Surrogacy makes me very uncomfortable

[HermioneKipper]

I was listening to Giovanna Fletcher’s podcast with H from Steps and hearing them talk about him using a surrogate for his twins made me feel very uncomfortable.

It’s essentially renting a woman’s body to buy a baby.

I understand the woman must’ve consented but she was paid and it doesn’t take into account the risk she was putting her body through. Pregnancy and childbirth is a huge strain on a woman’s body and she risks serious injury giving birth that she’ll have for life.

Even more so as she had twins which is even more dangerous.

And the babies taken away from their birth mother immediately. Who knows what harm it does to them.

It feels akin to the black market of buying and selling organs.

I know I have children so perhaps don’t have the right to comment but it doesn’t sit right with me.

YANBU. I think it’s human trafficking.

A woman’s body is not a workplace and nobody should be able to exploit women’s poverty by buying their baby away from its mother.

I think it’s obscene, and the law should be tightened on this - not liberalised.

@SoundBar

YANBU but you'll be cancelled for saying so.

Just because men will pay for it doesn't make it ok

Women pay surrogates too. Women pay for sperm.

This is not a male/female thing.

It’s also no one else’s business but the people involved.

@fantastaballs so I assume you're against adoption then? A newborn being taken from the woman who carried them, is much better than keeping a baby with an unfit parent so as not to "take their rights".
A toddler In a nurturing loving environment won't remember being in the womb. Don't be so ridiculous. You do not have to give birth or carry a child to be a mother.

@RandomLondoner

Surrogacy is a human rights violation

I think if you took the issue to court, you might find the exact opposite is true, that it would be a human rights violation to prevent it.

I don’t think any court would rule that it is an absolute right for anyone to have a child. The part of the European Charter of Human Rights covering this is about enforced sterilisation etc, it is not about facilitating people having children.

@lynntheyresexpeople would you be offended if someone says they are pro choice? people can also be anti-surrogacy, why not? Shall we also cancel mother's day/father's day because some people are orphans and will be sad?

[quote grey12]@lynntheyresexpeople would you be offended if someone says they are pro choice? people can also be anti-surrogacy, why not? Shall we also cancel mother's day/father's day because some people are orphans and will be sad?[/quote]
Ermm, no? I'm pro choice - I have no idea where you've got any of those ideas from as they aren't related in the slightest.
Being anti surrogacy when you have absolutely no idea of personal circumstances, and with absolutely no consideration for the people involved, just makes you a dick.

@Dandy0911

I think your comments are quite harsh and cold to be honest.

Surrogacy isn't plain black and white. You don't just offer someone an inviting amount of money to carry a child and that's that.

If I wanted to have another baby, I would have to use a surrogate due to past cancer, chemo, C sections, and surgery trauma. If I carried a baby now it would probably kill me. I very nearly had to have a medical abortion a couple of months ago as I fell pregnant but ended up miscarrying. I'm not on any contraception as the chemo has left me Infertile but it happened. It was bitter sweet but I knew I couldn't carry.

My sister, a loving, caring, healthy, BEAUTIFUL soul of a woman has offered to be my surrogate. It's an Avenue we're thinking about.

Your comment about a baby being taken away from their birth mother isn't nice at all.

Yes, there's corruptions and problems when it comes to women and their bodies. There is with a lot of things. But I think your view is quite blasé. Not everybody is out to find a surrogate who will accept a truck load of money to help their family and put them self through emotion and physical turmoil to do so. Yes it happens. But not in most cases.

If you would only consider your sister and not consider paying someone (yes in the U.K. women still get paid) that's one thing. I have sympathy for your situation but lots of women can't have as many children as they want for many reasons and having children isn't a right. I really hope you're sensitive to the emotional pressure that your sister may face. She may not feel able to say no.

Comparing porn to surrogacy is only something you'd read on this bloody website 🙄 absolutely bonkers.

@CloseYourEyesAndSee it's not your right to comment on the posters situation, at all. You don't know her sister, you're making huge assumptions and are probably really upsetting the poster you quoted. Why comment? Why purposely try and upset somebody? I hope you feel good about yourself.

You need to wind your neck in OP. For some women on here this is their only way of having a child and a post like this could be very hurtful.

I wonder how people who are pro-surrogacy feel about puppies being taken off their mother at birth?

@Heidi1982

I wonder how people who are pro-surrogacy feel about puppies being taken off their mother at birth?

😂😂😂 yes, because that's the same

I don't see the problem when the woman is doing it of her own free will and fully consenting. I am 40 now so probably too old but since I've had my own children I would have loved to help give a couple their own child. If it was fully genetically theirs.

