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.

I find articles written from the POV of the IPs to be more interesting than those written by surrogates. The emotions are different, the journies are different, the reasonings etc. There have been some piss poor examples of surrogacy in the last 5 years but there are some beautiful ones too. The sad thing is, as with everything, you rarely hear the good but inevitably always hear the bad

I'm infertile. We tried for years but we'll never have a family, it almost broke us.

I agree completely with the OP and others on this thread: despite the idyllic fantasy of it all ("Here's a tiny healthy newborn baby! You have a family now! Enjoy!"), I'd never use surrogates.

When we researched into adoption, we read more and more about attachment disorders and how they're caused. I couldn't risk doing that to another human being, and the truth is you'd never know for sure - it could take decades for them to articulate something as some poor posters on this thread have, and that's even if they can put it into words.

I came to MN originally for the infertility boards. Still no children, and can't see it happening. However, I'm v uneasy at both donor conception and even more so surrogacy. A clinic we looked at advertised that if I was willing to give up half my eggs then IVF would be £££ cheaper. Surely that's pressuring women who can't afford infertility treatment into giving away something that they wouldn't dream of usually?

I can just about get on board with truly altruistic surrogacy (a sister doing it for example). However those cases are few and far between. In the UK the rights of the child are paramount: the surrogate mother can change her mind after birth, and this has been established in case law. It may have been Tom Daley and husband who moaned about having to go to the US to find a surrogate as over there once the contract is signed that takes precedence over everything. The mother has no chance to change her mind. The rights of the consumers is all that matters, not the rights of the child. If you read a US surrogacy contract it is absolutely barbaric - if it turns out to be multiple foetuses, the consumers can force the mother to abort one or more. If any disability is detected likewise. If they just change their minds then they can force the mother to abort under huge financial penalties - and as a PP noted, if the mothers were rich they wouldn't be doing it.

As for buying babies from developing countries, does anyone remember baby Gammy in Thailand - Australian couple, wanted the Thai mother to abort the twin with Down's syndrome, then when she refused only took the healthy twin back to Australia, abandoning what was apparently their child. (The father then turned out to be a convicted sex offender, just when you thought it couldn't get any worse)

The whole thing leaves me feeling uneasy.
I'm glad to hear it's been made illegal in India.
I read a magazine article years ago on a surrogacy clinic / home in India. It was painted in the best possible light, with interviews from the manager and surrogacy mothers of how well they were treated, but there was no getting away from the fact that these were women living in poverty who were doing it purely for financial reasons.
The also considered the babies to be theirs (even when a donor egg was used) and justified to themselves that they were giving up their baby for a better life, one they could never offer.

They certainly didn't have the mental detachment like the UK surrogacy poster above. I also wonder about gay male couples and surrogacy - won't the child want to know who their mother is at some point. I can imagine it working if it is a female family member and it's all open and talked about, but otherwise wouldn't they wonder how their mother could give them up without any apparent emotion ?

What will???

Before some knobhead individual comes on here and tells us that surrogates are prostitutes.

I see two sides of surrogacy:

1. For example: me carrying a baby for my sister, giving the baby to my sister but still maintaining a normal aunt-niece/nephew relationship, still being a part of the baby’s life.

I think this is a wonderful gift to give someone, while at the same time still getting personal enjoyment from that gift by having a relationship with the child and being part of their growing up etc.

1. The Rent-A-Womb agencies. I hate the idea of this.

www.google.com/amp/s/variety.com/2018/biz/news/flipping-out-bravo-trent-1202844060/amp/ This case pretty much sums up my feelings about it. This couple treated their surrogate as their property - they’d “bought” her to carry their baby and she wasn’t a human being while pregnant - just a walking incubator for them to do as they pleased with. Makes me very uncomfortable. Essentially buying a baby

I’m not sure why surrogate would look down on sex workers though as both involve renting of reproductive organs.

You could say that about adoption too, especially of babies and infants.

@polini when you are adopting you are not creating a life. You are looking after a child who already exists and making them part of your family.

Yes adopted children have attachment issues but it is worth speaking to adults of different ages who have been adopted including those who had interracial adoptions, plus if possible those who were long term foster. The latter have more issues as they feel they were robbed twice.

