‘With science I can have a baby whenever I want’’

[Laughingstock91]

Naomi Campbell had had a baby at 50 - not sure if she’s given birth or it’s a surrogate but her comments really irritated me. She said ‘with science I can have a baby whenever I want’ - do people actually think about the baby? I am sure she’ll be a lovely mum but it makes having a baby just sound like something to tick off on a list when you have decided you have had enough of everything else no matter what age you are. Maybe I am being harsh but if it’s that easy with science, why wait until you are 50?

Aibu?

she’s not asking her body to go through the arduous task of pregnancy for nine months
No, she's paying someone else to! What a tone deaf comment!

@Lonel

she’s not asking her body to go through the arduous task of pregnancy for nine months No, she's paying someone else to! What a tone deaf comment!

Isn't it just. So close.

A surrogate mother is not a labour saving device (no pun intended).

@CounsellorTroi

It seems to have got to the point where anyone with enough money can acquire a new born baby. They may not have carried the child, may not be genetically related, may be years past menopause, but anyone with enough money can take delivery of a new born baby. I'm not sure whether that is a good thing.

Indeed. When read like that it's tough to see how this can ever be ok.

@CounsellorTroi

If surrogacy is a choice, why aren't the women of Knightsbridge choosing to have babies for couples in Ukraine?

Quite. More likely to be a poor Ukrainian student selling her eggs for the benefit of a wealthy woman from Knightsbridge.

This

In the Observer today:

"Too late or too great to gestate? Don’t worry, Britain will welcome you
In contrast to other countries, our surrogacy laws ignore the traumas faced by birth mothers...

...But either way, unstinting appreciation of Campbell’s announcement is encouraging for pro-surrogacy advocates impatient for the day Britain becomes in this respect more like the US, Ukraine and – for now – Russia. If it can never become a reproductive tourism destination on their scale, the normalisation of cases such as, possibly, Campbell’s, must diminish the possibility of the UK becoming the opposite – that is more like Sweden, Iceland, France, Portugal, Bulgaria, Norway, Germany, Italy, Spain and Finland – in banning all surrogacy."

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

She’s selfish imo
She chose to live her life the way she wanted until she was bored and has now had a baby much later than she should have. If she ‘wast ready’ in her 59s she shouldn’t accepted that motherhood wasn’t for her

Great piece by Catherine Bennett, Hecate, thanks for posting. Interesting to read about all these men pushing for the normalisation of surrogacy in the UK

childbearinghipsterF
The fact it's men doing a lot of the pushing doesn't surprise me. It must really piss some men off that there is something women have that they can't control or possess.
It would be interesting to see how many men who view women as rent-a-wombs also see women as sexual objects who exist to facilitate men's sexual desires. There seems an uncanny similarity of objectification and desire for control in both positions.

It would be interesting to see how many men who view women as rent-a-wombs also see women as sexual objects who exist to facilitate men's sexual desires. There seems an uncanny similarity of objectification and desire for control in both positions.

Except there is an influential arm of the pro-surrogacy lobby group coming from men who are gay and so they see don't see women as sexual objects, but objects nonetheless. Useful ones.

The single gay commissioning father in the BBC's "The Surrogates" (note removal of the word Mother) seemed almost pissed off he had to involve a woman at all (he didn't of course, he could have adopted, and the woman he was going to co-parent with was probably devastated when she miscarried and he reneged on their agreement.)

OhHolyJesus
Poor phrasing on my part. Gay men obviously wouldn't see women as sexual objects for them, but I'd be interested in how many see women as sexual objects for the benefit of men (as a class).

Your second paragraph is the sort of attitude I think exists. Some men seem to hate the fact that biology makes women the gatekeeper of children/new life. You can have all the ingredients, but you need a real, living, breathing, woman to grow a baby.

Exactly Lola. Surrogacy is 'used' by men and women, but the men doing it are not 'infertile' - though I see how that label helps with the argument for 'fertility equality' which is appearing frequently in pro-surrogacy media and social media - they just need two of the three ingredients they are missing due to their biology. In hetero couples they can still be missing the eggs and/or a womb that can carry and deliver a baby, and it can be the woman/wife who pushes for surrogacy. I wish in a way it was only limited to men who see women as sex objects, it would at least bring the numbers down a bit.

