Surrogacy in Mexico

[courageiscontagious]

I want LGBTQ people to have families but I am so conflicted about things like this. This article barely mentions the women that are pregnant. It also really grinds my gears when couples clearly value their own genetic ties (eg here it’s two men who by design will be the genetic parent of one child each who share the same genetic mother) but apparently don’t think their child’s genetic ties and sense of identity matter as much. They’ve chosen for their children to never know their genetic mother, and they’ve also chosen for their children to have genetic half siblings.

surely if genetic ties are important- then the children’s best interests should override the parents wishes? If you were the child in that situation wouldn’t you prefer to know your mother? And failing that, for your sibling to be a full sibling and not a half sibling?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2025/06/03/lgbtq-fertility-ivf-family-planning/83942271007/

I want to be feeling like this is good but it really rubs me the wrong way when they approach these things from an LGBTQ perspective only, glossing over the women and children in the story and what might be best for them.

this story is about how expensive it is. Should it be cheap to rent people to grow babies for you?

thats my rant, please point me to some literature that will educate me so I can get behind this and go back to being a better LGBTQ ally.

The two babies, one each, just smacks of both having to have a shiny new thing. Be it handbags or motorbikes or a human being. No one in their right mind would choose to have 2 babies a few weeks apart.

It also makes it sound like they will each have “their” child. Rather than both being parents together, and not playing top trumps over who the baby belongs to. I suppose if they split up they each keep a baby too…

I think it depends on the person there. I would happily do it and be excited for the addition to the family. We have our niece and nephews sleeping over often, we go on holiday together, they're not quite the same as my children but not far off and bring a huge amount of happiness to our lives like our own children do.

However I can see your point that in some cases it may not be the same.
But it could definitely be a positive and completely unexploited set up whereas any other surrogacy there isn't that reason of expanding your own family behind it so there's other exploitative reasons.

That’s a good question, it’s made me think.

I suppose I was thinking of the hypothetical scenario in which my sister (who has just started TTC) needed a surrogate to become a parent.

There are protective factors in my situation that would make me feel it wasn’t exploitative:

Ive completed my own family
Im financially independent
the dynamic between my sister and I - I am older so arguably our life long dynamic has given me more “power” or influence than her.

also I would know the baby was going to a good person who would love him or her, I’d still have a relationship with them and be there to answer any questions they had about themselves or their origin.

also I saw my sister with my newborns- they were so happy and settled with her - I guess we sound and smell the same - so I wouldn’t feel that initial fracture between mother and child would be horrific in the way it would be in other situations.

Children are not for sale. A woman’s body is not for sale, not for sex nor for carrying a child. Women die in pregnancy and childbirth and that risk is not for sale.

Having genetic offspring is not a right you can have with someone else having all the risks. Surrogacy is exploitative in the extreme.

If you still don’t understand why, ask around amongst your friends, who would carry a baby for someone else. Almost all of us would say no because pregnancy and birth isn’t a great deal of fun and frolics and for almost all of us there’s not enough money that could convince us to do it for someone else. Ask yourself why people have to travel to
Mexico to find someone poor enough to agree to do it.

The wishes of those with fertility problems do not trump the rights of impoverished women

I disagree.

men often don’t parent “instinctively” because it’s socialised out of them. They leave the women’s work to the women.

however I don’t think men need training or teaching to parent any more than women do. I know many men that are excellent, natural parents. Dh is way better with babies than I am. I remember going to baby clinic with him though and everyone being stunned when he had dc stripped, weighed and redressed, without any input from me. It’s not that men can’t, it’s just they sit and let the woman lead, because like you they think it’s some mystical ability.

there’s a single man often in the press who Foster’s disabled and end of life children and does a wonderful job.

so no, I would not have a problem with gay men or straight men adopting, fostering, or bring up children.

surrogacy, however, should be banned.

I'm going to ask a question: What do poor gay men do?

This is the problem at the heart of surrogacy. It is something that is only available to rich people. Even 'altruistic' surrogacy is expensive because of legal fees and fertility treatment.

Celebrities are only ever the beneficiaries of surrogacy. Name A single A lister who gave up her career for a year and risked her body, her life and future work in order to help someone else have a baby.

