Celebs having babies via surrogates

[Lardlizard]

Just concerns me a bit that’s all, i do believe you can love a child you adopt and I’m sure in one goes into this lightly

It just makes me worry for the women that are the surrogates

@SanFranBear
Exactly.
Im adopted, and have huge issues with it now, in my 40's.
Creating a child specifically to have them adopted, and people paying for this?
No, no, just never.
I'll never be on board with it.

A woman who’s been pregnant and decided not to do it again because of the cost to her health is better placed than anybody to know how dangerous it can be.

There was a documentary on a few years back about a couple who went to India to get a baby via surrogate and it was horrific. These misfortune women are treated appallingly. They become nothing more than baby machines. I was disgusted watching it.

Gay couples are hugely into surrogacy now. Buying eggs, buying women's bodies to grow the baby, gender selection, the works.

Celeb/wealthy couples are into it. And when the female is near 50, the chances are she is also buying eggs, too, as egg freezing is relatively new to have done it when they were in their 20s or early 30s, the egg is a very delicate structure, so yeah, it's buying a child so it is the husband's biological child. Creating, growing, delivering a human being so a man's DNA can be in it.

Do you all have the same issue with sperm donation, medical experiments and organ donation or is it just issues with women doing selfless acts? If peoples bodies and stuff shouldn't be up for sale, people shouldn't be agreeing to clinical trials for breakthrough medicines or sampling drugs and products to see if they are fit for purpose or giving their sperm to give a childless couple or single person a baby or donating their organs.

If someone signs up to be a surrogate, human medical experiment, organ donor - whatever really, that is their choice. There's an assumption that all surrogates are poor which is rubbish. Pregnancy is also less risky to a healthy woman than a lot of clinical trials and organ donation. If the person wants to do it, they can do it. It's no one else's business what a woman does with her body. It's funny how a termination is totally a woman's choice but choosing to be a surrogate is apparently something they must have been forced into. Women aren't approached by celebrities in the street to be a surrogate you know. The intended surrogate joins an agency hoping to be a surrogate. A choice THEY make. If no one wanted to do it, it wouldn't really exist unless women were picked off the street, raped, held hostage for 9 months then forced to hand the baby over. That is not happening in surrogacies in the civilised world, the one we are talking about. The surrogate is waiting and is picked by the intended parents, not the other way around unless it's a situation where a family member or friend approaches another and asks them to do it

It’s definitely a weird trend among celebrities now. I’ve never understood why Cristiano Ronaldo used a surrogate to have children as a young single man.

is it just issues with women doing selfless acts? If peoples bodies and stuff shouldn't be up for sale, people shouldn't be agreeing to clinical trials for breakthrough medicines or sampling drugs and products to see if they are fit for purpose or giving their sperm to give a childless couple or single person a baby or donating their organs.

It's not selfless when there's remuneration involved. You don't see wealthy women volunteering their uteri and bodies to incubate someone else's baby. It's not a donation. It's exploitation of economically disadvantaged women to sell their bodies as incubators and/or inject hormones to sell their genetic material.

Are you genuinely comparing a man spunking in a cup to a woman being pregnant for 9 months and going through delivering a baby YappityYapYap?

I’ve never done the former because I’m a woman but I understand it’s painless, risk free and only takes a few minutes...

It's funny how a termination is totally a woman's choice but choosing to be a surrogate is apparently something they must have been forced into.
This
I think there is potential for surrogacy to be exploited so it should be closely regulatwd. However I would never want to stop a woman who wants to carry a child for a friend/ relative. They are adult women, who are free to make decisions about their own bodies and I wouldn't dream of infantilising them.by telling them they don't know what they want.

India has banned surrogacy for foreigners. The embryos (I think not operate eggs/sperm) were being sent there it was cheaper to rent a womb in India.

Nope not comparing the two at all but someone commented above saying human beings and their bodies should not be up for sale. Sperm is part of the body no? Or does donating only count as forced when a woman does it because it's more complicated? As in eggs? So are we saying because it's more complicated for a woman to do it it's wrong? But no one can help that. So only men should be allowed to donate because it's less complicated and not forced?

It gets even worse when wealthy couples use surrogates from poorer backgrounds and then reject the baby if it has health issues and/or is disabled as has happened on a few occasions. Very sad documentary on this

I think that the surrogates motivation and opinion has to be taken into consideration before making a judgement.

A surrogate mother may choose to be a surrogate for altruistic reasons. She may accept money but be genuinely happy to take on the (significant) risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth. That is, of course, something that she is capable of deciding (not ignoring the fact that some women don't have the luxury of free choice where they feel pressured to help family members or where they are motivated by poverty). The issue, in circumstances where the surrogate is genuinely happy, lies with the people renting the surrogate's body. I think that regardless of the surrogate's feelings, it is despicable for one human being to decide that it's acceptable for another human being to take big health risks for their personal gain. However much my sister wanted to help me, I would never allow her to risk her health and potentially her life for me.