What makes me laugh (when I say laugh I mean angry) is when gay men like LOJ and Benjamin Cohen suddenly know what a woman is when they want one to impregnate and grow and birth a baby for them.

What makes me laugh angry is when the founding chair of Ethics at Surrogacy U.K. says

"Gender
Ethics also come into play when thinking about the gendered nature of surrogacy and intended parenting. Biologically, the surrogate has to be someone with the capacity to gestate and give birth – usually a womann*. As gendered labour, surrogacy triggers important feminist concerns, such as about bodily autonomy, vulnerability, inequality and rights"

You can see why removing the words women and mother are a useful linguistic mechanism as a precursor to law reform for surrogacy can't you.

https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/ptr/departments/philosophy/research/projects/ethics-surrogacy.aspx

@DalPalak

YANBU. My dad was 50 when I was born. As a child, I worried intensely about him growing old and dying. He's still alive and in remarkably good health (at 80), but it doesn't change the fact that his age caused me a lot of stress that I should not have had as a child. This makes me a little sad for Naomi's child, though I do wish them well.

But if he didn't have you at 50 you wouldn't have been born. Would you rather not exist? Having children later in life is not ideal but people very rarely have perfect conditions to have children. Usually something has to give.

@OhHolyJesus

Men become fathers in their 50s all the time and no one cares. But a woman does it and it’s a huge issue.

It's almost as if men and women are different isn't and so men's fertility and women's fertility isn't equally comparable.

I don't understand this argument. So just because men can have babies later in life they should? Yet when women are able to have babies with let's say help from IVF then it is criticised. People often use life expectancy and effects of having older parents on a child as arguments against having children later in life. Men actually often age faster then women and also die younger and fathers today need to be much more involved then before. Yet nobody says anything about men. We are so used to discussing parenting and fertility only in relation to women and feel like we can dictate to other women what they should do to the extent no one would ever do with men.

I know one guy who had kids in his 50s and everyone who knew him thought it was a stupid idea (it was a second family for him).

I don't understand this argument. So just because men can have babies later in life they should? Yet when women are able to have babies with let's say help from IVF then it is criticised.

The argument is that naturally a woman's fertility declines sharply around the 35-40 mark and for a man that doesn't happen. Our peak fertility is in our 20-early 30s, not ideal if you want a career and time to invest in it but it is what it is. The same is not true of a man. Perhaps it is one of the great injustices of biology which is what I meant by

"It's almost as if men and women are different isn't and so men's fertility and women's fertility isn't equally comparable."

It's not so much an argument as it is a fact if nature. I think men becoming fathers (looking at your Bernie Ecclestone and Jon Snow) in their 70s, 80s, 90s is pretty irresponsible but nature doesn't prevent it.

It's the 'help' through IVF I take issue with. With man-made science we can put ready-made embryos into post-menopausal wombs, stimulate ovaries and suck out up to 60 at a time (with some known, some unknown side effects) and introduce drugs to force a woman's body to accept eggs from another woman (in the form of a ready-made embryo).

I'm not against IVF as a method of science but I do think that some of it is going against nature and I think it has shifted from its original intentions. Naomi at 51 with a young baby and 24hr nannies she will be fine, the baby? Not sure. I know children who are raised by nannies and see the heartbreak every time they leave (and they do leave as their employers are a nightmare, let's hope NC does better with nannies than she did with assistants.) Maybe she will be running around with her toddler at 53 and see her marry at 86. She is just one example.

NC aside I have more interest in the wider discussion. Science does amazing things but as infertility increases globally and the IVF and Surrogacy industries grow to meet demand I think the ethics that surround it are shifting.

The worlds oldest mother is now a single mother. She became a mother because a doctor made it so, nature had long since made it impossible. These children have no other relatives. Let's hope Yerramatti lives til a ripe old age so her twins get into their adult years with their mum.

Yerramatti Mangayamma became the 'world's oldest mum' in 2019 after giving birth to twins at the age of 73 but she is now raising her twins on her own as her husband Raja, 84, died of a heart attack.