why the effing jeffing is there a Surrogacy board on Mumsnet???

[nevertuesday]

I have been on MN for 15 years or so and only just realised via a post in Active Threads, that there is a Surrogacy board on Mumsnet??

I only read a couple of the discussions there, along the lines of can I buy my baby abroad? has anyone else had a baby via Surrogacy?? so, looks to be a chat board to SUPPORT people try to remove babies from their mothers using cash.

huh?? on Mumsnet?

Ok tell me the key points.

Developmental trauma- absolutely that impacts a developing brain. That's not surrogacy.

I was referring to the fact that they were suggesting if you cant you shouldnt and of course IVF is going against nature also.

That is categorically not why every birth happens 🤣

Ok ok if you want to dissect it of course there are some accidents, births as a result of rape etc, but come on you know what point I was making.

Removing a newborn from it's mother is traumatic to the baby.

That's surrogacy.

Is the brain not developing at birth then when a newborn is removed from the only attachment it has ever known?

Well I don't know if there are any studies that have shown how much of an impact that very small moment has. Like how much impact does it have when a baby needs to be kept in an incubator after birth instead of home with mum. The warm safe caring environment is presumably the key matter.

“That very small moment” of removing a baby from its mother, permanently? Surely you’re having a giraffe?

Yes the very small moment of being removed from the woman who carried the baby. To then hopefully have a lifetime of love and care by their biological mother (in the most common type of surrogacy)

Surrogacy is used by couples who aren't infertile too. Look at the absolutely bonkers Hilaria and Alex Baldwin. Their 6th child together is as a result of surrogacy. She was already pregnant with another baby when the surrogate underwent the implantation process and the babies are 5 months apart. That's not a couple who were experiencing infertility and "needed" to pay a woman to carry a baby for them. The Kardashians also were not infertile but two of them paid for surrogacy.

There's a number of high profile families where the parents have used surrogacy where it's not exactly infertility as such as the woman is in her late 40s or 50s. That's due to age and used to be accepted but now it's possible to pay for someone else to carry the baby and it's usually a third woman's egg. So it's not 'biologically' the commissioning woman's egg either. Yet somehow this is also ok. Liz Kendall MP was 50 when she became a mother via surrogacy, after she was into the menopause.

It's not uncommon for the baby to be conceived using a donor egg, again there are a number of high profile cases with this being the case. Sophie Beresiner has two children which are biologically her husband's but not hers and which were carried by a different woman than the one who donated the eggs . This has more medical risk to the pregnant woman but this is usually glossed over
If you look on various Reddit boards you see people talking about how intrusive and lengthy the process for adopting is, and this is the US which is much less stringent on adoption than the UK. So surrogacy is suggested as a better quicker option to get a baby.

It is by no means a “small moment”. Time wise, the act of handing the baby to someone else might be short. But the impact on the baby is lifelong.
It’s actually shocking that you can’t comprehend that.
Many children who are adopted by loving families also experience this trauma. Whether they are loved or not after the fact does not undo the trauma of being removed from your birth mother. And a baby has no concept of who “owned” the egg it developed from.

And what is the lifelong impact?

I'm afraid I dont pay much attention to what the Kardashians get up to. I think many celebrities and their children have very abnormal lives that are different to the rest of us.

@Anchorage56 - it’s great that you were the product of a loving surrogacy that happened because someone wanted to be a surrogate and your parents wanted you, that’s nice. But it appears to have skewed your view

You seem to think that bad surrogacy only happens abroad because ‘legal U.K.’ surrogacy is different. But it is well known that there are financial loopholes (as someone else pointed out) that means people are paying for (aka buying) babies from poor women. You are legally allowed to give gifts or money as ‘expenses’ and these have no cap on them - these can and have been payments for a baby covered up as expenses. There is coercion and there is emotional blackmailing. There have been cases in the U.K. of issues, such as the surrogate who changed her mind and went to court and was allowed to keep the baby. Not her egg or sperm, they belonged to the people who wanted the baby but she carried it and birthed it and she wanted it and the judge ruled she should be allowed to keep that child because the birth mother actually has more right over the child. Things because The law states a surrogate is deemed the legal mother when the baby is born, then the baby is sighed over to the new parents.

I think you need to do some research about U.K. and worldwide issues. Because actually, you can keep arguing that the U.K. is different but in many ways it isn’t and if you support U.K. surrogacy with all its issues, then by your own arguments you just support all surrogacy (because if adoption and surrogacy are the same then all surrogacy is the same, right?).