I think surrogacy should be banned in all cases altrustic and for money like it is in most of Europe.
Most people on MN think thought the EU was great, the general opinion in EU is that surrogacy is a bad thing
Having children is not a right and trying to circumnavigate rules like Tom Daley did by using an American surrogate is not right either.
I do not think the UK or Europe should recognise people as parents that used surrogates in other countries it should be banned for all UK citizens with no get outs by using poor women in USA India Thailand etc etc
The idea that the surrogate parents can have rules other the woman carrying the baby as to her health, food and social choices and even mandate she is kept on life support until child is viable is horrendous. as is saying there must be an abortion if child is not 100% healthy or refusing to take child at birth if some medical physical problem becomes apparent that was not known about before
While I feel sorry for those that can't conceive naturally or for whom another pregnancy would be dangerous medically the answer is not surrogacy but a realisation that any child or a second child is not a right that can be bought but that childlessness or secondary infertility ( which I had) needs to be accepted

Nope, having to go through infertility isn’t a justification for exploiting someone else. Nobody has the right to have a child. Unfortunately some people don’t have the ability to have a child, but as hard as that is, that’s life.

Otherwise where do we draw that line? If someone isn’t able to have a child naturally and can’t afford to pay a surrogate, should they have the right to adopt? Should the SW consider the heartbreak of childlessness over the needs of the child?

And so what if some women choose to do it. Some women choose to be prostitutes. Do we say that we have no right to judge the industry because women choose to do it?

it’s a slippery slope when we start ignoring the exploitation which goes on in some of these industries just because some choose to do it. It essentially says “you have a choice, therefore if you’re doing it then you’re not being exploited.”

And what of the Ukrainian babies in lockdown who were kept away from any loving parent because their buyers hadn’t turned up to collect them?

What of these parents who buy a baby from abroad, who never meet the mother, and who only turn up to collect the baby once it’s born? FGS you have more involvement with the mother of a puppy you’re going to buy than some of these people have with the surrogate who is going to give them a baby.

@HeartsAndClubs have you actually gone through infertility?

[quote Babyghirl]@HermioneKipper
All I will say is put yourself in the shoes of someone that can't have kids naturally and it's the only root they can take to have the family they dream off 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️[/quote]
It's not a right to have a baby
Sorry

I simply can't understand how it's legal to buy a baby. I believe they have paid adoption in the US too, which also seems so very wrong.

And yes, animals and children are different, but I can't see how people can on one hand consider it unbearably cruel to take puppies from their mother before x number of weeks, but then turn around and say it's beautiful and just fine to do it to a human baby. Surely a human baby should have an even higher level of care and consideration?

It’s a bit like abortion tho isn’t it. Don’t agree with it? Don’t have one

I don't think it's like abortion at all - since that's all about your own body. Surrogacy is about someone else's body (and in fact, in the US, can't the commissioning parents force an abortion/prevent her from aborting/control her healthcare options?)

Starting this thread with a clear lack of understanding of the issues was shortsighted at best and cruel at worst, OP.

Surrogacy is a huge issue that encompasses an enormous range of experience, from vulnerable women in poverty having their ability to gestate a baby 'bought' in horrifying power dynamics, to a family member doing a utterly selfless and loving thing for someone they care about. With a million variables and grey areas in between - are women who have historically easy pregnancies and want to give that gift to others, but accept money for it in America, being exploited? Or are the people paying her, by someone who has found a way to extract large sums of money from desperate people based off something she herself believes to be reasonably low risk? Do we run the risk of restricting what women can do with their own bodies if we say 'all surrogacy = bad', or are we protecting the most vulnerable?

You are not wrong that there are elements of some cases of surrogacy which could be concerning.

But by coming in with your big broad brush (and your children you were able to be pregnant with yourself!) you are slapping your own shitty paint all over the nuance that you clearly don't understand and haven't experienced yourself. Good job.

[quote Lemonsandlemonade]@HeartsAndClubs have you actually gone through infertility?[/quote]
I have and I agree with HeartsandClubs.

@YouTubeAddict

You need to wind your neck in OP. For some women on here this is their only way of having a child and a post like this could be very hurtful.

@YouTubeAddict you seem to think that the wishes of the infertile trump everyone else’s rights - would kidnap of someone else’s child also be ok?

Alternatives to surrogacy:
Find an opposite sex co-parent
IVF
Fostering
Adoption

have you actually gone through infertility? I’ve been through secondary infertility, but even if I hadn’t the right to an opinion isn’t reserved only for those who have had fertility issues. The fact is that sometimes you just can’t have children. Women go through rounds and rounds of IVF, women go through countless infertility treatments, women are turned down for adoption. Sometimes it just isn’t possible to have a baby.

That doesn’t mean that those women aren’t entitled to be upset/devastated, but it doesn’t entitle them to exploit another woman and pay her for carrying a baby for them.

You might as well say that someone waiting for an organ transplant should be perfectly within their rights to buy an organ on the black market, because you can’t possibly know what it’s like to experience organ failure, and well, if someone is prepared to sell their kidney then why not?

Nope, having to go through infertility isn’t a justification for exploiting someone else. Nobody has the right to have a child. Unfortunately some people don’t have the ability to have a child, but as hard as that is, that’s life.

Absolutely this

Don’t agree with it? Don’t have one

No, not at all. It’s about the ethics of exploiting women’s bodies.