK.

And do the women involved in surrogacy always see it as exploitative?

I dont think men see it as exploitative, they like the idea of spreading their seed. At least, that is what one man I knew said.

It’s an interesting debate for sure

It's also weird that we are now in a situation where anywhere a man's sperm can fertilise an egg, he can claim parental rights, according to one comment.

But it doesn't work the other way around - so a woman's egg can be used for IVF for another woman to hopefully conceive and carry, but the egg donor cannot claim parental rights AFAIK.

I agree. Going to poorer countries to buy organs from people who need the money would be seen as abhorrent. Why is surrogacy different? I mean, buying a kidney actually has greater benefits than buying a baby, because the person might die without it. And yet we, rightly, don’t allow it even to save a life. We don’t say “well if the person agrees then they should have the right to do what they want with their body, even if that means selling a part of their liver”.

This is a great point. Sperm donation is equally exploitative

Do you feel men are equally vulnerable to being coerced into providing sperm to sperms banks for donation to couples experiencing infertility or lesbians?

Malthus was wrong. Provably wrong since we are here and the majority of humans are not starving because we cannot grow enough food. Think carefully about reducing populations. Someone has to work to support those who cannot - the old, the sick, the disabled (unless you would throw those people under the bus of course).
Surrogacy is evil because it treats humans as commodities to be bought and sold. We have a name for that: slavery.

Pre natal bonding is real and separation from their birth mother causes severe trauma if just for the baby (most likely also the mother).

No one has the right to a child.

Altruistic surrogacy sounds lovely. But it doesn't really work like that, sadly. What happens is that people order babies as if they are commodities (the market commodifies everything and we now live in a world where the market is sovereign) and if you allow 'altruistic' surrogacy you will end up allowing the exploitation of women who mainly are poorer than the baby-buyers. Having children is not a right, it is a blessing. Some cannot have children and they adopt. Same sex couples can adopt, although Lesbian couples can have their babies if they are prepared to pay for AI, or persuade a friend to be a sperm donor (but he will have parental rights and may not want them, so this solution is a minefield).

Celebrities in the US especially are renting the wombs of other women so that the female half of the couple doesn't need to go through the dangers and pains of pregnancy and birth - and they seem oblivious that though they may have given the genetic material it is the mother's body which makes the baby, so 'their' child is also the child of its mother and wants that mother, too, which is cruel to the baby, who is a person, not a commodity.

I’m not. But raising a child is no mean feat either - and I’m asking what is it that makes someone a mother?

Is the act of birthing a baby "simple"? Or is it 9 months long ending in a labour that can have serious consequences for mother and baby? Why try to diminish the scale of the work involved?

I agree that doing it for a family member is far more ok on the surface. But of course relationships within families can also contain coercion and control that can limit a woman's choices, even if not as much as poverty does.

But if people understood more about the baby they wouldn't even need to get to this kind of wrangling over when surrogacy is and isn't palatable. It is KNOWN that separation from ones mother at birth causes trauma.

These days babies are only adopted when the risk of harm TO THE BABY otherwise is really significant.

To commission a baby into existence, with the known intention of causing trauma to it, is a form of child abuse in my opinion. How can the needs and wants of the adults involved - however demonstrably lovely or worthy they seem - make this ok?

How is it ethically complex for them to be relabelled? If the baby is of no biological relation to the person who carried it, is it simply the act of birthing that makes one a mother? Or is it the love and affection you give to a child that makes you their mother?

It's damaging for the baby who will suffer the trauma of removal and potentially damaging for the teen and then adult they will become. Deliberately creating a child to remove them is wrong.

It's too much to ask of the mother and too great a risk. Where there has been ivf the risks to her body are even higher, this isn't just a regular pregnancy, (and even regular pregnancies are a risk.)

I have issues with family members doing it too because mother become relabelled sister / aunt or a different role is ethically complex.

Surrogacy should be illegal.

But that’s where the distinction lies imo. There ARE cases where it’s like that

The world is overpopulated and we need to get a handle on the massive amount of resources that first world countries are overusing and the huge environmental impact on less developed countries whose emissions are a direct result of what we buy from them and outsource to them. If that means that some people need to accept that they can’t have kids, like everyone infertile did 100 years ago, then that’s how it needs to be.

I don’t think there should be any exceptions because the trauma to the child should be weighed higher than the want of the woman or man to obtain a child. People who think of children as tradeable objects will never make good parents. The baby farms are sickening and we should do whatever it takes to stop that. If any surrogacy is allowed, we cannot ask hard questions at borders etc when someone tries to take a baby out of the country that isn’t theirs. This is why so many countries have cracked down on international adoptions.

I think reducing total fertility and protecting the babies and pregnant women should be front and centre not letting Kim Kardashian have a fifth kid.

Thanks for posting OP… not celebrating by any means for the reasons you say, but even this recognition does feel hopeful.

I think it does need banning – the industrial scale of it is appalling and incredibly damaging to the health of women and children. I get that there may be very worthy pleas for exceptions but I don’t think they’re worthy enough to make up for the level of exploitation.

Family members are more open than most to coercion. I read a case a while back that was particularly concerning, a surrogacy carried daughter carrying for her gay father.
We all imagine a loving sibling bond with everyone equally powerful. That’s not a particularly common scenario. There’s often a golden child, or other complex dynamic. It’s rarely equal.