To not consider surrogacy for SIL when I would for my sister?

[nervousnelly8]

DH's sister has longstanding fertility problems. She has been told surrogacy would be her best option. DH and I were discussing today whether I would consider acting as a surrogate in future (she hasn't asked me directly but has raised it with DH).

I came down pretty firmly on the no side. I'm currently very pregnant with DC2 and I do not enjoy pregnancy. I had bad birth injuries with DC1 and am very apprehensive about going through it again, but know it will be worth it if we get a healthy baby out at the end.

Selfishly, I just don't feel willing to but my body through a pregnancy/birth for SIL, with all the risks that it entails. We're not sure yet if we would like more children after DC2, so that plays a part too.

DH asked if I would be willing to do it for anyone else. And the honest answer was that I would do it for my own sister. I would do anything for my sister. DH understood but was visibly upset, and I now feel like a selfish cow. AIBU?

@SirVixofVixHall

Surrogacy should never be presented as an “option”. Apart from the fact that surrogacy, even in families, is exploitation of women and their bodies, there is another person in this, the baby. A baby should be with its mother. That is the person the baby wants, a small person is not a doll to be doled out to someone else or sold.

Easy to say when you have children.

This was not a debate on surrogacy itself.

because your DH is a dickhead. You are a human being and not an incubator. He has seen up close the toll that pregnancy and birth has taken, and he still thinks it’s appropriate to ask you and be sulky when you say no.
Surrogacy should be banned in all its forms, it is exploitation of women’s bodies. It is possible to feel sorry for your SIL with her fertility problems without feeling an obligation to solve them. She is not entitled to a child and she is definitely not entitled to use your body, as a conveniently close and fertile women.

YANBU for saying no. And of course your own sister is different.

But i dont agree with some people here at all. I think SIL and DH were trying to ask without making the OP feel pressured. It sounds like SIL asked her brother to ask you about the subject and see how you react, instead of putting you on the spot by asking outright.
I dont think hoping you would just put yourself forward was an option for her.
I would never just offer to be a surrogate if someone told me they needed one. Even if i was willing. It would feel weird to just say "Hey, I will do it!"

I wouldnt do it either. Pregnancy is hard work, giving birth plus recovery is painful. That's a massive thing to ask anyone.

Basically, she asked your DH to lend her your body. No. Not if you don’t wish to.

Truth be told, I would give up a kidney for my sisters but I would not be a surrogate for either of them. I have a stubborn cervix and have had two sections already and will most likely have a third should I decide to have another child. The experience of a section never gets any better for me and the only saving grace is seeing my baby. I could not cope with the pain and extending bleeding nor would I put myself through the complications I have experienced twice already for either of them.

Yanbu it is your body and ultimately up to you to assess risks you are willing to take. If you would take them for your sister and not your sil that is fine.

I have been asked this question by my own sil (dh's sil) and I said whilst I sympathised with her plight I would not be in a position to help. It probably sounded very cold to her but she has been an utter cow to me for years so the cf shouldn't have even asked.

And if he can’t appreciate (really appreciate) the difference between how a person generally feels about their sister compared to their SIL, he hasn’t thought hard enough. Your sisters are there from childhood - it’s a completely different relationship. I met my SIL when I was about twenty. I like her most of the time. I don’t love her.

YANBU and I don't see why you shouldn't admit you would do it for your sister, it's only honest.

I wouldn't be a surrogate by choice. I've struggled with pregnancy due to previous failed ones (which one was really tough at the time, too) and if DH asked me to do it for his sister it would be a firm no, unfortunately.

If my brother and his partner were to want children, I would be more willing to consider it.

And if my DH outright asked me if there was anyone I would do it for (weird question, as if he wanted to have a strop over the answer!) then I wouldn't lie to him, like PP have suggested. He asked you a question and you gave him an answer.

It's your body and you have the right to decide how to use it. Your SIL and DH obviously mentioned you in their conversation although whether he or she suggested you, is the main question. If it's her, then it's utterly rude to even do so.

[quote WhereverIGoddamnLike]@Clymene

I don't agree with surrogacy so I'm not arguing on that score, but what makes that person the mother?

If you're using the egg and sperm of the intended parents, and the woman is willingly doing it, without coercion or payment but through pure choice, then is she the mother? Or is the woman who gave her egg fertilised by her husband's sperm the mother?[/quote]
The mother is the woman who gestated and birthed the child. Legally, ethically and as far as the baby is concerned. The relationship can be legally severed but just like with adoption it can never be erased.
Of course surrogacy is different to adoption in some ways most significantly if the baby is genetically the offspring of the female 'intended' parent, but she becomes the mother legally, not in fact.

@MJMG2015 'This was not a debate on surrogacy itself.'

