To tell you the Scottish Govt are targeting 18 year old girls for egg harvesting

[VestaTilley]

Yes, really.

Surrogacy Concern broke the news on Friday night. I can’t actually believe it.

Over a month to come, the Scottish Govt are asking for egg and sperm donors as young as 18 to come forward in a series of targeted ads on social media and the radio. They’ve expanded IVF provision and - in their own words - have a supply and demand issue.

I’d heard of fertility clinics advertising (bad enough in my view) but for a national Govt to do this to women is staggering. Women can die from complications arising from OHSS, which can be caused by egg donation. A British woman died in 2006 as a result.

The ads don’t mention these risks; it’s all “be kind” “do something amazing”. I cannot actually believe a Govt could be this stupid. They’ve only just apologised for forced adoption!

AIBU?

Infertility has a devastating impact on mental health. Your callousness is astonishing.

I don't need to appeal to emotion or anything else. I can access donor egg treatment whenever I like. That's not going to change. Do you really think it is?

Where I live surrogacy is illegal. Women simply travel abroad. Like so many women travel to my country from the UK to evade various restrictions at UK clinics. You can't control women's reproductive systems. A determined woman will always find a way.

*That obviously should read women have orgasms.

What have orgasms got to do with the price of fish?

Look at the quote I was responding to.

I can access donor egg treatment whenever I like

Yes you're selfish and arrogant and care nothing for the women you'll exploit to get what you want, we get it.

Sorry, scrolled back.

I'm not exploiting anyone. You clearly know nothing about the process.

By your own reasoning, children are being stolen. It's called surrogacy.

I agree the primary bond is between the baby and the mother, i.e. the one whose body grows it, the one who gave birth. But strangely, when couples commission a baby through surrogacy, they think the genetic link outweighs the gestational link.

When they buy eggs to use for IVF personally, they think the gestational link outweighs the genetic link.

I'm not sure how the babies are supposed to know which they're being expected to value more, the genetic link or the gestational link. I suppose newborn babies are presumably expected to instinctively sense which parties in the equation have the money to pay another woman and bond with the richer one.

Babies love the person who nurtures them after they are born. They don't know who's womb they've come out if. They don't know what a womb is.

I don't think my baby and I will have a greater bond because I've given birth than if I'd used a surrogate, or adopted. It's just that in my case, me carrying makes the most sense.

I was simply pointing out that no 'child stealing' is involved.

Incidentally I have no way of knowing if I'll be richer or poorer than my egg donor, but as I'm quite poor, I would not assume for second that I'll be the wealthier one.

So you're backtracking. Noted.

Err, no. In the case of egg donation, the biological mother is the one who gives birth. In the case of surrogacy, the biological mother is the one who gives birth. In both cases, what matters is who nurtures and raises the child to adulthood.

Biology is irrelevant.

Babies learn their mother's voice in the womb. They live with the rhythm of their mother's heart and her smell, and instinctively turn towards their mother when they hear her voice, from birth.

Carrying a baby is very much the start of the bonding process between mother and baby.

So it's all about the adults. The child's psychological and emotional relationship with the woman who gave birth is to be flicked on and off, according to which direction the money is going in.

It's a pity no-one can tell the baby beforehand, isn't it?

What a load of sentimental nonsense.

Sure, babies initially recognise the biological mother's voice, but that doesn't mean anything long term.

Babies need loving parents. That's all. Who carries them is irrelevant.

However by your logic, the biological mother is the 'real' mother and therefore egg donation cannot be 'baby stealing ' right?

Babies bond, attach and form relationships to the people who care for them. They don't have long term memories.

😂😂

Are you suggesting otherwise?

You may find once you have a baby that the feelings between a mother and baby are indeed very strong. You could call that 'sentimental' or you could recognise it as the strongest and most intense instinct humans have.

But I think sometimes Rumsfeld's 'unknown unknowns' come into play, here. Before I'd had a baby I recall I was very dismissive of some things that mothers told me. Strangely, with all my theories, I thought that I somehow knew better than women who had actually been pregnant, birthed and cared for babies.

Of course. Because only a real, womanly woman who has naturally concieved and given birth to her own genetic child as nature apparently 'intended' (nature intends nothing) can understand true parental love.

Are you seriously suggesting that when families are formed by adoption or surrogacy, the love between parents and their children is somehow substandard?

This whole way of thinking is so medieval.

Apologies. I shouldn’t have laughed.

I was just taken aback that anyone thinks babies don’t have long term memories.

I expect it was typed in haste and perhaps wasn’t quite what you meant. In which case, apologies for the reaction.

Are you seriously suggesting that when families are formed by adoption or surrogacy, the love between parents and their children is somehow substandard?

You don't have a clue. And you don't even realise that you don't have a clue. There is no point even discussing it further with you.

What is your experience of adoption?

I have adopted people within my family, and people romanticise it a lot. It is a difficult processs and not everyone has the capacity for it.

Are you aware that adoption placements break down? IIRC, about 3% of placements break down, and that is of the parents that made it through to adopt. They don't let any random well-presented couple just take a baby any more, because of the child abuse rates that it enabled. These days, applicants to adopt have to make it through an intensive screening process. And yet placements still don't work out.

We're straying from the OP's pointing out that young childless women are being encouraged to donate eggs - clearly a bad idea as anybody who's been through IVF can testify to the effects the process has on the body - to a discussion about the use of donor eggs and surrogacy. Fair enough, these things are connected, but can we also feed into the matrix that many women who are going through IVF for themselves end up having more eggs harvested and even fertilised than they can use. Some of those women choose to donate their eggs and even embryos to other women.

To declare a personal interest, I have two beautiful DGDDs that are genetically unrelated to anybody in our family because both my DD and her DH had fertility issues. However those eggs were donated by someone who had completed her family. A previous (failed) IVF attempt involved a donor embryo. IMHO my DD who carried and birthed her babies and is raising them beautifully is their mother.

No, you are pontificating that the love that you have for your children is greater than the love that other people have for their children, based on nothing but a load of biological essentialism and pseudoscience.

It's bullshit, and incredibly offensive, but then you're proud of that.