Has anyone had a baby via surrogacy?

[highsexdriveonhol]

Posting for traffic as no one replied to the surrogacy area (fully aware probably the worst place to post but need answers!)

Disclaimer: this is NOT a thread about the ethics of surrogacy - please don't come here with posts about how you don't agree with surrogacy blah blah it's not what the thread is for and you'd be wasting your breath.

I'm exploring all routes of starting a family and to be honest, not convinced this route is for me but I feel only right to consider everything before drawing a line.

So I wanted to hear about positive and negative experiences of surrogacy from parents that did this to have a family.

Did it go well or not well for you, would you do it again?

Are there trauma issues for the child in your experience? Did you struggle to bond with the child?

Ideally looking for couple that used their own sperm and egg where possible.

Thanks in advance x

I suspect you are quite right though. I don’t believe that wasafool will have anything of substance to add.

The completely unworkable solution is one designed to make some people feel good about themselves. They signal their compassion for women who are infertile by not closing off the supply of infants commoditised to meet the desires of adults and the women who are needed for the service. They position it that those discussing the ethics have no compassion because of our tone. And that we relentlessly keep mentioning these ethical issues.

They signal their awareness of the desperate decisions faced by the surrogates in some instances. And signal their own actions as being thoughtful and compassionate.

However, when it comes down to it, they state that those women can remain exploitable and put at significant risk until their government and external agencies lift all women in that country out of poverty so all women can be protected. Like that is some kind of wonderful, liberal, caring solution.

I doubt many posters could come back and adequately defend the position.

That some women and children can be considered collateral while the world gets better.

That a poster has deigned that some women and children are expendable while a government and/or agencies supposedly work to improve the economy and cultural elements that keeps those women and children in poverty.

Yeah… that may be hard to defend.

However, when you pull apart the suggestion and you point out the issues and the ramifications those reading along will certainly have an idea of exactly how that impacts those women and all the children involved. Including the women’s own children who are put hugely at risk of being without a mother who can be there in their lives.

The kindness of unthinking suggestions like that one really do need as much discussion as possible. Because that compassion? It is not compassion at all in my opinion. But apparently, it is so very attractive and great PR too.

So you can't show where I said it because I didn't. Either you admit it or you are just downright lying.

Oh dear. wasafool All those questions you have missed. All that name calling. You know it could be considered abusive to call people zealots for simply pointing out legitimate ethical issues.

But you are focused on this?

You don’t seem to understand the use of language to describe analogies.

Maybe this will help.

Analogy:

a comparison between one thing and another, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification.

Eg a thing which is comparable to something else in significant respects.
"works of art were seen as an analogy for works of nature"

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=analogy&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari

I will try again because obviously I didn’t explain it very well at all.

Rocket did not say that “you” said those things. Rocket used those issues as examples of how what YOU said translates into those same issues. Therefore they were used as a linguist device.

Does that explain it better.

NO ONE SAID YOU WROTE THOSE STATEMENTS IN REALITY!

How about this though. WHY does it make you so uncomfortable to say those things?

Has it sunk in yet? That your actual statement leaves women and children open to exploitation JUST as much as prostitution and organ donation?

Yet, you are fucking horrified to be portrayed as saying those statements about prostitution and organ donation but stand by your statement about surrogacy. Do you see the incoherence and inconsistency it your thoughts?

To those following along, this dissonance is not unusual when we, as humans, recognise that there are ethical considerations for an activity yet parts of society have tried to convince us all that it is not unethical at all.

However, that this poster decided that the answer was to launch ad hom attacks is an issue. It is not unusual, many women who point out the ethical issues about surrogacy and even egg donation experience these types of attacks. Because posters understand the evidence is clear, it is absolutely unassailable and that frustrates their need to be seen as compassionate, kind and empathetic.

Because how can you profess to being compassionate (a most attractive trait so I now believe, to some people apparently) when your actions put so many women and children at risk, all the sake of being seen as compassionate….

You cannot escape the dissonance clanging loudly with this.

So, you cannot answer the questions.

I think I will give up now. You have no idea what you are actually talking about.

You seem to just don’t like women who clearly speak about issues you are uncomfortable with. And will lash out in reaction to being questioned. I would suggest MN could be challenging for you.

Thank you for your patience and hard work, Helleofabore. I hope there are lots of people reading.

Thanks Selfportrait

I know that there are still plenty of people reading. It is a very important topic to discuss and to discuss with clarity and honesty. Hence we have seen the tactics of both the OP and other posters to try to prevent the very difficult discussion from happening.

However, we know that every single time a celebrity announces their new surrogate baby, or every time a news report is honest and describes some of the very negative outcomes or the horrific situations such as what happened in Malta (a literal 'baby farm') and in the Ukraine, or baby Gammy in Thailand, that women want to know. Women are beginning to see the patterns of the reality and that it is being constantly skewed and hidden behind platitudes such as fools suggestion that on the surface seems 'reasonable' to those who have not wanted to do the hard thinking about that.