The point is the Trojan Horse syndrome.

We have been told by very affluent and influential individuals who want to buy a baby that we should support them otherwise we are homophobic. This is coercive.

It makes us stop questioning. This makes us blind to moral and ethical questions around surrogacy. Find 'altruistic' surrogacy every bit as bad as commercial surrogacy because it RELIES on coercive arguments and emotional blackmail and pretends there's an equal balance of power between all parties. Inevitably the woman involved is being manipulated and is vulnerable by default and design.

Poor gay couples don't have biological children. It's that simple. They can't afford to. You don't see celebrities lobbying for free access to surrogates either. Can you imagine that in the US?! Even in the UK with the NHS, when heterosexual fertility treatment is not available universally, the subject is very much off limits to serious campaigns on this because it draws too much attention to a debate over the subject and the moral arguments.

So far from it being a 'right' to have children, it's all about trying to pull the wool over enough people's eyes to justify buying a baby and to stop it damaging the reputation of rich people. Indeed using gay people to hide behind, also legitimises it for heterosexual rich people who then go 'look how progressive I am in supporting gay people'.

It's a form of human slavery. It's human trafficking. It's just that rich people have given it a good PR job.

Don't be fooled. It's got nothing to do with gay rights. It's got everything to do with ultra capitalism where, if you are rich enough, the rules don't apply to you in the same way as everyone else.

Adoption isn't quite the same as having your own child in terms of the likely parenting experience. The child is often (not always, but often) going to have developmental or trauma related struggles.
When a couple who can have biological children choose adoption because they want to support and raise a child who has had a tough start to life it's likely to be a much better outcome than a couple (or person) deciding to adopt because its the only way they can have a child.
They won't necessarily be as emotionally suited to raising a child with complex needs as someone who wants to adopt, as they haven't gone into it for the same reason, it's just their only way to have a child.

I know just the organisation you’re talking about and they are horrid. They promote surrogacy in Mexico where, by the way, over 95% of surrogates are forced/coerced to have elective caesarean sections so that the baby can be removed on a date convenient for the (usually gay male) couple and there is less chance of the surrogate bonding through the process of labour. They are then sent home with very little aftercare, often having to take long bus journeys 1-2 days after major surgery to return home. The surrogates sometimes end up with ongoing blood pressure problems too, because the eggs are usually from a white European donor (the men don’t want brown babies, ew) and they are more likely to develop preeclampsia towards the end of the pregnancy. No one explains that risk to women in my experience of the industry.

This particular organisation also has a ‘concierge package’ for the intended parents that includes a stay at a luxury hotel and a VIB (very important baby) service where the baby is delivered to them from the hospital in a designer cot. I wish I was kidding but I’m not.

I used to be okay with surrogacy, then I did some work with these orgs and ‘charities’ and changed my views completely. It’s vulgar exploitation and selfishness through and through.

I really didn’t understand this until I had children. My children were my children long before they were born. Losing my child at birth would have been heartbreaking. I didn’t really get that before I’d experienced it. The child can’t consent but I also think it’s very difficult/ immoral to secure the advance consent of the mother.

Agree, several celebs have used surrogates, and been pro surrogacy sometimes for pretty spurious reasons but funnily enough none has ever been so pro surrogacy they've offered to do it for one of their rich friends!
The effects of pregnancy for a woman don't just last the 9 months you are pregnant- even in textbook healthy pregnancies....in the same way the connection between a baby and mother doesn't immediately stop the moment it is born.

At least the gay couples are physically incapable of carrying their own child. I judge the women who use surrogates as they don't want the effects of pregnancy on their own bodies even more. For example the ones who have had previous complications

I agree that men can be great parents. If a man’s wife dies in childbirth we don’t expect him to give the baby up do we? I also know/know of gay couples who have adopted. Pete Buttigieg and his husband in the US, Nigel Owens and his husband here, and a gay couple of my acquaintance.

@RedToothBrush
🎯

your post should be automatically put on all discussions about surrogacy.

