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.

When you are becoming pregnant yourself you are not involving your sister. You are also not in a position of authority and having to make decisions based on ethical concerns.

Surrogacy is different because it has both elements.

Your sister is risking the health of someone else - who in your case has children.

A HCP should be considering the wellbeing of all vested interest groups.

Going back to considerations of safeguarding and rights.

Concerns in order of priority:
The baby being created
The existing children of the mother
The mother
The commissioning parents

A HCP and commissioning parents should be considering the following:
What happens if the baby has trauma or disabilities?
What happens if the mother dies or suffers life changing injuries?
What happens if the relationship between the mother and her blood relatives breakdown?

A mother deciding to have more of her own children will consider some of this, and maybe decide not to have more children.

If we are serious about protecting all parties in surrogacy, we should actually protect all parties.

In a surrogacy arrangement these normal considerations inevitably are much more complex and a HCP should have an additional responsibility, because they are enabling the pregnancy, to consider the potential impacts on the existing children because of this highly complex situation.

Given we are already seeing surrogacy being used as a means to allow individuals who would be rejected for adoption, to have a baby and we are already seeing various cases of manipulation of family members we should be doing this because the central focus should be on the children - not two adult women who come to an agreement between themselves. Cos life just doesn't work like that.

You risk some pretty fucked up court cases in the future if you don't.

And yet there's no obligations for extensive counselling and considerations of this. There's this airy fairy 'and we all lived happily ever after'.

I don't believe altruistic surrogacy should be allowed anymore than commercial. I think the fall out when it goes wrong is still huge and in some ways potentially more damaging.

@eqpi4t2hbsnktd the poster meant you don't see wealthy women being a surrogate for someone. You do see wealthy women getting poorer women being a surrogate for them, as they don't want to go through pregnancy themselves.

But aside of this particular case several people just said surrogacy is vile period. They weren’t attaching that sentiment to this particular case but to all surrogacy. That’s what I’m interested in. I’ve not heard of it to be so strongly disliked before as to be considered vile period and just wonder why such strong feeling considering all conception could be considered selfish being no babies consent to being conceived or born, it just happpens to them.

Why do the wants of adults unable to have biological children trump the needs of babies? We are so fecking afraid to say the obvious these days - children NEED their biological mum and their biological dad. It’s their right and primal need. Anything less than this is not good at least and often tragic - but there’s a massive difference between unfortunate circumstances and deliberately, knowingly depriving the child of their rights. I believe future generations - as our understanding of the biological bond and the trauma of severing it increases - will look back on some of our practices like surrogacy and wonder how we could be such animals.

@OhCalmTheFuckDownMargaret a number of posters have responded to your question, including me. Do you see why we have objections to surrogacy?

Most babies stay with their birth mother. Surrogacy specifically creates a baby that will be taken from their birth mother, it is not an accident that this happens it is planned. How can that ever be seen as okay? And in most cases the child will never have a link with their birth mother.

Many instances of surrogacy should be looked at with horror in the same way Magdalene Laundries now are.

Agreed.

I have lesbian friends who considered something like this with gay friends of theirs but in the end it seemed both too complicated and too risky.

But I'd love to hear of genuinely successful, non traditional family arrangements. I'd be interested to know anyone has devised a framework?

I think it's tricky because many hetero relationships end in divorce and many are abusive towards the woman and/ or the children. So there's lots of weight behind the idea of "disrupting the traditional family" or "rejecting heteronormativity" which is fair enough.....

.....Except in this patriarchal capitalist world so often those sentiments come to mean "commodifying women" and "give me access to children". Traditional families may be far from perfect but children raised without some sort of close family are even more vulnerable to abuse.

@RedToothBrush

There’s a slippery slope to your argument though, especially from a feminist perspective.

if the rights/best interests of the prospective baby and the woman’s existing children trump her own wishes over her body-

you can apply that same logic and say it should be illegal for mothers to smoke, sky dive, have plastic surgery, give birth at home and all manner of dangerous things we don’t use the law to prevent women from choosing to do.

there is a concept in law and sociology called “dignity of risk” which means people have the right to take risks even when there can be a negative outcome.

OP, if your sister accepts your surrogacy offer then she values a child more than she values your health and your relationship.

You could die without providing the child. What will she owe your family, husband and dc then?
You could be unable to work in the future- ditto.
You could be left with lifelong continence issues.

What if you discover you need chemo part way through?
What if you fall off a ladder and lose the baby?
What if the baby has a disability?

I don’t know well a single family I could say was healthy enough to survive any of those scenarios.

I think the bit your missing there is that even if you are okay with everything and while your sister might SAY yes yes yes because she wants a baby

In reality...it might not be okay her side.

