Adam Kay and his husband’s babies

[MatildaTheCat]

Apologies if this has already been covered.

I read in the paper this morning that AK and his DH have welcomed TWO babies into their lives, born to two different surrogates. One child is six months old and their sibling is two months old.

I genuinely cannot wrap my head around this. It seems so very odd to me. Is it a case of ‘one each’ or ‘get the baby stages over asap’?

Obviously nobody but the two parents can answer this but AIBU to find this really quite disturbing?

My understanding is that the normal surrogacy process involves implanting one or two embryos so I don't think what they did was unusual. I don't think this is that relevant though. I'm not a surrogacy specialist so don't know why the decisions are made to implant one or two. Guessing similar reasons to IVF.

When women have IVF for fertility issues, the decision is sometimes made to transfer more than one embryo at a time because her fertility issues mean the odds of any embryo implanting are too low. Two embryos are transferred with the hopes one will implant.

When women are pregnant for hire as gestational surrogates, they are specifically selected for their reproductive health. These are women without fertility issues, so they wouldn't need to use multiple embryos at once to have good odds of initiating a pregnancy.

Multiple embryos are being transferred because the commissioning buyers want twins .

MyNumber1Rule
There are lots of gay couples who use surrogates and they seem like amazing parents, look at Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka for example, they used a surrogate and implanted an embryo each, they have 10 yo twins now. I can't see an arguement against them doing this.

It is concerning that you present this as an example of great surrogacy. First they break the genetic link between the children and the gestational mother by using an egg donor. Then they use medical science to do something that happens extremely rarely naturally and isn’t for the benefit of the children. They implant two embryos with different fathers, just because they can.

You do know that rich people can also be tight-fisted? I suspect in this case, though, they were less motivated by the desire to save money than by the novelty factor of having twins born with different fathers.

Also a woman doing IVF for herself is taking on the risk herself out of her own choice and for her own ability to have a family. Not taking on the additional risk of twins for someone else’s benefit, because she needs money and the IPs WANT 2 babies instead of 1.

"Surrogacy is bad because of the physical risk to women through pregnancy and childbirth, which is elevated by IVF on women without fertility issues and elevated by donated eggs and the emotional and coercive issues associated with giving a baby away which are at odds with physical and mental instincts after giving birth. In the case of donated eggs a second woman is exploited for egg harvesting, which carries a risk to her health and fertility. These women are vulnerable to clients dumping them mid pregnancy or after the birth both in terms of physically leaving them holding a baby they don't want and emotionally after making promises about contact which aren't upheld"

"Surrogacy is bad because of the deliberate attempts to conceal parentage through procedure and paperwork which can lead to a lifelong feeling of something being missing in your identity. It also can produce trauma in babies because we know they are able to identify the woman who gave birth to them and get comfort from their mother. Surrogacy removes them from this situation by design. Children born with defects are more likely to be abandoned"

"Surrogacy centres the wants of rich couples or individuals over the needs of a baby and the women exploited for a baby"

Reply

"But won't someone think of the poor rich couples who are traumatised by not being able to have children and definitely wouldn't exploit women or put them at risk by preferring a twin pregnancy because it's cheaper and involves less paperwork and 'third party' involvement".

Newsflash: anyone who commissions a surrogacy is be definition perfectly happy to exploit women because by definition they are ok with exploitation. Why should we remotely believe that somehow there is then a switch triggered that this level of exploitation is bad but this level is ok? Give over. They don't care. They just want a baby and don't give two shit about anyone else involved other wise they wouldn't do it in the first place.

Then you have dismissed the exploitation of women’s bodies if you just equated a wank to the huge risks associated with egg harvesting and then carrying a child, particularly an infant who has no biological connection to her own body.

The idea that undergoing IVF followed by 9 months of pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum is equivalent to a man wanking into a cup is absolutely batshit.

'Used' - this is a human being we are talking about here. Absolutely awful. I just wish the whole thing would be banned.

Agreed. Unfortunately the government are currently consulting on potentially legalising commercial surrogacy.