We reached the end of the road with our fertility journey, as my womb is too damaged to sustain a pregnancy. We have frozen embryos left, but couldn't do any more transfers because of my crap womb lining. I have 3 friends who have offered to be a surrogate, but I don't know how we will proceed, precisely because of the ethical questions.

If we were to proceed, then of course any future child would grow up with their 'tummy mummy' as a hugely important part of their lives.

But I wrestle with this issue, because the welfare of my friends and any future child are more important than our longing to become parents

@AmyDowdensLeftLeftShoe, I'm not sure if I was clear above - I wouldn't ever look into surrogacy because of the prospect of creating attachment disorders in someone.

As you say, adoption is giving an existing child a fighting chance at having a family and security and everything those offer (which can hopefully help them with issues from attachment disorders).

It's a necessary thing in society, although ideally a child would never have to be removed from their birth families.

For me though, surrogacy is akin to intentionally creating an orphan (albeit one who gets adopted right away), without any consideration for the issues that could cause for the future human being who has to live that whole life.

For me it's not okay and I couldn't live with the feeling that I'd potentially given someone those issues (even though I'd selfishly love the fantasy of a newborn and a family). Others probably weigh up that risk and think nothing of it in particular.

 @bananafish81

headstone i have no issue with women who are sex workers through choice. But prostitution is usually done for the monetary gain. Surrogacy (at least in the UK) for profit is illegal. So no, i'm not a prostitute!

What I find interesting is that the idea of adoption usually only gets chucked at infertile couples or gay couples. 'You can't naturally have children, so you should adopt' - it isn't that easy. And if this is some sort of moral thing people have, why isn't it every couple who want a child that are told to adopt? The desire for a baby is only labelled selfish & self-centred when it comes to people who need help conceiving one. The hoops that couples have to jump through to get their parental order are intense; even the checks we had before we conceived & then before i gave birth. I never went through any of that for either of my two children.
There are biological parents that get to keep their children & end up doing more damage than good to them.

Obviously the issues abroad are different. I detest anybody with the attitude they are paying the surrogate therefore they control her. Hell no way. It is a partnership.

I often wonder as to the motivation of surrogates. Is it truly an altruistic act or a narcissistic need for the attention of pregnancy and the empowering feeling of creating life? Are those who do it for relatives driven by guilt that they are fertile while their relative is not?

What of the siblings of those babies who are given away? How will they feel about it when they are able to quantify it?

It is a cold indictment of our capitalist society where it is argued that a newborn will not miss it's birth mother and any old one can take over from birth so it doesn't matter. Mind boggling. It seems we have less emotion than animals. Well see the effects in 20/30 years.

I echo a PP, just because we can do something, doesn't mean we should.

What motivates a person to donate blood? To sign up to be an organ donor? To donate to charity? None of these things are truly altruistic because the donator usually feels some good feeling for doing so. Is that narcissistic?

Fwiw i'd met many people - including a life long friend who couldn't have kids. I fell accidentally with my DD & it almost pissed me off the more i looked at people - sometimes neglectful people - who could get pregnant at the drop of a hat whilst good people struggled. Do i get a sense of pride from what i did? Hell yes i do, every time i get a photo of her, every time her dad watsapps me to tell me what she has been up to, i get a glowing feeling. But i went into it because i wanted to help a wonderful couple fulfill a dream of having a family. After being turned down for adoption because one smoked & didn't drive - two criteria that are never questioned when people conceive naturally - this was their last hope. And i have yet to have a day where i regret it

How do IVF conceived children feel? Louise Brown, for instance, is now old enough to say. If it were me, i don't think I would be traumatised if i were a product of my parents genetic material conceived using IVF. 100 years ago it was unthinkable that a baby could be conceived outside the body. Perhaps those IVF babies could be grown entirely outside the body in another 100 years.

Pissed blood and charity is on a slightly different level to donating a living human being with feelings and intelligence of their own .

But the feeling behind them aren't in many cases. Altruistic surrogacy is done because someone wants to help a couple have a family. Donating a kidney is done because someone hopes it will save a life. If one is narcissistic then surely the rest are too?