What happened in my extended family is
...the baby is born, the sister getd the baby but you are it's mother and your sister (pretty naturally imo) finds it very difficult to have you around as she wants to be the mother and her protective instincts start kicking in. Things get strained shes reactive to even mild comments you make... it escalates slowly....
Next thing you know your relationship is falling apart, you are left feeling used "for a baby" she is left feeling isolated from family / not understood.
My cousins are totally NC and we're mega close before its a tragic unintended side effect.

And OP, it might not be okay for you either. You don’t really know how you would feel once the baby is born. It’s sadly not uncommon for surrogates to not want to give up the child.

Because babies aren't commodities to be commissioned and purchased by the wealthy.

Yep, this scenario happens quite a lot too. Everything is sunshine and roses during the pregnancy and then when the baby arrives the surrogate is pushed aside so the parents can bond and they feel threatened by the biological bond the surrogate has. Or they decide that it would be ‘confusing’ for the child to know the truth of their birth and so forbid them to speak about it and minimise contact. I’ve seen many cases where surrogates end up feeling very used, even by close family, and it’s indescribably sad and disturbing.

And those are the things that make it fundamentally different from any slippery slop argument...

Nothing about this is ok, its baby shopping and cruel exploitation of both the mother and the child. A baby isn't a thing you can buy and its wrong to remove a child from its mother in this way.

There are children who have been abandoned or removed for legitimate reasons looking for adoptive parents or their are children who need foster homes if people unable to have their own children really want to be parents.

Them being gay doesn't come into it, they are a couple unable to have children naturally just like many heterosexual couples, none of that makes it ok for them to use surrogates.

@wordywitch and in all this mess is a child

That was my understanding.

Thank you.

Indescribably sad and disturbing sums it up perfectly.

It has has a profound impact on our entire (& fairly large) family.
I actually feel very sorry for the children who no doubt will have to navigate this mess at some point in time...

When that child finds out, which they 100% should are their feelings on the matter going to be respected?

If they feel that actually, they want to be with the woman who carried them will that be allowed? Would that woman want that?

None of it is about the child's wants or needs.

IMO it would always be more appropriate (as is usually the case) to criticise the people who want to commission the mother in the first place and the culture which seeks to obscure the facts of infant trauma.

Women are compelled to do quite extreme things in our patriarchal and hyper capitalist society. Who knows what is free choice and what isn't. Socialisation runs deep, coercion comes from many angles and poverty is hard.

Would our culture support people who paid a woman to drink heavily/ smoke / skydive throughout her pregnancy? (From what I've heard about maternal employment rights in the US maybe they're not far off the last one in terms of causing stress!)

I'm interested in the cultural ideas because at the moment there is a huge push to consider surrogacy "progressive". It's not coming from the libertarian angle so much.

I find it interesting to compare attitudes on surrogacy to attitudes on the puppy trade and the ivory trade. My guess would be people who self identify as progressive tend to accept that removing puppies from their mothers too young is harmful. And that a ban on the trade of all ivory is in the interests of protecting living elephants today. Why then are human mothers and babies less worthy of protection from harm?

I guess a baby isn’t a gift for you to give to a loved one. Your kidney is part of you so if you want to give part of you to someone it’s yours to give, but the baby is a whole new human being and as you can’t own a human being how can you gift a baby to a sister or a cousin? And if your family relationships don’t survive how would that child feel as they grow up? No one is entitled to a child however much they want one and however good a parent they would be.

I think it's also useful to compare it to the slave trade.

When the ethics of slavery was a hot topic and it was on the way to being abolished, people did make arguments like the slave owners gave the slaves a good life / it was good for slaves, and that it would be too hard to abolish.

They also used a load of arguments that fit in with the ethos of the day e.g. that it was god's will / in the bible / that slavery created a stable society / it was essential for some industries/ that some people are naturally inferior etc etc.

Similarly, arguments in favour of surrogacy lean into the ethos of the day - hyperindividualism and claims to be "progressive"

People can dress up the reasons for surrogacy all they like, but at the end of the day - like slavery - it is about the buying and selling of people and is hugely exploitative. Both are human rights abuses.

A friend sent me this today, very apt for this thread

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14630367/British-surrogacy-firm-exploited-women-Mexico-babies.html

@wordywitch that's the organisation I alluded to upthread. Hadn't seen this though. They are very vocal normally...

And now I’ve actually given the DM some traffic 🙈🫣

THE MEN BEHIND THE MSJ FIRM
My Surrogacy Journey was founded in 2021 by Michael and Wes Johnson-Ellis, who have two children born through surrogacy and a third surrogate ‘journey’ under way in Mexico.

Well, yes. The men. The one woman interviewed also wasn’t a surrogate but somebody who paid to create this baby.

It really shows who is centred in this whole set-up:

the men profiting financially from exploitative practices. the people paying for their baby.

but the actual babies? Or the surrogates? Nope.

Or the woman who donates the egg if different from the surrogate.