Friends surrogacy

[Fatcat00]

Not a particularly close friend, but friend enough for me to be invited to social events etc. has recently told me she is having a baby due in April, I was shocked and congratulated her, she then says “surrogate… obviously”. I was a bit lost for words.

for context friend has recently divorced, they had been trying for a baby for 5 years, had IVF etc. I furthered the conversation and asked if it was her egg. Her response was “nah, I’m not bothered if it’s not my biological baby.. I just want a baby”. Followed by “I can’t be assed putting hormones into my body for the sake of my own egg”. I am just so shocked and speechless, I don’t agree with surrogacy for a number of reasons. Some of them being I don’t agree with the hiring of a woman’s body. I don’t agree with a baby being ripped away from its mother to suit someone else’s needs and the physical and psychological implications to both baby and mother as such. Why not just adopt?? If you don’t care for the child to be your biological anyway, why not adopt a baby who needs a parent?

it’s kind of made me look at her in a different light. She seemed very flippant about it (I’m aware this is just how she has came across I’m sure it’s a lengthy and draining process). She says she was put in touch with this woman through a friend who had used her.

essentially, this surrogate has just got pregnant for the purpose of handing over the baby to someone else in exchange for cash. I think I’d still be a bit 🤔 even if it was her own egg if truth be told.

I just can’t get my head around it. Am I being a bit of a bigot? Aibu to want to distance myself a bit? I don’t like feeling as though someone’s path to parenthood or happiness is “wrong” but it really doesn’t sit right with me and I’m not entirely sure why.

I would personally never consider surrogacy but I know a women who has recently been a surrogate for a couple that she knows and has said she'd happily do it again if the couple wanted a second. She's a professional and independent women with two grown up children of her own. She wanted to help this couple and feels great about what she's done for them.

Maybe your friend was being flippant because she didn't want a deep conversation about her private decisions.

Maybe she didn't want to take the hormones because of her experience with IVF - I've had it and had hyper stimulation leading to me having to have all of my follicles drained. That wasn't fun. The whole process of IVF for me ( four rounds and one miscarriage) was bloody awful and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

In the end I "just adopted" as you put it and although I have two amazing kids it has not been a walk in the park! You really should never say "just adopt" to anyone struggling with infertility l.

If you can't be friends with her now then that's your decision. You are entitled to your views but she's also entitled to do whatever she can to become a mother provided it's done within the law.

I’m not being obtuse- I’m just not living in bizarro fairy land where the op’s friend is automatically the mother of a baby she paid for, despite having no genetic or other legal claim to it.

The reality is she will have to apply for adoption, justify her position and why she thinks this baby should be hers, and prove she is fit to be a parent, just like all other adoptive parents!

Babies are not handed out like sweeties to people just because they really really really want them, or because the birth mother says it’s ok or because money changed hands.

We judge because privileged peoples' desire to buy a baby leads to poor, vulnerable and often abused women being locked up in baby factories around the world.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/23/ukraine-surrogates-fertility-00104913

Surrogacy isn't just something a pal does for someone else put of the goodness of their heart.

And no one seems to think about the babies, taken from the women who carried them and whose body and smell is all they've every known. I think that every adopted person I know — all adopted by nice families, none with traumatic tales to tell — has had periods of serious distress about being adopted, not belonging, wanting to know their birth family and so on. They've been able to trace their birth mothers (and sometimes uncovered some very distressing and difficult things on that front). Imagine growing up knowing that your birth mother had you for money and handed you over to a stranger...

Your opinions on this subject are , in my view, wild, out of touch and ignorant (and deeply unpleasant/ offensive). So, yes, I say someone else’s reproductive choices are none of your goddam business. (That goes for the choices of OP’s friend and her surrogate/ gamete donor(s)). You sound like the kind of person who’d be harassing women outside abortion clinics, in the name of “baby murdering is everyone’s business!”

So why is it always either:

a) very poor women
b) women who aren’t poor like in India but are just coping and “could do with the money”

and never

c) rich women with loads of time and money who want to do a nice thing for a financially destitute infertile woman?

The “unique” circumstances shouldn’t matter. The framework of the law should assume exploitation of poor women being forced into it through desperation or coercion and work from there. Not assume women are doing it “freely” and through an amazing sense of altruism.

Because if you assume the latter the former will get missed. If you assume the former the latter will be protected too.

You know full well that adoption is an entirely different process.

Stop talking rubbish. Buying a baby from abroad in order to avoid the checks on adoptive parents in the UK is human trafficking (literally the buying, selling and transporting of humans)- and something no one with an ounce of moral feeling would do. Would it be ok if it was a 5 year old child? Or a 15 year old? No. Human beings are not there to be bought and sold.

No, your way leads to women's misery and people trafficking. And those of us who are speaking out against surrogacy are feminists and the women who fight to keep abortion clinics open.