When I thought I was infertile, my ExH and I made the decision that the most we would do, if I couldn't conceive, would be to adopt an older child or foster children.

I don't think that just because science is able to do something, that it should. We have so many children in this world that aren't already provided for, that I cannot fathom using scientific methods to create new ones for people who can afford to buy the science.

We teach children that they can't have everything they want, and that they aren't entitled to things, yet this seems to go out of the window when it comes to infertility.

It is a wonderful thing to do for someone as long as all adults are happy

To me, this comment from upthread exactly explains why I disagree with surrogacy. It treats a child as a commodity for consumers, with no consideration of potential disadvantages to the child - as long as the adults are happy

Becoming a parent is inately selfish regardless of how you do it. People become parents because they want to

@PissedOffDotCom - I think I agree with you to a point. But how does society look after and fund its older people, if there are few young ones in it?

To me, this comment from upthread exactly explains why I disagree with surrogacy. It treats a child as a commodity for consumers, with no consideration of potential disadvantages to the child - as long as the adults are happy

But that’s the case for most parents to some extent. Taken to its logical conclusion, why would poor people be allowed to have children? Outcomes for children whose parents are out of work or have criminal records are much worse than for the rest of the population. Ditto care leavers or victims of child abuse. People on low wages. Parents with low IQs. Children of people with physical or mental health problems. People who have a family history of addiction or genetic illnesses.

How about ‘just as long as the adults are happy’ being a bad thing and the foetus’ rights be paramount when it comes to abortion?

Basically fertile people have or don’t have children because it’s what the adults want and regardless of disadvantages all the time. They can say hands off their body and make their reproductive decisions as they see fit regardless of whether they are bringing a child into a shitty situation where they’re going to face a lifetime full of disadvantage, poor health and low opportunity.

But when it comes to infertile women, suddenly all these fertile women decide that it’s their business to dictate what other women can or can’t do with their eggs or foetuses or their wombs.

They don’t want to be told what to do with their bodies, but they think an accident of biology means that they have the right to dictate to other women what they can and can’t do.

It’s really fucking shitty behaviour TBH.

I've been reading posts on a local IVF fertility board recently and the extent some women will go to is mind boggling. I signed up when we were considering IVF before somehow falling naturally after almost 14yrs of infertility.

The way they talk about the embryos, the frozen embryos, donor eggs, donor sperm, surrogates... all wrapped in financial value and desperate panic they won't get good results on their NHS cycles and how much they paid for their donor eggs abroad.

It's so detached. It's almost sickening. If anyone else was talking like that about a child or pregnancy they would be referred for psychiatric help.

Besides the impact of IVF on natural selection and life long health implications we do not know about yet (due to the short period of time it's been happening), the monetary aspect and entitlement attitude portrayed by some is hideous.

One woman who's wife was almost dying in IC after egg collection was more arsed if they fertilised with the donor sperm (so they could be transferred in to her - not her wife!) than if her wife was going to survive

The culture of the nurses and consultants being so detached and blasé about it all too, encouraging additional rounds for women who basically have a less than 0% chance, preying on vulnerability and hope is seriously concerning.

Agreed Augusta! The baby doesn’t ever get to choose, society loves to lambast people who can’t have children ‘the natural way’ all the time, without considering that they are often required to be more engaged with the process, more able to be around for the child, more financially capable etc.
Basically most people in these situations (LGBT parents, IVF parents, Adoptive parents, Surrogates Intended Parents) are just trying to have children, the same as any couple who do not have any fertility issues.

@PeachMelba78 finances don't mean that a child is more wanted though. See above re the surrogate couple who got 2 nannies for their twins. Maybe wanted initially, yes, but what about when the gloss wears off?

From your list, adoptive couples have to be really committed to the process and the child, because they are accountable to the approval of others.

Surely the other means of having children can just be bought?

@Augusta, so is it ok if people disagree with surrogacy and IVF/IVCI and also have a huge problem with the prevalence of abortion (not its existence, but the amount it is used)?

Surely if adoption was as common as it used to be, there would be more babies to adopt and therefore less need for surrogacy and IVF?