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

I'm sitting on the fence. Don't think it's right for vulnerable women to do it for money
Personally I wish we were all like mr potato head and we could just swap bits about. Would happily give my womb/ovaries/tubes to someone who needed them. Saw my colleague struggle for 9 years through IVF and if I could have carried a child for her, I would and not for the money

I wanted children but couldn't afford to, and I'm 39 now so too old!

That doesn’t inherently mean they are doing something against their will that will scar them in some way though. We ALL do things for money, every single day. That’s the way society works.

Commodifying women's bodies is always disgusting. Sad as infertility is, I do not think that commercial surrogacy can ever provide a morally acceptable solution.

I’m sure some are desperate. Desperate people do all kinds of things for money, that’s an issue around poverty, not surrogacy as such.
i understand if you object to surrogacy (and presumably by extension also adoption? As that is the same thing) because you don’t agree with a baby being removed from its birth mother at all. But the OP doesn’t seem to think it’s as much of an issue if you do it for the ‘right’ reasons…which strikes me as pretty odd tbh.

i highly doubt Paris Hilton’s surrogate is some starving Ukrainian woman.

Many many surrogates are not first timers. I know people who have done it for friends and family, after they’ve had their own kids. I know of people who do it purely because they like being pregnant. Not all surrogates are impoverished desperate people.

I'm for bodily autonomy which means that a woman can decide if she wants to be a surrogate or not. It is as simple as that. It is not for randoms on some internet forum to make that decision on her behalf.

You’re right, being forced into making the so-called ‘choice’ to be a surrogate, is much better….

The surrogate isn’t the biological mother though in these surrogacies. The baby is not related genetically
Pregnancy and childbirth forms a tremendous bond between the mother and child, a baby doesn't know its genetics, it only knows the smell and sounds of the woman who carried them and gave birth to them.
Removing a baby from the person who carried them and gave birth to them at birth is traumatic for them and cruel.

I agree.
i understand the POV that women are forced into it for financial reasons, but I don’t necessarily think taking that option away helps those women. Poverty is the thing that needs fixing, not surrogacy.

do those who oppose surrogacy also oppose adoption? Genuinely curious if you see that differently.

I agree with OPs opinion about surrogacy but disagree that pregnancy prepares you to care for a newborn.
I adopted my kids and I was perfectly able to care for them even though I have never been pregnant.

Mumsnet is incredibly judgemental on surrogacy!
I was ripped a new one for daring to suggest that I might consider this journey in the future. I have lost my womb to cancer at 32. No children.
For reasons I don't want to go into I don't want to go through the adoption process. Someone in my life has offered to do this for me if I wanted to go down that road. No for payment. Because they know how important being a mum would be to me. I'm nowhere near ready. But they came to me with the suggestion not the other way around.
Yet somehow I'm a vile individual for even considering it!

There is no negative evidence about the long term impacts of surrogacy on the baby. The studies they have used are based on babies going through the adoption or fostering system. Not the same thing at all.

You don't have a problem with women in desperate poverty being forced by circumstance into undergoing a painful, risky, life-threatening, emotionally gruelling process?

You don't think that a 'choice' made by a woman who can't find any other way to feed her children is in some way a coerced or problematic 'choice'?

You don't think we should ever intervene in a person's actions over their own body? Even if they're suffering from psychosis and about to throw themselves off a bridge?

Libertarianism is just capitalism gone wild, in the end. Posts like this make it very clear.

How will you feel if the 'person in your life' dies or is permanently disabled as a direct result of carrying this pregnancy?

I think anyone with experience of adoption knows it's far from ideal. But sometimes it's the least bad option for a child who is already born, or conceived. There's a difference between that, and deliberately conceiving a child in order to sell it.

Do you, every single day, conceive a baby and carry it in your body, risking death or disability, and undergoing all of the strains of pregnancy 24/7 for 40 weeks?

Do you really think that pregnancy and giving birth are comparable to doing a crappy job for money?

By this logic anyone other than the mother being the primary caregiver to the child is cruel?

In lots of countries there is no maternity rights or leave. Lots of babies are cared for by other family members o nannies. Are you seriously suggesting that this is cruel and is harming them!

Not an unpopular opinion on Mumsnet. People on here are very, very judgy about surrogacy.
A woman's 'right to choose' only goes one way on here.

*By this logic anyone other than the mother being the primary caregiver to the child is cruel?

In lots of countries there is no maternity rights or leave. Lots of babies are cared for by other family members o nannies. Are you seriously suggesting that this is cruel and is harming them!*
My point was, that a baby feels more familiarity with the person who gave birth to them than the woman who shares more genetic material with them.
Ideally a mother should be spending a lot of time with their newborns, especially in the first few weeks post birth, it's well known that a baby will be more relaxed when they feel their mothers heartbeat or hear their mother voice because those are recognisable to them from being in the uterus.
Obviously in many people's lives that isn't possible but they would still spend many hours with their babies when able.
With surrogacy you are intentionally removing a baby from the person who can give them that comfort in transitioning to life outside the uterus.

@BloodAndFire it would be terrible. But we all take risks in life all the time. Everything we do involves a level of risk.
As an adult she is able to make a judgement on what level of risk is acceptable to her. She is fully aware of all potential consequences of her offer.
She brought the information to me. Surrogacy wasn't on my radar until she brought the idea to me.

sometimes, yes. It depends on the job you do. I know countless people I grew up with who joined the army after struggling to find work after school. Most of them who saw combat are deeply affected, one or two were very badly hurt. 3 were killed.
i know firemen and police officers with significant mental and physical injuries from work. I know a nurse who was stabbed and paralysed by a patient. I know plumbers and builders and such like who’ve experienced life changing injuries at work. I know dozens of people who’ve have mental breakdowns due to work stress and terrible situations they’ve seen at work. In my own family I lost an uncle in a mine collapse in 2011. So yes, I think there are very definitely direct comparisons to be made.

Those sound like truly terrible and traumatic experiences. People should not be put in those situations because they are financially desperate. Right?

I'm not asking for your interpretation of her perspective. I'm asking for your perspective.

If she dies or is disabled due to altruistically carrying a pregnancy for you, are you OK with that?

Will you be happy to explain it to the child, or to her existing children?

@Tooposhtowash

Yes, there are already human farms in the world.

www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/5/3/survivors-of-nigerias-baby-factories-share-their-stories#:~:text=Women%20and%20girls%20are%20held,several%20reports%20suggest%2C%20ritually%20killed.

Interesting that none of Paris's friends or sister were offering up this 'gift'.

Surrogacy is grim business. Right now, there's a post-partum woman with painful breasts, difficulty peeing and possibly other complications, but gee doesn't Paris look great!

YANBU