The media provides such a nice gloss on this action in so many situations. It does take some moral courage to work out why you support it or why you don't. Or just why you are so uncomfortable about some degree of exploitation of women's bodies vs others. It is the lack of that in-depth personal engagement that we are seeing with the complete lack of outward engagement by wasafool or any other supportive poster with the questions repeated over the past two pages.

But people are still reading along.

Just adding this article from today’s Times.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/604951f0-4372-11ee-8b31-3c9c533abb75?shareToken=ce104693d0efe7cf35c77b570a86d521

Covering womb transplants, organ harvesting and surrogacy.

Discussing the ethics of surrogacy and egg donation is mainstream. It is not ‘zealots’ who are discussing this no matter how people wish to portray those discussing it.

The question to ask yourself at this stage for those reading along, is where are your boundaries? And why? Why do you then find the discussion uncomfortable if blunt terms are used?

Is your ‘kindness’ just about making you feel better and not actually based on protecting women and children?

Why are some women and children exploitable if a person is desperately unhappy versus other women and children?

And why do some women allow themselves to be exploited and put themselves at significant risk? Is it lack of care about themselves and if they have children, their own children? Is it lack of detailed and explicit knowledge of the risk or the inability to believe it could happen?

No. Zealots are not the ones questioning, reading, forming boundaries and discussing them forthrightly while asking questions of those who have a different point of view.

And another woman writing about the parallel between womb transplants, infertility and the ethics around surrogacy.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/27/womb-transplants-uk-fill-me-with-foreboding?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Remarkable isn’t it? How many fucking ‘zealots’ must be out there speaking out, using the same arguments and the same words in the name of protecting women from being exploited for their bodies by anyone?

I'm coming in late to this discussion but have read the whole thread. While I have a lot to say about what I see as the unethical business of egg selling and surrogacy, I won't repeat what so many smart women have already explained. But I will share a complicated but personal story. A friend of mine hired a surrogate mother and purchased eggs from another woman. Her main motivation was to give her husband biological children. While I disagree with her choices, I think she is a very loving and good mother.

However, her daughter is now a teenager and is really, really struggling with her identity and wanting to know her egg 'donor' mom (the children have had limited contact with birth mom who was the surrogate). This poor teen girl is dealing with the stress of having three mothers: legal, bio and birth and coming to terms with how much her father may have pressured her mother into this. She is often very angry at my friend, and I can't blame her. It's not an easy thing for my friend to contemplate, but surrogacy is no longer the rosy picture she believed it to be when her children were little. Any "success" stories of surrogacy should be suspect until the children are grown adults.

Do you think the outcome would be different if thr child’s legal mother and father were also the biological parents (who may still being born via a surrogate)?

Yes. I do think it would be different. She's looking to figure out who she is and she's upset that she can't connect with her bio mother and she's angry at her parents for creating this situation. I suppose this is similar to what some adopted kids go through - however, this separation from her bio mo was done on purpose, where adoption is something done to help find a family for a child...her legal mom (my friend) supports the idea of open adoption for those reasons, but she didn't consider that her daughter would want to also know her bio mom (the egg 'donor').

My favourite thing about these threads and conversations is that no one ever talks about the children who are born into the world with knowingly bad parents or irresponsible parents who don't have a job to support their child. Children like that are often forced to grow up in an abusive or unstable household. Just because some people can get pregnant naturally it doesn't always mean they should have children. However as society we knowingly let this happen and allow children to suffer in the care system. At least with children born via surrogacy they are wanted and hopefully bought up in a loving and stable home. The other argument I see come up a lot is 'the baby longs for its ''real mother'' and will never be happy otherwise. How about the fathers which no one mentions? From the explanations on these threads a baby born from normal conception isn't supposed to notice it's farther and only it's mother. All this talk about feminism but no one ever talks about the dad taking care of the baby. If children can bond with their farther once born why can't they bond with their mother?

Because the baby doesn't grow inside the father? I'd say that was blindingly obvious.

@PurpleChrayne it also doesn't grow inside the the mother working with the surrogate to help her have a baby so what's your point?

bulbarsaurus Most of us are capable of taking about one issue without bringing in a bunch of strawman or whataboutery. Start a thread about neglectful parents or how fathers bond with babies if you want to discuss those topics. This thread is about surrogacy.

Because it's a false equivalence. One situation is a product of bad and irresponsible individuals and the other is a bad and irresponsible industry that profiteers from turning babies into products.

I'm pleased to see so many posters share my view of surrogacy being people trafficking. Some people are so naive and would probably be more outraged by unethical human hair harvesting for wigs than they would for harvesting babies from women in poverty.