AIBU to wonder if surrogacy is a bit cruel?

[NRGR]

Firstly I'd like to say I think someone being able to give a couple the opportunity to be parents is a lovely thing! I don't mean this in a nasty way.

When a baby's born they say they instantly know who mum is, by the sound of her voice, her smell, heartbeat etc. So taking that into account, is it a bit mean to take that baby after it's born and pass it straight to someone else? One of the first things they say to you when you have a baby is have plenty of skin to skin because you are all the baby really knows.

Surely regardless of whether the surrogate used her own eggs or not, as far as the baby's conserned she is mum and she will be the one the baby wants.

"Cruel" is the wrong word I think but it just made me wonder.

thighofrelief101 I have donated eggs to a close relative and I don’t think I could be a surrogate.
I have major issues with surrogacy, but not for the reasons the OP has. I realised during our experience that this was my “line” was: egg donation to a known relative.
Commercial surrogacy disturbs me greatly.

that this was where my line was

I must be selfish because I thought of the person giving birth straight away.
I used to think it was something I quite fancied doing but having carried and birthed my own child I couldn’t have survived that knowing I wasn’t going to get to keep a baby. For me, the sacrifice would be too great.
Of course it would be different if you knew from the off you weren’t going to keep the baby.
Hats off to surrogate mothers!?

No obnoxious question mark

Cherries, do you have any evidence for that? It sounds somewhat unlikely.

i considered carrying a child for my son and daughter in law who had fertility problems. i have no issues with surrogacy within family.

If left to nature most babies wouldn’t be raised by the women who gave birth to them, as those women would be dead.

MOST women would die from childbirth??

There's no evidence at all for your line of reasoning. Yes the baby has some capacity to recognise it's mother's voice but is happy as long as it has food, cuddles and love. Often the dad has the first skin to skin anyway.

So it’s another go at infertile women, yes?

I've often wondered the same re the baby; my friend who was adopted at literally days old (overseas) has had lifelong issues with identity and belonging.

There's also the impact on the birth mother, too. It's such an enormous risk to take for someone else. Surrogacy between close family members, I sort of understand, although it isn't something I think I'd ever consider doing (perhaps for one of my DD's though.) Commercial surrogacy is hideous imo.

My ex was adopted and couldn’t be closer to his adoptive parents if they had conceived him.

However, many years ago he found his birth parents who were, incredibly, still together. He now has a close bond with them also.

I understand what you’re trying to say but I don’t agree. Birth mothers can be cruel, adoptive mothers can be amazing. Remembering a smell or a sound from the womb doesn’t teally come into it.

Having watched a close friend suffer over 15years of ttc, IVF etc and finally the birth by surrogate of her lovely children I think that it's very easy for fertile women to moralise about something of which they have no concept.
My friend's DC are healthy, happy and much loved. It's not just surrogate babies who are removed from the mother at birth, plenty of babies are for plenty of reasons. Most suffer no ill effects, a small number do. Just like everything in life.

I am originally from a country which is a surrogacy tourism destination and I am very uneasy about it.
A couple of years a new acquaintance told me excitedly how a couple she knew used a surrogate in my country, and had to fly there repeatedly for the insemination sessions. Isn't it great that services like this are available! And the child is half XXX ethnicity now through the biological mother, maybe I can give them hints how to connect her to her heritage.
I know how it works behind the curtain. The woman does it for £5K because she needs to feed her existing children, or her parents have cancer, or whatever - and this is an equivalent of a five-year salary to her. She then pretends to everyone else that her child was stillborn, because there is a massive stigma attached to such arrangements.
I just cannot reconcile myself with this.

I agree, I think intentionally creating a baby who has to be separated from their mother is wrong.

I agree with you OP. There is an impact on the child... a luck of research and long-term studies does not proof otherwise.
A baby is born completely dependent on its mother. Taking mum away must trigger some stress, even if the baby is well cared for. How this baby responds and what impact it has long term is entirely down to its own personality.

As for surrogacy itself, I couldn't do it. And for ethical (and personal) reasons I am totally against it.

I agree with you OP

When we adopted we were told that even babies taken from their mother at birth have experienced a "trauma" as they have been separated from their mother, the only one they ever knew. So I guess in that way you are right. Whether it will have a lasting impact is another thing. Most adopted children have experienced other issues alongside the breaking of an attachment so hard to compare.

But without surrogacy these children would have never been created.....
Think of it that way.

I don't think fertile women should be able to moralise on something that doesn't affect them.

Also there's many situations where a baby cannot be with its birth mother.
That cannot be controlled

So it’s another go at infertile women, yes?

Stop being over-dramatic 😡

Christ, can’t people discuss anything nowadays without someone precious getting offended?

I couldn't disagree more.

And surrogacy is not the same as adoption. When a child is adopted there was another potential life/family they would have had if the parents had not chosen to place for adoption. This is where the confusion/trauma stems from for some adopted people. This is why they want to find birth parents, etc. In surrogacy where the intended parents give both egg and sperm the child would never have existed without the surrogacy agreement. There was no parent who chose to 'give them up.' This was simply a way for them to enter the world. I don't think it is cruel to separate from the birth mother. As the pp said, babies are not carried by their father and nobody questions the love and bond they develop with dad.

It's very easy for people who have not faced these issues to sit back and judge. I can understand the morality issues of using surrogacy tourism and would be wary of these situations for the women involved but have no questions that the child born is absolutely fine. And for those saying there are blogs by people who write about how messed up they are - there are plenty of these from those born and raised by their own bio parents too.

If you're concerned about children's welfare volunteer for a local agency instead of sitting back and judging loving parents for how they had to bring their children into the world.

Lots of people (not me) on MN are very anti-surrogacy so I expect you won’t be the only one.

I am very uneasy about commercial surrogacy. Especially when a woman in a poorer country is the surrogate.

I don't think fertile women should be able to moralise on something that doesn't affect them.
What about surrogacy for male gay couples then, where there is no infertility issues to start with? Where the surrogate is also the egg donor (i.e. biological mother)?

I think there is a lack of research into the feelings of surrogate children. We know that donor insemination has caused a lot more issues in children than was previously imagined they would have. Before anyone jumps down my throat, I have had infertility issues but never considered surrogacy because I consider it imoral.no one has a right to have a child, and the current Sunday times columnist wrtitng about their american surrogacy journey is so unbelievably self centred it makes me feel sick.

I was prompted by another thread to look up evidence around it (I was curious about attachment issues). The two papers I found (acknowledging that there are a lack of studies and these may have had agendas), one compared children born from surrogacy with their peers not from surrogacy and with adopted peers and found they had relatively good outcomes (the adopted group of course will always have had very mixed experiences with some with perinatal or post natal trauma so they acknowledged its not a good comparison). The other study looked at the wellbeing of the surrogate mothers and found that their health and mental health was much more likely to be negatively impacted.