To feel sorry for these babies

[Hottoddy1]

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/may/14/surrogates-baby-coronavirus-lockdown-parents-surrogacy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The tone of the article seems to just be - oh what a shame that covid happened and this has meant surrogate babies can’t get to their intended parents. Absolutely no concern for firstly the trauma to the babies leaving the caregiver they are bonded with after who knows how long and secondly no acknowledgement that perhaps allowing people to go to other countries and essentially hire women’s bodies and buy babies might have some downsides for both the women and the babies involved.

Surrogacy is so deeply damaging to young women and children. I don’t get how people can support it. It is deeply selfish and traumatising to the mother and baby. It is surely exploitation at the deepest level.

Thank you Ova. I did not mean to say so much tbh but some people on here seem not to care about these babies born to be taken from their mothers like it is nothing. It is a big deal, as we both know.

If most surrogacy is to heterosexual couples, i assume there is some connection to their biological roots i.e. the father may be biologically their parent? Actually having typed that, even in heterosexual couples the baby may be biologically related to one of the two parents?

Sometimes the surrogate mother is the biological mother. Sometimes a donor egg is used which means the child has to deal with yet another issue, the fact that he has a genetic mother somewhere as well as a birth mother.

So, to be clear, infertile people should just stay infertile and suck up the fact that they can't have children? Because surrogacy is just wrong regardless of circumstance? x

haawa I'm so sorry.

Until surrogacy is carried out by the wealthy for the benefit of the poor in equal measure as the other way round, I'll be against it. It exploits people, especially where they are groomed in to it like haawa or straight up forced.

Agggh. Ignore the x.

So, to be clear, infertile people should just stay infertile and suck up the fact that they can't have children? Because surrogacy is just wrong regardless of circumstance?

Well to put it bluntly then yes as having a baby is not a right.

Luckily surrogacy is not the only way for infertile people to have a child so if they want one they dont need to cause lifelong attachment disorders and trauma to a newborn baby for their own selfish desire of having a baby. Because lets not lie it's honest to say they only want a brand new baby.

So, to be clear, infertile people should just stay infertile and suck up the fact that they can't have children?

Surrogacy doesn’t change the fertility of the buyers. They’ll still be infertile regardless. Do you mean stay childless? No, there are other options to allow them to become parents.

It is my understanding that commercial surrogacy is illegal in most places?
Buying or renting body parts is usually illegal in most of parts of the world before you move onto consider the impact on the dc.

@StepAwayFromGoogle

Yes! Because sometimes in life you just can't get what you want. There are plenty of children who could do with a home. Adopt! Growing one in a lab, inserting into a paid woman for money, risking her life and no doubt giving the child some pretty heavy issues to come to terms with growing up is just plain wrong.

OK, but surely with one biological parent on the scene the abandonment issues would be different to being adopted, where a child has been given up (or been taken away from)both biological parents? 'We desperately wanted you but mummy couldn't carry you / two men can't have babies' is a somewhat different message to get to grips with than 'neither of your parents wanted to/ were able to look after you'?

Would it makes a difference?

@PlanDeRaccordement
You've repeatedly used the phrase, the child's biological parents. As pp have said there are many surrogate babies that have no biological connection to their owners i.e. those that have paid for the baby.
There is nothing altruistic about commercial surrogacy.

So, to be clear, infertile people should just stay infertile and suck up the fact that they can't have children? Because surrogacy is just wrong regardless of circumstance?

I think everyone recognises the sadness and difficulties of infertility but it goes back to the organ donation comparison.

There are people who wait for years on dialysis or other forms of life support for a transplant. Sometimes they wait so long it's too late and they die yet we still don't bring in legislation allowing the buying and selling of organs because as a society we know this immediately would be exploited horrifically from a human rights perspective.

I can't really see surrogacy as any different. Allowing for it in any form means it becomes an industry and exploitation inevitably a big part of that. Commodifying women and children as saleable products can never lead anywhere good in the grand scheme.

Quite @OvaHere. I know the sadness of infertility, I am infertile - but the end doesn't justify the means where surrogacy is concerned.

