Unpopular opinion but surrogacy as a choice is a bit gross?

[Janedoe95]

I was just reading about Paris Hilton and obviously i don’t know the full story but it seems like she just used a surrogate because her friends do for convenience.

obviously if you have no choice I completely understand but if it’s just because pregnancy is hard I think it’s a bit wrong taking a newborn baby away from the only person they’ve known for 9 months

especially as pregnancy itself prepares you to care for a newborn and changes your brain for that purpose.

am I just being very judgmental

YANBU
I think it is appalling to buy a poor woman's body. Kinship surrogacy when a sibling bears a baby for an infertile or gay sibling can be totally different but what these people do: Kim Kardashian, Elton John, Lance Black, Paris Hilton etc is basically using a woman's body to to the often dangerous job of growing and bearing their children. Often in developing countries. It is grotesque. I remember wincing when I was told that my husbands great grandmother had a wet nurse, but this is a new scale of abuse of poor women.

The majority of surrogacy is commercial, not altruistic.

Facing poverty but above all a desire for social upward mobility
Nearly all surrogates clearly stated that money was their primary motivation for committing to surrogacy (n = 32/33)Footnote2 (Table 3). Surrogates had earned or would earn between 200,000 and 400,000 INR. This represents 30 months of family income, as the median family income of the surrogates was 10,000 INR.
Some of the surrogates (n = 10) stated that their financial condition was critical as they had very heavy debts to repay (from 4 to 10 lakhs INR, i.e. 5600 to 14,000 euros) or because their husband was no longer working for health reasons. For these women, surrogacy could be a “non-choice” and two of them stated that only poor women who suffer become surrogates:
“Money is the first aspect of respect. It [surrogacy] is not accepted because it is associated with poor people. Who else comes to become a surrogate?” Simran (S29)

bmcwomenshealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12905-020-01087-2

I assume that all those clamouring for surrogacy to be banned have never known real endless, grinding poverty. Imagine having several children, no welfare benefits, living in crap accommodation. Maybe some women, offered a way out of this vicious circle by carrying a child for another couple. Who are we, I our ivory towers, to judge them?

Re Paris, she makes reference to IVF and fertility issues, and she's 41. It's hugely possible she didn't go via surrogacy for the sake of stretch marks and her vagina but because she couldn't conceive.

The ethics of surrogacy apy whether your famous or not but if you're adding in judgement for not using surrogacy "properly" , at least be sure of your facts.

Families in appalling poverty sometimes have to sell their own children, too. e.g. in Vietnam and Thailand. Generally they are forced into sex work for wealthy Western tourists. You cool with this too?

I believe Khloe had fertility issues which became apparent before she had True, who was a bit of a good surprise. So having a second was always going to be challenging naturally, although I agree Tristain was NOT the good choice to have any her second child with, even if it did make them a whole sibling!

Are you new here? Surrogacy being 'gross' is not an unpopular opinion on MN 😂

Surrogacy is always a choice in the IPs part- though the reasons for making that choice may vary.

personally I don’t like surrogacy because the infants needs are surrogates needs are usually secondary/tertiary to the IPs and that doesn’t sit right with me. Seems to be much worse where there is commercialised surrogacy.

taking a baby away from its mother should be a last resort only for the sake of the baby, not plan A for the sake of adults.

Imagine having several children, no welfare benefits, living in crap accommodation. Maybe some women, offered a way out of this vicious circle by carrying a child for another couple

The couple could just hand over the money as a gift instead of taking the woman’s baby in return. That’s altruism.

It’s really not for you to pass judgement or set limits on what other women do with their bodies. Simple as that.

What nonsense. We all have limits on the harm we are allowed to do to ourselves. We are not allowed to sell organs, for example.

I'm completely against surrogacy. It should be banned.

obviously if you have no choice I completely understand but if it’s just because pregnancy is hard I think it’s a bit wrong taking a newborn baby away from the only person they’ve known for 9 months

Why is it different either way? Both ways you're taking a newborn away from the only mother they've ever known.

The surrogate isn’t the biological mother though in these surrogacies. The baby is not related genetically

The surrogate isn’t the biological mother though in these surrogacies. The baby is not related genetically

But the surrogate is the only mother that the baby has ever known - the sound of her heartbeat, her smell, her voice.

YABU to think it's an unpopular opinion on here.

The law treats the pregnant woman as the mother

the new trend for wealthy women to acquire a baby

wasn’t long ago it was a baby from China or a baby from a country in Africa were popular. Never a baby from South Asia, South America or the ME

During the pregnancy maybe. But once the baby is born, the surrogate has no parental rights to them. It's legally not her child.

And thank fuck that we are allowed to share our opinions with other women, right?

Because if you only read what's published in the media, you would have no idea that anyone had ever felt in any way uncomfortable with it.

But it is. I know families who have children born to surrogates and they all have a relationship with their birth mother and books with pictures which document the pregnancy and the journey all their parents went on to have them. The surrogate is considered part of the family. Obviously, sometimes these relationships break down. But that happens with all types of families.

It is her child (and if she has a husband he is considered the father) until the legal process happens, which can take several weeks. If you do things properly and everyone builds a good relationship, there’s no reason for all parties not to follow the surrogacy agreement. There is always a risk until the legal process has been completed. Birth mother refuses to hand over baby….or parents-to-be decide they don’t want the baby and leave surrogate with an unplanned child to raise. The stake are so high for the babies before they have even been born.

Doesn’t that depend on the country?

You've just reminded me how much of a shit actress she was in that film House Of Wax

It's not an unpopular opinion though is it?
I don't thing any surrogacy should be allowed. It's baby farming & abhorrent.

I think this makes it worse.

Women wanting a child to be biologically “theirs” so they go down the surrogacy route, meaning babies and children in the care system waiting to be fostered and adopted aren’t good enough or desirable.

(Although I do understand fostering and adopting comes with its own hurdles, it isn’t so black and white and simple.) But to be so desperate for a child/family and choose surrogacy and completely bypass adoption makes me sad.