Why not? The fact that the SIL was told that surrogacy was an option is something that needs discussing. Renting out another woman's body and buying a baby should not be presented as 'an option' by fertility specialists. As another poster pointed out earlier, it is illegal in most of Europe.

@JetBlackSteed I don't think you understand what surrogacy is.
I'd carry a baby that was genetically the offspring of my brother and his wife. Not my brother and me. That would be ridiculous.

Sil does have another option - adoption.

Yanbu.

Your sil asked her brother to ask you 😮😑

Yanbu and they make you feel like you are, they are being manipulative and abusive

OP - you will not be allowed to carry for your sister,. or SIL. End of.

When my sister was struggling with infertility, she asked if I would be a surrogate; I was told that in NO WAY would I be considered.

Ethically, I would not be allowed to be 'mother' and 'aunt' to the child, and it causes too many problems with how the baby would be brought up; would drive a wedge between us all; I would have no say in child upbringing, religion, education, discipline - and it would all be 'too close to home'.

Quite rightly, I refused, and I was refused anyway. My sister adopted instead. (She is the least maternal person ever, and we are now NC due to her criticism of my own parenting, so it would have been a total nightmare anyway)

I’m sure it’s difficult for your dh to see his sister suffer, but I doubt if he would be a surrogate for yours either. He might think he would but doesn’t know the full realities of pregnancy having never carried or birthed a child.

The media have made serogracy look easy. It isn’t. Woman die in child birth. Suffer horrific injuries etc etc. I wouldn’t do it. It needs regulating.

Surrogacy should always come as an offer, not a request, IMO. Many women with fertility problems do not have a sister; not that a sister should ever feel obligated to offer. If I had completed my family, and had had straightforward pregnancies and births, I would consider being a surrogate for someone I liked and trusted.

I definitely don’t think you’re being unreasonable at all. Yes you maybe could have been a bit more tactful but you also weren’t rude or anything, you were just honest and in this situation I’d say that’s for the best, you wouldn’t want to be too ambiguous and they think it could be a possibility, that would only cause more problems in the long run! I’d say he’s just feeling upset for his sister and a bit helpless because he knows he can’t do this for her but wants to help her. I wouldn’t be angry with him while he works through those emotions, It’s not about you, it’s about the shit situation his sister is in!

What.A.Bitch.

So selfish of you to not put yourself through everything that growing a child and giving birth does to a woman for someone who doesn’t have the decency to address you herself.

Its fucking ridiculous that you should even have to ask yourself if YABU.

Tell your whole family to fuck off - your body is not public property.

I have bladder weakness and the beginnings of a prolapse as a result of childbirth. I can just about consider this worthwhile in exchange for my children. Why would anyone put their body through that for someone else? Having babies damages women’s bodies, very few escape completely unscathed by the process. Nobody should ask another person to do that for them, paid or unpaid.

Easy to say when you have children.

I don't have children and I agree with SirVix. We need a national debate on the issue of surrogacy, without resorting to shutting down anyone who has children.

Ask your dh if he'd have his dick mangled for his BIL and see what he says.So unreasonable for him to even suggest that you could do it.Something that big needs to be volunteered by the actual person who would be going through it!

But in terms of marital harmony, bearing in mind the likelihood of this issue coming up for both sisters, I would have said, at the very least "Well I havent really thought about it".

No.

This is about bodily autonomy. The OP is entirely within her rights to say she'd have a surrogate baby for absolutely anyone or noone. Nobody else gets a say or an opinion.

Dear gods what next. "Hey sis, whilst I'm incapacitated can you give DH a shag for me, poor man will be upset if he can't have what he wants'.

I think the serious birth injury you suffered the first time is hugely relevant here, god forbid you get injured for DC2 and for ANYONE to even consider asking you to do this knowing you suffered badly before and are weeks away from another birth is utter madness.

Wishing you a safe and positive birth for your little one, sending you all the luck in the world

Reading more of the thread, and focussing on the second half of the post...

There is mass agreement that no one should be under the slightest pressure to be a surrogate. The whole concept is suspect and delicate.

Now for the husband asking, “would you do it fir anyone.” I do think the easy way out would have been to tell him a white lie and know in her heart that she would for her sister.

BUT, that would somehow lesson their bond. He becomes someone that she manages rather than sharing everything with. Him asking that question was very wrong in the first place. He was using a debating/persuading technique against his wife, where you take it from a question of yes/no to a matter of degrees.

The OP is no longer arguing that she doesn’t want to be a surrogate but that her SIL isn’t worth it.

Lying beneath the husband’s questions was a desire to use emotional manipulation to push his wife’s boundaries. He may not have understood consciously what he was doing, but that is the effect.