Surrogacy is as horrible a practice as buying a kidney. Women and children are not commodities.
Babies want to be with their mother. In some tragic circumstances that isn’t possible, either due to maternal death, or because a woman is not able to parent their baby. Then adoption is obviously a wonderful thing. To deliberately separate a baby from its mother, and to risk another, (almost always poorer) woman’s health so that you can get the baby you want is cruel and selfish.

So, to be clear, infertile people should just stay infertile and suck up the fact that they can't have children? Because surrogacy is just wrong regardless of circumstance?

Logically, you could just as well ask the question "should infertile people be able to do anything in order to have a child?" The answer is no.

I think Hagar was the first surrogate mother but then Sarah had Isaac and poor old Hagar and her son Ishmael were left in the desert. Abraham didn't have a good track record did he, Ishmael moved on when Abraham's wife eventually had a child, then he was ready to sacrifice Isaac but settled for circumcision instead. Doesn't seem to have had a positive history.

I suppose it was a bit different as Hagar was a slave and had no choice.

Personally splitting up with your children’s father when they are young is far far more traumatic to a child

What on earth are you on about? Talk about making blanket statements.....

I split up with my ex when our son was 6 months old. He was a 100% absent dad.
My son is a well-functioning adult, thanks.

Anyway, this thread is about surrogacy. Sorry for the derailment.

Yes, I feel terribly sorry for those babies, but also the birth family and the adoptive family. What a mess....

Haawa, what a terrible thing to happen to you. I'm so sorry. You sound like a strong and amazing woman.

Bollocks. Both my father and uncle were adopted at birth (separately, this is my uncle on my mother's side) and had decent upbringings in nice, stable families. They both faced massive problems as teenagers trying to overcome the fact that they had biological parents out there who had given them up. Obviously they had been adopted for a reason rather than on a whim but that doesn't mean much to children and teenagers. Despite loving and being very close to their adoptive families, it was very hard for them to get past the fact that their mothers had let them go while they were surrounded with children who were loved and cared for and brought up by their own mothers.

There is a very interesting documentary on Netflix, I think it is called Three Identical Strangers about identical triplets who were adopted by 3 different families. I think only one of the three was truly happy with his adoptive parents, when they met (I think they were late teens) the three of them seemed to bond most with the happy one's father. The saddest thing was he said if he and his wife had known there were three of them they'd have taken them all.

Commerical surrogacy is like a puppy mill. There are plenty of sad eyed doggies looking for homes in shelters but people are hell bent on having a designer pup especially if you want a certain colour.
Tales of couples abandoning babies they have ordered because they didnt come out right are plentiful. It's a shady business.

It's rapey. Sorry, but it is. It's sex work.

Sigh, yes I really was a social worker, although I'm not sure how to prove it. Attachment and speration trauma doesn't happen when a baby is removed immediately as it hasn't bonded.

I'm glad you said was a social worker (past tense) In which decade was this?!

When I received a foster baby straight from hospital it made me cry, so sad, but as others have said it is making the best of a bad situation,

And as for you @PlanDeRaccordement
Your comment about it being a minor thing have left me speechless.

for those trying to find their way from difficult beginnings, and to Haawa.

Microchimerism. The transfer of cells between baby and mother across the placenta that may have allsorts of health implications.
www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-discover-childrens-cells-living-in-mothers-brain/?redirect=1
This is a growing field of science. Bet the surrogates are never told about it. Gives lie to the "merely a gestational carrier, no biological bond" nonsense that is constantly doled out to the press by the "industry" and some "commissioning parents."

Another voice agreeing that surrogacy in all forms should be banned. I can’t begin to imagine the trauma of infertility, it destroys people. But as a PP said, that doesn’t give you the right to do something else awful. Children are not a human right, they are a blessing that some people are tragically denied.

Surrogacy is disgusting and immoral and I can’t believe any descent human believes otherwise.

From the article “babies are being born without their parents present at the birth “ how can anyone write that ? Because one parent is very much at the birth, the birth would not be happening without her.