It's everyone's business when women and babies are being used and abused, traded like trainers or laptops or puppies.

A newborn baby who she’s been bonding with throughout pregnancy, where she knows the exact history and can bond with straight from birth is obviously not going to have the same trauma as an adopted child, whether you agree with it or not. You adopt a child because you want to adopt a child, which is not the same as wanting a baby.

This woman has probably heard it all and is sick of it so that’s probably why she was so flippant. Maybe get to know the situation a bit more before you assume she’s an evil baby snatcher?

Have you not considered that perhaps she doesn't have any eggs to donate or there may be a problem with her eggs? Her flippant response sounds like one of someone who had been through a lot of trauma surrounding this, and has come to terms with the idea of not having her own biological child. She certainly will have considered adoption and had her own reasons for deciding against that. I imagine she is very concerned about judgement from all sorts of people and has decided that the best way to deal with it is just to act like it's all no big deal. She certainly doesn't need to start justifying and explaining herself every 5 minutes!

Quite right.

I want a baby doesn’t mean you get one- it’s terribly sad for people (I’ve had failed ivf myself), but it doesn’t trump other people’s human rights.

Wtf?? Being anti surrogacy does not mean being pro life?

YABU

Its none of your business and I think it’s pretty shitty of you to judge her so much without knowing the full details.

There have been surrogates on here that have explained they’re not forced into it or exploited in anyway.

If she was exploiting someone, then you could be outraged at that but you sound like you don’t even know why you are outraged.

I’m probably not allowed my ivf baby either am I? She did cost a lot! 🤣

She’s tried IVF for 5 years she may have sounded un bothered but this has already been a massive journey. now and at this stage she just wants the baby! I think maybe a little more compassion for her journey! This is obviously her last opportunity and she’s possibly downplaying it for people who ask intrusive questions.

This is quite different from adoption — and you know it.

I’m part of an American group and there are loads of surrogates on there. I think they’d be pretty surprised and angered to be compared with vulnerable women used as baby makers. If you want it banned, it will fall to vulnerable women again. Like with abortion. You might not like it but it will happen.

What a ridiculous thing to say. No one was hurt or trafficked or exploited in your process.

OP, I’m not sure what the point is of your thread. Going by your responses, you have clearly made up your mind already. As you are well aware, all the objections have been made before and there is nothing new to say on the subject. As far as I can see, you have a boring day ahead of you and so you are putting some Clickbait out there.

As you have said, this isn’t even a close friend of yours so there is nothing that you need to do and your friend doesn’t even need you. Well done to all those who have spoken up and said it is none of your business.

There are many cases of this. Women dying, suffering serious illness, PND/psychosis.

There was also an example of a surrogacy contract in California where it was determined that should the pregnant woman suffer an injury or catastrophic event that rendered her in a vegetative state, the intended parents would get to decide if life support was withdrawn, in case it was possible to get the fetus to viability, not the woman’s own family.

There exists no legal framework in which all three parties - the mother, intended parents and baby - can have their rights protected. Someone’s rights have to be sacrificed in order for surrogacy to “work”. It’s hit and hope. There are no successful surrogacy cases. Because even IF the woman gets through the pregnancy without mishap, and even IF the birth goes safely, and even IF the mother and intended parents get on and transfer ownership of the baby successfully with no postnatal issues, you still can’t be sure that the baby will not grow up and feel trauma from the separation, which could take decades.

OP said she’s been trying for a baby for five years. Not that she’s been having IVF for five years.

1. as I said, I’ve had ivf.

2. you paid a regulated medical clinic for clinical work, not a women for the rent of her uterus.

3. you gave birth to your child, therefor legally are it’s mother even if you used donated eggs.

4. you did not break the law.

5. you did not traffic a human being from one country to another in order to bypass the necessary safeguards that try to keep children safe.

So why do you think your situation is in anyway comparable?

Nobody has said they are, or that she’s automatically the parent. You said she won’t become a mother - but assuming she’s legally successful she will. Just because you don’t like the method doesn’t change that. The rest of it is just arguing the same point that nobody is disagreeing with for the sake of being obtuse. Glad we’ve cleared that up!

If you want it banned, it will fall to vulnerable women again. Like with abortion. You might not like it but it will happen.

Your meaning isn't clear. Are you suggesting that having babies to sell is a valid and acceptable way for vulnerable women to make a living and that they will suffer if, like abortion in the US, it's banned?

Do you stop for a moment and think about the children, sold to whoever has the money to pay for them? It's a human rights issue. The human rights of the children.

Do you also agree with people owning pets? I know it's not the same thing... and yet it kind of is in this instance, isn't it? Like buying a puppy. Only that's way worse, because you're taking an animal away from its animal family and making it live with humans instead!