This is very much the case on my view regarding adoption. Having as mentioned worked with children who have developmental difficulties /trauma prospective parents need to really understand and be committed to providing for a child who will likely have some level of need.
Thanks for your suggestion to "butt out" on reflection, i think I would encourage conversation, my sons boyfriend also has an aunt who fosters and appears very aware of the challenges of the foster child, so I would encourage certainly my son to find out more about children with additional needs that way. I think discussion around surrogacy when and if the subject is brought up could be to help them think carefully of the implications for children and the birth mother, without necessarily bringing up my own views on surrogacy.

I agree the best reason to adopt is because you want to adopt a child, not because you can’t have one of your own.

It is intentionally commissioning trauma (separation from their mother) to be inflicted on the most vulnerable humans (newborns).

Psychologists have studied infants and babies in utero for DECADES. As a culture we should know this practice is abhorrent. Many women feel it's abhorrent but the good old patriarchy has created euphemisms to obfuscate facts and social coercion to shame us to shut up or we're HOMOPHOBIC.

What an insult to imply all gay people would intentionally commission trauma.

If you were close to anyone adopted v v young you would know that they carry the effects of that early traumatic separation for life. But adoption makes the best out of a trauma that has already happened. Surrogacy pays to bring the child into the world with the intention of inflicting that trauma. That is FUCKED UP.

And that is before you even consider the women (usually disadvantaged) whose bodies are used.

All has shades of Never Let Me Go.

This will come back to bite them one day, when these children want to find their birth Mother. Suddenly everyone is pretending attachment trauma doesn't exist. These babies don't know that they exist to validate men. They will just be missing their Mother.

Being an LGBT ally does not mean agreeing with everything the LGBT ‘community ‘ (whatever that is) approves of. It means seeing LGBT people as equal citizens to heterosexuals, as adults with rights, responsibilities and agency. It means being able to freely object when they do something reprehensible and not being afraid to criticise. It also means understanding that that not all LGBT people believe the same thing. There are plenty of lesbians who oppose surrogacy, just are there plenty of gay men who support it. Which part of the LGBT community do you want to ally with over this issue?

LGBT people are EQUALLY able to act in a way which is exploitative, abusive or coercive.

For this reason we should treat them EQUALLY and not treat them as is they are incapable of such acts. Doing so creates sacred castes who then are identified by exploiters as a way to exploit.

Surrogacy is something rich people do to poor or vulnerable people. It's not 'a gay thing'. See this and the whole 'but what about gay thing starts to evaporate'.

Then you look at safeguarding. Safeguarding ALWAYS put the child front and centre. Then it puts vulnerable adults next. Then the rights of others adults are considered. In that order. Even for matters relating to human rights.

There is no room for 'what about the gays' in this. The child comes first.
If removing a child from it's biological mother causes trauma to the child that comes first.
If giving birth to a child and then giving it away to a third party causes physical and emotional distress or trauma to a mother or allows them to be financially exploited that comes as a secondary consideration and should always be stopped.

The 'what about the gays' comes AFTER the considerations of the first two parties. Anyone who goes straight to 'its homophobic' doesn't understand human rights and human rights law.

This is a slam dunk in terms of whether surrogacy should be legal or not. The trouble is precisely who benefits from surrogacy and who has the greatest lobbying power and has forced it's legalisation.

And that's rich powerful people who hide behind false progressiveness.

This is regressive human slavery to commodify having biological children and to repress the rights of women and children as mere products or incubators. They are their to serve the desires of the rich and powerful adult.

What about sibling surrogacy? Genuine question. Not being combative. Just wondering if you hold that sibling or other close bond surrogacy is vile and why if it is offered with genuine love and not for profit

Correct me if I misunderstand but I thought surrogacy was usually not using the surrogates eggs. So the ‘birth mother’ in this case is not the same as a birth mother in the traditional sense of the person giving birth also being the biological mother.

As was said upthread there can be massive pressure within families for a sibling to carry for a sibling that can’t. And what if the sibling agreed and then suffered life threatening complications, or serious birth injuries?

I would like to know the stats on reasons for using a surrogate. I doubt this exists anywhere but I’d be interested in knowing what % choose surrogacy due to inability to carry vs because they don’t want to carry

Sometimes the birth mother is also the genetic mother (straight surrogacy), sometimes not (donor surrogacy).