To think it is wrong for a surrogate to have a child for two men?

[Extremelychocolatey]

The men in question are Elton John and David Furnish.

link

It feels wrong on so many levels.

The point I'm trying to get at is that this little boy does not have and will never have a Mummy. So he will never be brought up knowing that Mummy existed but is not here anymore.
By another poster.

I think this is terribly sad and bleak.

I can understand, on an individual basis, the happiness that a surrogate baby can bring to people. However, looking at it from a societal perspective, I would be concerned that absolutely anyone and everyone can now circumvent nature because the want a child. I would be seriously concerned about the effects of this in the long term. I think sometimes we just have to live with barriers even if it prevents us from having everything that we wish for.

k12 not once have I made any comparisons between the US and India. You might want to actually check who has said what before you start accusing people of being racist.

Having said that, it is well known that India's practices wrt fertility treatments are questionable i.e. where there are no age limits and women in their 60s and 70s have been given fertility treatment at extortionate cost to them.

Whether people like it or not, fertility treatment is big business, and in some countries it is bigger business than in others, and in many of the countries where there is good money to be earned the ethics seem to go out of the window. Acknowledging that does not make one a racist.

You are being deliberately obtuse wrt my comments about surrogates. I have said time and time again that I have issue with surrogates who use their own eggs, thus essentially giving up their own biological children for money. Maybe not all do but it is certainly a more common practice than you would have people believe, here in the UK it is particularly common because the process is that much simpler i.e. the woman merely has to go through artificial incemination rather than IVF. On every single documentary I have ever watched re surrogacy in the UK the women have predominantly used their own eggs.

What I'm saying Lenin is that sometimes individual needs shouldn't be met if it means loosening up barriers that might be there for a good reason. This isn't just about gay couples, it's also about elderly women having children, masses of children not having a clue who their biological mother is and all the various, widespread complications that can arise if you consider the individual's happiness first and foremost all the time.

Society has been like that for ever. Surely people should fit in with the needs of society as opposed to constantly twisting and turning society to meet the needs of a minority.

But that's my point. It's not really possible for everyone to live freely and equally, someone will always end up hurt. I think sometimes rules, barriers and boundaries serve a purpose.

Actually, I think we have a society that says 'fuck biology, fuck nature, if I want it I'll have it and no one's going to stop me', which can be dangerous.

No Lenin, no one's saying that all that matters is biology, jsut that some of nature's barriers serve a purpose and a 'free for all' society just doesn't work.

society - what does this actually mean? do you mean the ideologies that govern how people should behave (as opposed to how they actually do?)
It's patent nonsense to suggest that society is unchanging (in the 16th century, for example, the majority of brides were pregnant on their wedding day; most adults were married an average of 3 times), it's not even constant in the contemporary world (as the discussion about the US/UK and India amply demonstrates). It's also not the case that a single model is remotely helpful: when my father died in the 1970s it was routinely the case that my mother and I were given the worst table in any restaurant and the slowest and surliest service - presumably because they assumed that she was a single mother. How is that a good thing (and this is only a very overt example of how elevating a single family model over everything else impacts negatively on those who - for whatever reason - 'fail' to meet the 'standard')?

And swan your final riposte made me laugh - 'fuck biology, fuck nature' - gay people are born, not made, and they have fully functioning reproductive systems - so they are perhaps uniquely caught between 2 contradictory parts of their nature. Gay man + gay woman = sperm + egg = small baby (if lucky). What's unnatural about that?? And I really think that someone with infertility (of whom there are several posting on this thread) would rightly feel pretty offended by that particular post and its phrasing. I'm not in any sense invalidating the points you have made about it elsewhere, just that I think this isn't appropriate to the level of respect and intellect that has largely been demonstrated in this difficult topic.

Driving

Why would they be offended? I was making the point that we can't just ignore all of nature's boundaries regardless of the effect on society, not that any and every kind of fertility treatment is wrong.

I think it's a bit shitty that you can be deemed too old to adopt, but are allowed to then create a new life, artificially, just because you are very wealthy. Either adoption rules need to change or age limits set on bringing a baby into the world by other means.

SugarMouse

What on earth are you talking about? I am talking about removing certain boundaries that might not be in the best interests of society. Not intervening to help disadvantaged children or advocating 'survival of the fittest'. What an unfair and insulting post.

And by the way, there are no 'nature' barriers to disabled children being born. There are people who would advocate preventing them being born which I think also goes against nature and is wrong.

That's not my point. I am not going back and saying the same thing over and over. If you don't 'get' it there's not much more I can say.