Mark Feehily wants surrogacy to be cheaper and accessible for everyone

[Wouldloveanother]

www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-11141771/Westlifes-Mark-Feehily-discusses-privileged-expensive-surrogacy-journey-welcome-daughter.html

Why are men so entitled?

Surrogacy should be illegal

A lot of bullying behaviour on this thread. Having an opposing viewpoint is not 'derailing', it's having a discussion. For the life of me I can't understand why surrogacy is so despised on MN.

Wow that photo with the newborn is quite chilling. Can't help thinking there is probably a woman in that building having just gone through childbirth and emotions all over the place 😔
It's like they've won a prize.

Very, very few circumstances that I agree with surrogacy and those are getting fewer and fewer tbh. Certainly feel that the regulations in UK go as far as they ever should.

No I’m just asking questions

Indeed. Aled Jones (not that one) head of Radio 1 was on R4 Saturday Live a while back. Bemoaning the fact that the ‘surrogate’ mother has rights and the adopting parents have to go through a legal process weeks after the birth and how awful that is for them. Another guest, Baroness Floella Benjamin, proclaimed she didn’t know that and that it was something she really thinks the House of Lords should look in to doing something about………

May the Lord open

The sexuality is actually irrelevant though. It’s about surrogacy but in this instance the intended parents happen to be gay.

surrogacy is the issue for me anyway. Not the sexuality of the parents.

So if a drug addict had a baby and was over the moon with them, would you say the same thing?

🤣 No. I mean stable people. People with a good stable home. It doesn't bother me if a child is convinced naturally or with the help of science. If they're born to a stable loving family, I'm delighted for them.

Quote from Mark:

I have been involved, I’m just one of many people involved, in this amazing campaign to change the legislation on laws surrounding surrogacy and families and the parental guardianship laws

I didn’t notice that he was actively campaigning! I think Irish feminists need to pick this one up and fast…

But then I think well if it’s bodily autonomy we are talking about then surely it’s up to each individual woman if she wants to do it or not rather than just a ban

They didn't "welcome" their daughter.

They bought her. Trafficked, if you like. I am very, very anti-surrogacy. (Except in the scenario of a sister doing it for a sister or something, with zero expectation of payment).

Awww how nice that what happens to other people doesn’t bother you.

Having an opposing view on surrogacy would be one thing. Introducing a correlation between surrogacy and abortion is quite another. And refusing to be sidetracked isn’t bullying.

I believe there was some consultation about surrogacy a couple of years ago that looked at that issue.

it scares me that people can’t see the wider implications for women and infants of not keeping mothers as automatically having parental responsibility.

No child consents to be made and born…IVF is irrelevant to this argument

Should that also apply to organ donation?

It's not homophobia, it's caring about women and children.

Conceived *

Because a lot of people think the buying and selling of babies, while creating them for the purpose of being removed from their mother, is wrong?

No because people can’t sell their organs even if they consent and want to. Why should they be able to give away an actual human being? Buying a baby is wrong.

(Also I see it very differently to adoption - it’s creating a baby knowing you’re going to deprive it of its birth mother whereas adoption is not ideal but in the best interests of the child. That argument always crops up!)

What a disgusting human being.

If you make it unpaid, that's how you get situations like Brian's much younger, not remotely famous, single, childless sister is carrying a child for him and his husband. Brian famously referred to her as it when he tried not to give the game away about who their surrogate mother was.

I do find surrogacy horrible for the mother and for the child. A lot of celebrities seem to be doing it now. It would be better if it didnt exist so noone would be pressured into doing it and anyone caught doing it could be prosecuted.

If it helps I had no idea who this was and didn't know from the name what sex his partner was. In fact, I'll be honest, I read a lot of the article wondering why the reason for the surrogacy wasn't mentioned. The photo was the clue!

So no, not every person who objects does it because of homophobia.

I know loads of gay adoptive parents and lesbians who had a baby with a donor and they're all as boringly OK and pedestrian as any other parent. It's surrogacy I don't like.

He wants to make it easier to commission and buy a baby, so that's nice.

This is an interesting point regarding consent. If we think women should have choice over their bodies then shouldn’t they be able to choose to be surrogates?

In my opinion though legislation regarding surrogacy is about safeguarding women in general and vulnerable women in particular. In countries where surrogacy is legal and cheap/easy there tends to be lots of ethical issues around vulnerable/poor women being exploited.