Good for you that your family had a positive surrogate experience. But we know that there are lots of women who don’t have this experience. Understanding that surrogacy has serious issues doesn’t mean your family were wrong to have you or didn’t love you, it’s just accepting that in its current state, both in the U.K. and worldwide, surrogacy has serious issues that need addressing.

Absolutely the surrogate can choose to keep the baby. And it shouldnt be any other way. Like you say you can't take the baby from the birth mother if she changes her mind and decides to keep the baby. I dont see what argument your making there.

And people keep talking about this idea that so many surrogates in the UK do it purely for financial gain and being taken advantage of by better off parents, again I'd like to see the evidence of that. If I found myself struggling due to having no money- first off I'd try to get a job, second I'd claim benefits, third if it came to it probably some form of sex for money, and at the very end of the list would be finding a couple desperate for kids, getting pregnant by them in a clinical setting and having their baby. I'd hazard a guess the majority of people would be similar give or take the exact methods of making money.

I’m not making ‘an argument’, I’m pointing out a pitfall in surrogacy. Because whilst I agree with it, the emotional damage that must do to the ‘parents’ and potentially the child later in life are huge. How can you not see that?

Maybe you would do all those things in that order, that’s YOUR choice, but you aren’t everyone, other people would never choose sex work. That’s their choice. You don’t speak for everyone. And that’s why I suggested some research, the cases are out there. Lots of people do do it because they love being pregnant or whatever, but not everyone. Why can’t you accept both are true? Why can’t you say that you support surrogacy but you also have concerns of women’s welfare? Can’t both be true? Or doesn’t women potentially dying for someone else to have a baby that shares their DNA bother you? Two things can be true.

Dying is the absolute worst case scenario that is true of all births so again that is no reason to be against surrogacy.

It's reasonable what I'm saying- there is plenty evidence around us to suggest surrogacy is not the route most women go down (in this country) in order for financial gain.

No one has said anything about ‘most women’ but some women is enough for me to want changes. Don’t those women count to you?

and your argument about it’s okay for them to potentially die because anyone could die is ridiculous. It’s clear you don’t value lots of women, maybe women in poverty, over women who have money and that’s horrendously sad. Because if you did you would want reform and support for all women, not just the ones who can afford to use others bodies. But your constant daft arguments show you couldn’t give a shit about the poor health and even fatalities of women around the world who are forced and even trafficked into surrogacy. And to discuss U.K. surrogacy you must discuss worldwide surrogacy, they are one and the same. You’re also either naive or being deliberately obtuse to the fact that women in this country aren’t treated like shit for the purposes of surrogacy. It’s coming across as very privileged.

No I don't discuss worldwide surrogacy because I can't comment on that. Surrogacy is legal in the UK, there are processes and legalities that the people involved in it go through. I cant begin to comment on the rest of the world.

I'm also for abortion, IVF, adoption, same sex marriage, women doing whatever job they are able to. It's good that women have choice.

I dont myself believe in banning something simply when sometimes things may go wrong or a bad person might become involved because I think that's ridiculous.

You are fixated on half truths but refusing to accept other truths offered by many posters and just determined not to look at the full picture.

Many of us have issues with surrogacy overall. And not because we want to win an argument with someone like you. You are welcome to have the last word, but you just sound dismissive of responses written to you in good will. @anchorage56

Because people replying to my posts are not necessarily replying to me with truths. I dont have to agree with them and they dont have to agree with me.

Just like the people replying to my posts I'm allowed to reply to their posts surely?? But because I'm disagreeing with the majority it means I'm a troll??

Where did I say I wanted it banned? And the argument that you can’t comment on worldwide surrogacy is simply a way of you not admitting that surrogacy is flawed in its current form - hell, you won’t even admit that it has flaws in the U.K. despite the examples given.

I sympathised with you on this thread as the child of surrogacy but in all your ramblings you have shown n sympathy for anyone who may have suffered as a result of the surrogacy system. You simply dismiss any issues put forward to you as not your problem because it’s ’not The U.K.’ or ‘celebrities are weird’ or ‘it’s legal here’ instead of showing some critical thinking and accepting there are flaws and women around the world are suffering as a result. You clearly don’t support women if you pick and choose the ones who get your care.

My posts have been centred around the thread topic that it should be banned and it's a horrid practice. I've had that many replies that it's hard to remember the ins and outs of all posters but I'm basically for surrogacy and most replies to me have been people against it.

Why would I not have sympathy for any human being who might have suffered some form of physical or mental pain. You could argue anything in life can sometimes go wrong. So I'm not wanting to nit pik around that because its silly.

Anchorage hasn't claimed to be the product of a surrogate pregnancy unless I've missed something. There was a hypothetical post above saying 'if my parents told me they used a surrogate' or something like that.