It's kind of like the men who tell us that their female partners beg them to be choked during sex. Even if there was a woman who genuinely, truly loved being choked, I would still think that any man who choked her was a misogynistic fuck.

A lot of wealthy women have acted as surrogates actually, read up on it and watch some documentaries. You're looking at it like the third world but this thread is about the first world and surrogacies. Some are paid (where it's legal) and some are not (it's not legal to pay a surrogate in the UK). Some are doing it as a selfless act, some want to benefit financially. So what? Portraying surrogates as poor, down trodden women that are desperate is disgusting. Do you not see how offensive this thread is? I'm sure if they wanted the crazy feminism board of mumsnet to speak out about how poor and disadvantaged they are, they'd ask!

Most surrogates are selected based on being healthy good women with a good background so they can be relied on and these women will have signed up to do it before they were even asked to do a surrogacy. Stop piping out this myth that surrogates are poor and disadvantaged because it's very offensive

I am uncomfortable with it. I do wonder about the effect it must have on the baby.

If you believe the gossip pages, some celebrities have babies via surrogates but lie and claim to have given birth themselves - some even going so far as to talk about their supposed post pregnancy weight loss for money. I've no idea if it's true, but it's disgusting if it is.

Think there's positives and negatives to it all. I can't see anything wrong if a couple can't carry, has health issues but for the pure fact they just don't want to carry for vanity reasons (like Kim Ks last child) I do think it's wrong.

The other side of the surrogates praying on families desperate for a baby is terrible too. Louis Theroux did a surrogacy documentary, there was a lady on there that had everything paid for her and was asking for hand outs and then went radio silent around her due date. She had the baby and decided to keep baby without telling anyone. Left this devastated couple with a decorated room and thousands of dollars down.

@YappityYapYap You are deluded and your comments make me wonder why you are trying to deny the clearly documented exploitation.

If women engaged in surrogacy for altruistic reasons, then surrogates would come from all socio-economic backgrounds. But they don't. What a shock!

Getting a woman pregnant on purpose, knowing before conception that the baby will be removed from its birth mother, is supremely selfish of those who want the child. They are knowingly traumatizing the baby. The intentionality of the pregnancy differentiates it from adoption.

Being able to buy access to women's bodies also totally reinforces the idea that it's ok for men to buy sex from women, and that it's ok for people to sell organs. If one bit of the body is for sale, then why shouldn't the rest be?

In the instances when the child has a disability, and the birth mother cant bring herself to abort, but the surrogate couple no longer want the child - what happens then?

If the surrogate dies in childbirth or is left disabled - what happens to any kids that she already has? Who Will look after them and support them?

Infertility is totally heartbreaking, I get that, but that doesn't mean that another woman's body should be treated as a consumer good, so that an infertile person can have a child. Sometimes, we just have to accept that we can't have children, heartbreaking as that is.

For some healthy western women who have easy pregnancy and labours you could see it as a career choice. As long as they are not using their own genetic material it could enable them to stay home with their own children rather than working punishing hours. I'm thinking of America where it is the norm (for the not wealthy) to go back to full time work, possibly with a side job too, within 6 weeks of a baby's birth.

As long as they are not using their own genetic material it could enable them to stay home with their own children rather than working punishing hours

Not if they need to go on bed rest. Or if they die or become disabled during childbirth. How much work/life balance do you get when you are dead?

And even if it WAS fine for women to rent out their bodies, it is totally immoral and selfish to knowingly put a baby through separation trauma!

For me, first and foremost, it's about the child, who won't be a baby for long, and will be born with the intention of being separated from its mother.
I can't understand why anyone would do that to their child, and the people buying the baby are doing that.
It's cruel.

Some women do sail through pregnancy and birth and even enjoy it.

Wouldn't trauma to a baby be only at being separated. If the sperm and egg belong to the parents raising the child you could say they are going 'home'.

Only being separated

Have you any idea of the long term trauma that it can cause throughout a persons life, even though they cannot remember the cause?

I had a coworker who acted as a surrogate several times for people who could not have a child. It's legal in California. I am not sure how much money she made out of it-she earns about $100,000 a year already.

KK has a number of different problems. I remember an episode of her show where she and her sisters were putting cinnamon onto all of their food as it was apparently good for blood sugar — in real life I have only seen women with PCOS do this. Which would explain why she needed IVF.

She also suffered pre-eclampsia, PPH, and placenta accreta which made each successive pregnancy more dangerous.

Now in her situation I probably would have stopped with two children but if she wants to pay millions to a surrogate that’s her choice. Surrogacy is a proper business in many countries and comes with employee benefits.