Media Coverage of Surrogacy is biased - AIBU?

[OhHolyJesus]

I've been watching the media coverage of the babies born from surrogacy in Ukraine, who are being cared for in hotels by 'professional babysitters' due to the travel ban in the global pandemic.

So much of the coverage barely mentioned the surrogate mothers and focused mainly on the parents who obviously had issues entering the country. I've seen one piece from Marie Claire cover the story of the surrogate mother in more detail, all other coverage from mainstream media, from print to TV,/Radio is overly sympathetic to the parents.

UK Women's magazines have for years spun surrogacy as a generous undertaking and I think that women are being gaslit by this representation. This is one article that I think sums up the issues well, it is from a religious source and refers to the Ukraine story, but as the mainstream media consistently obliterates the mother from the picture, I make no apology for the source. It is obviously not mainstream media.

"For me it was a sad reminder of the months our adopted daughter spent in a Chinese orphanage while her father and I longed to fly to her rescue. Living in a cold bassinet under the indifferent attention of overworked nannies, after being unnaturally parted from her birth mother, is no way for a child to spend the first months of her life.
Our daughter’s plight was the result of unjust laws and morally problematic cultural attitudes — namely, China’s brutal population control policies and a culture that values sons over daughters.
The plight of the babies in Kiev likewise has similar social roots. In their case, a Wild West-style sense of lawlessness has created a thriving, unethical, commercial child-producing industry in Ukraine, an industry built on a growing acceptance of the concept of a child as a bespoke commodity that can be artificially created by rich Westerners and implanted in rented women. In both cases, the babies suffer by being torn away from the woman who nurtured them for months."

...and this

"At home or abroad, surrogacy is the most unethical practice (so far) of a reproductive-industrial complex that has utterly monetized and debased one of the most intimate and meaningful aspects of human existence."

...stood out to me in particular. Why do we not see these sorts of opinion pieces or more factual stories on surrogacy in the media?

Is the news coverage of surrogacy (around the world or UK) only representing one side of the story?

And that includes so-called altruistic surrogates/donors because they are the ones actually going through the process while the parents are the ones collecting a shiny new baby at the end of it all. A baby they have equally given little thought to as they bring it up without one or in some instances both biological parents in its life.

I found being pregnant and birthing a baby a much easier process than 6 years of ivf. So it's not always that simple actually. And why wouldn't the biological mum not be in it's life? Surely with altruistic surrogacy it's mostly the sister or best friend who does it? I never wanted to be at the receiving end of pregnancy but while doing ivf my SIL offered me her eggs and my best friend offered to be a surrogate. I didn't ask for it or want it but if I did they would still be in my life, just as they are now.

That means to say that I didn't want to be at the receiving end of surrogacy

I think you’re over exaggerating on egg donation here. I have done two rounds of IVF. I was on the ‘drug that causes you to go into menopause’ really it just shuts down your lining and ovaries so they can be stimulated artificially. My period was back to normal a month later. Re ovarian torsion to avoid that just keep to gentle walking for two weeks during stimulation and the risks are minuscule. It happens if day you did a HIIT class during ivf and are twisting your stomach. For OHSS I was put on a low dose of meds to prevent this based on my fertility tests. Incidence of severe OHSS is 1%!

Re cancer “ The study, which was presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Vienna, involved 59,000 women who had fertility treatment, and 567,000 females of equal age who had not. Over the 21 year period that the study spanned, less than 1 percent of the total 626,000 women were diagnosed with breast cancer, with those who had utilized IVF getting the disease at a higher rate.

But candidates for in vitro fertilization may already be at a higher risk for breast cancer than other women their age. “Women who have not achieved a pregnancy by the time they are forty, are at a much higher risk for breast cancer,” says Dr. Knopman.

Part of the reason has to do with the amount of time women spend producing eggs. “The menstrual cycle of hormones does place someone at risk for breast cancer,” says Dr. Knopman. “When you are pregnant, you are ten months out of the period game– then breast feeding.” As a result, pregnancies can help protect against cancer, by reducing the amount of period cycles women go through during their childbearing years.”

So risk for younger egg donors who have already had children would be lower.

Side effects of the pill by the way:
such as blood clots, deep vein thrombosis (DVT), a clot on the lung, a stroke or heart attack, an increase in blood pressure, benign liver tumors, and some types of cancer.

In reality some women on pill will get these but it’s incredibly rare. Same with women doing IVF. If you read an article where every woman had had a severe side effect of the pill you would also be clamouring to ban it for its shocking impact on women.

Also, in my clinic egg donors are already parents and finished their family so they will not be giving up on a chance of having their own.

I think if someone wants to do that then it’s their decision. Personally I did not find the physical impacts of IVF difficult. It was the emotional impact.

Just to give a different perspective!

Before undergoing fertility treatment there is a lot of information to go through regarding the legal status of eggs, embryos, sperm etc. If you go through a proper clinic for donation, those issues are also discussed and counselling offered. If you've not been through the process you might not know just how much paperwork is involved and how limited treatment is in the UK. For example in other countries you can do something called family balancing which is basically picking the sex of the embryo before implantation. You cant do that here.

Issues tend to come up more from the 'found on Facebook and used a turkey baster' arrangements.

I agree that paid donation and surrogacy should remain illegal. I also don't think it should be possible to go abroad for these services either.

Yes, it's very biased. It's always about the parents and not the woman, usually poor, whose womb they rented at risk to her life.

Becoming pregnant and carrying a baby conceived with somebody else's egg (a donor egg) is also higher risk to both mother and baby than an IVF pregnancy where the pregnant mother has her own eggs harvested and her own fertilised egg implanted.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26854328/

"Donor oocyte pregnancy acts as an independent risk factor for pregnancy complications, including hypertensive disorders, small for gestational age, and preterm delivery. Women should be counselled carefully before undergoing DO-assisted conception."

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31598040/

"Ovum donation has now been shown to be an independent risk factor for hypertensive disease in pregnancy, post-partum haemorrhage and increased risk of caesarean section. Neonatal outcomes are less clear-cut, although there is some evidence to suggest there is increased risk of small for gestational age babies and preterm delivery. It is now clear that OD pregnancies are higher risk than IVF pregnancies with autologous ovum and they should be treated as such. Women with ovum donation pregnancies should have obstetric-led care, in a unit which has ready access to both blood transfusion and cell salvage. Future research should investigate how to reduce the risk of ovum donation to these women."

Bumping this old thread as the media bias continues and perhaps gets stronger as surrogacy reform progresses.

Ignoring the Times and their relentless pro-surrogacy fluff there's this from the DM

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9610645/The-surrogate-sister-act-Rachael-provides-eggs-sister-Leanne-carries-baby.html

These two from the Mirror

www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/kerry-katona-ready-sixth-baby-24163936

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/generous-younger-sister-offers-siblings-24165716

And interestingly this from the Guardian, to provide balance, an example of something that is critical of surrogacy.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/23/too-late-or-too-great-to-gestate---dont-worry-britain-will-welcome-you