To think that a surrogate mother...

[BackDownSouth]

Is the biological mother of a surrogate baby that she delivers, even in cases where another egg was used? One thing I hate hearing in the surrogacy debate by pro-surrogacy folks (who like to minimise the connection between mother and child and the effect that separation at birth can have on both) is “the surrogate has no biological relation to the baby” in cases where an egg other than the surrogate’s own were used. Of course she has a biological connection to the baby. She doesn’t have a GENETIC link to the baby - no. But biological? She has about as much of a biological connection with it as she would her own genetic child. The baby is quite literally made of her. The genetic material of the egg may predetermine baby’s genetic make-up to match that of the intended mother’s egg but that is such a shallow link compared to the nurturing happening during the pregnancy. It's the surrogate mother’s body building and nurturing that child. The mother’s body will likely forever retain snippets of the child’s DNA - particularly traces of Y chromosome if she carries a boy. Everything the mother does or eats or feels will influence that child. The baby knows her smell and voice and as soon as they are born they seek her, and they will feel stress at being placed into a stranger’s arms rather than mum’s immediately after birth. It’s completely ridiculous to say there is no biological connection between surrogate and baby. What’s more of a connection, really, to a newborn baby who has no concept of themselves other than the birth mother who is all they have ever known? Is the baby bothered about a mother who makes up half of their DNA but who has been on the other side of the world since their conception and is going to lay claim to them through a financial transaction? Or is the baby instead going to crave the presence of the woman who has grown and nurtured them? The surrogate is mum and the baby is going to need her post-birth no matter how much people want to ignore that.

People like to say “DNA is nothing” in the context of the love between step-parents and their stepchildren, adoptive children etc, and that’s rightly so. A genetic link isn’t what makes a family. But in the case of surrogacies, this is all completely thrown out of the window and the idea of a surrogate mother bonding with her baby (because it is her baby…) is inconceivable because she ‘isn’t even related to them’ despite literally creating and birthing the child.

Let's ban IVF as well. It needs money, so is in effect 'buying babies'

And food? Since a woman can't grow a baby without food right!

If you are commissioning a woman to grow a baby for you, that is buying a baby.

If I am paying to have my own eggs fertilised by my partners sperm and implanted into me, I am paying for that service, not for a baby.

I don't think donating eggs as a separate service should be legal either - just as you can't pay someone to donate a kidney.

I completely agree about payments.

My experience of adoption is in South Africa.

There, women planning to give up their babies for adoption can be paid for expenses.

The result is adopting a white baby is expensive, a black baby is quite cheap.

You are paying for a service that you want to result in a baby. For your own selfish reasons.

It's an affront to the brain dead woman who has no way to advocate for herself but also the growing foetus who would grow in a motionless womb, who would never hear their mother's voice, wouldn't be exposed to their mother's feelings, they would kick and push with their foot in the third trimester and never feel a hand push it somewhere comfortable stroke it back.

A lifeless womb is a poor substitute for this child. You have to be ideological driven to blindness not to acknowledge that.

You are paying for a service that you want to result in a baby. For your own selfish reasons.

In a baby that you will be gestating yourself, and not removing from their mother at birth... I think you're missing the issue here. It's not the money, it's that you're using it to remove a baby from its mother.

A clinically dead person cannot give informed consent. So of course shouldn't be allowed.

The idea is that you gave informed consent before you died. But that's not the reason its not ok, that reason is that its a fucking abhorrent dystopian nightmare.

Paid adoption is also problematic, not just for the reason you have given.

With that and surrogacy there is a massive power imbalance between purchaser and birth mother.

There are also lots of issues with rejecting the less than perfect baby, such as the one you have described.

There was a thread on here recently about a woman going abroad to pay to have sex selective IVF, she doesn't have any fertility issues, that is something which also raises a multitude of ethical issues.

With the mother's informed consent. Which she should be able to refuse at any point.

As I have said over and over again, there needs to be stringent regulation. Probably so stringent that it is rare.

But women should be able to have autonomy over their own bodies.

Sorry, my post didn't make it clear how abhorrent I find this.

Expenses are a way of making hidden payments

☝

I have a relative who was adopted as a new born. She had a yearning to meet her birth mother and eventually found her. She regretted it, refused to meet her again and had some harassment for a time until the birth mother accepted they were not going to have a relationship. Sometimes you do have to be careful what you wish for.

With that and surrogacy there is a massive power imbalance between purchaser and birth mother.

That is what needs regulation.

And, with proper regulation, it's unlikely that many surrogacies will take place.

But that is not the same as saying surrogacy should never take place.

I think that this is what has, ultimately, stopped my friend from acting.

I think adoption is different but one of my objections to any kind of surrogacy is the fact that you deliberately and knowingly create babies who are human beings who foreseeably will have these issues.

I think both sides have power don't they. The "buyer" is presumably the more powerful financially. The "seller" has the power to provide something the other person/couple desperately want and the power to change their mind and withhold the baby.

IMO there is always a power imbalance whether money changes hands or not.

There can be emotional pressure as well as financial.

If buying a baby is your only way to have a baby, maybe admit you support child trafficking and the exploitation of women for the benefit of wealthy couples.

But women should be able to have autonomy over their own bodies

Why? They don't in many other aspects of life. We don't have the autonomy to drive a car without a seatbelt or a motorbike without a helmet. We don't have the autonomy to sell a kidney, or any other body part. We don't have the autonomy to sell our bodies for sex or to have a third trimester abortion without a serious anomoly reason.

There are so many ways we do not have autonomy over our bodies. Society keeps us from doing bad things with our bodies,from making terrible choices, especially when they effect others.

Why would we get autonomy over our bodies to be able to grow and sell human beings?

How can you tell the difference? And who should decide? You write as though you’d be able to do it, so here goes.

Woman A is being a surrogate for her friend, she gets paid £14,000 (average U.K. expenses). She’s had a baby before.

Woman B is having a baby for a celebrity who is paying her £100,000. She’s signed an NDA so she can’t tell anyone but she says she’s happy to do it. She’s never had a baby before.

Woman C lives in Ukraine and is having a baby for a rich US couple and is being paid £50,000. She isn’t being physically forced, but her husband told her that they really need the money. She has also had a baby before.

Woman D lives in India with several other pregnant women and has been told she’ll be killed if she doesn’t comply with being impregnated and carrying a baby for a rich Chinese couple. She’s never had a baby before.

Woman E is in the U.K. and is 21, never had a baby before. She agrees to have a baby for her older sister who is infertile. The sister can’t pay her but she wants to do it to make her sister happy.

There are so many factors at play before you even begin to consider the baby. How do we know which of these women are fully and responsibly consenting, and which are being coerced with money or the threat of violence? And what happens if they initially think they consent and then they decide they don’t want to have the baby anymore or want to keep it?

This is like saying that prostitutes have power over their punters because they have something the punters want.

No.

And the emotional pressure can be deeply buried and unexplored. I keep asking what process and regulation will be robust enough to discover this, no answer has ever been forthcoming across different threads now.

I have begun to realise that it is a sop to some people’s wish to be either ‘kind’ or their perception of agency over decisions such as this. Hence we tend to get the same arguments across the threads.

Just like no one tends to answer the questions around what happens if a surrogate decides or is forced to decide due to health to change their mind. Hence another reason why the ‘organ donation’ argument is so superficial. It would only be revelent if someone was growing a kidney inside them and that kidney was sentient being with its own rights once it left the body.

I doubt any ‘altruistic’ surrogacy would even exist if it was robustly regulated to ensure the surrogate is under absolutely no emotional pressure/manipulation. Under what conditions would any woman risk her life, her own fertility, her family and the future relationship to the ‘purchaser’ parents without some degree of emotional coercion or manipulation (from either direction ). Remembering that even with friends or family surrogacies, there is the future relationship with that child as well!

Yeah, deprive that woman of her one means of earning enough to feed her children...

You think that banning surrogacy is going to deprive a woman the money to feed her existing children? So you think it is ok to exploit women’s bodies then?

Why stop at worrying about the biology. Why not force every fertile woman with children to have a baby for the infertile? Just treat it as a parasite, maybe like a long sickness bug. It's only fair afterall. Why stop at one, why doesn't every fertile woman have a second surrogate child for medical research? Afterall what do newborns care, they don't know any better.