Ukraine surrogacy "trade"

[Douberry]

news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-surrogate-trade-exposed-as-pandemic-leaves-51-babies-stranded-in-kiev-hotel-11988587

I'm sorry but this has made me want to weep. Such a bad situation on so many levels. I really welcome anyone to challenge the notion that commercial surrogacy is truly abhorrent

This is fucking unconscionable. It has to stop. Unbearable for those poor babies.

*It reminds me of the Romanian orphanages back in the day.

People would go over and 'pick a child' as if they were going to the puppy pound. *

Hardly the same thing. The adoptive parents didn't commission someone to create the child, and the only alternative for the child was to stay in the orphanage and never experience family love.

Advocates of surrogacy like to make the comparison with adoption, but it really is a different situation.

This clip was almost unwatchable, it was so sad. The Swedish couple 'getting' their twins. Surrogacy is illegal in Sweden.
Awful, awful trade, and that's what it is, a trade in humans. With unmeasured long term consequences for the babies.

I can't remember who made the film, maybe it was Anneka Rice, but there was a programme about someone (I think she's a journalist now) who helped in a Romanian orphanage for a while when she was 18. She formed a particular attachment with one little girl and for many years wondered how she was.
She went back and traced her. It was heartbreaking. The emotional and social deprivation, the lack of any physical stimulation had left this child with huge problems, both physically and mentally. Her development just never happened.

Some of these babies must be about three months old now - if they don't get picked up soon the nursery is going to have to do more than change nappies and give them a bottle.....

Agree that some of these babies will never be collected.

Absolutely despicable - infertility must be a horrific affliction but I hope the people who've paid less than the minimum wage (£14k for 9 months work) to poor Ukrainian women are utterly ashamed of themselves. Any pursuit to have "their" baby.

As an aside does it bother anyone else in the whole surrogacy saga that people "want a baby so badly" - they never seem to want a stroppy 6yo or grumpy teenager do they? It's all about the cute tiny baby without much thought of the long term.

That photo of the nurse holding up a baby to be Zoomed just made me think of those TV shopping channels where someone is showing off the merchandise they want people to buy, like we have it in a variety of finishes and perhaps it can be customized as shown by the rows of other "stored" babies in cots. It was just like, do people not notice that this is basically the plot of a dystopian novel?

It reminded me of QVC too Kittens

It concurred to me that they said 46 babies in one baby room at one hotel, with 4 serving in one day. There are obviously more pregnant surrogate mothers in the Ukraine as we speak, who could be adding to the newborn numbers in coming days.

That room looked pretty full to me. At any time the commissioning parents could get into the Ukraine or could already be there in quarantine - but suppose some of the CPs have Covid and develop symptoms in quarantine. Their baby could be there for a couple of months. Even if one parent could leave they would need to quarantine again.

I'm also keen to know if any of the surrogate mothers tried to keep hold of their baby knowing where they would end up, if maternal instinct took over or if they remained detached and simply upped and left (assuming they had recovered from the birth).

Indeed one of those 46 babies may have been born with Covid....

Am I being dramatic? It's possible.

I can't stop thinking about them and the screaming.

Oh god just the comments on this thread are making me want to cry.

It's pretty tragic Chatty

Once you see it you can't unsee it.

I hope the UK Law Commissioners are watching...

I think it’s quite clear now that international surrogacy will have to be banned. It’s completely immoral.

As an aside does it bother anyone else in the whole surrogacy saga that people "want a baby so badly" - they never seem to want a stroppy 6yo or grumpy teenager do they? It's all about the cute tiny baby without much thought of the long term.

I'm opposed to commercial and especially to international surrogacy, but I think that's an unfair comment - most people talk about wanting 'a baby' to mean having a child, and I don't think that's any more common among the infertile than the fertile. The people I know who have been most inclined to just wanting a little cute baby and being surprised that they have to have an actual child not a doll have all conceived their children with great ease.

In general, I wish these threads wouldn't tend towards downplaying the heartbreak and consequences of infertility - it's perfectly possible to oppose surrogacy without saying that people are being entitled or selfish to deeply want a biological child. We make a moral case for why selling organs is wrong and should be prohibited that doesn't include 'is it even really a big deal to have an organ fail, anyway?'.

Jesus Christ. I watched the video. That is horrific for any baby just for a very short time, let alone for months on end.
No primary carer at all, left lying on their backs in an overly-bright noisy roomful of other babies also being left to cry, no comfort, no stimulation, a constant parade of different ‘babysitters’, I can’t bear to think of their utter distress.

This reminds me of those agonising recordings of detained children crying for their parents after ‘family separation’ by Trump at the US border. Rightly, that became an international news issue and international diplomatic incident. This situation also, is just unbelievably cruel to children.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3619916-Children-in-detention-camps-in-the-US

The babies will have lifelong attachment and behaviour problems. I agree that this lays bare the facts of this human transaction. The law should stop it.

Its just horrific.

I'm also wondering how many of the 'buyers' are going to feel cheated of their newborn baby experience that they've been dreaming of for 9 months.
Will they all take their babies? My heart says if course not, but it's not as if babies haven't been rejected for perceived defects before.

I've said it before & been scorned on MN, but human beings should never be for sale.

Omg baby farming

Selling children that’s all it is

ITV covered it too.

No mention of the surrogate mothers but 'new parents' and 'surrogate parents' (meaning commissioning parents) get a mention.

BioTexCom man suggests numbers could double.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=BgPPOaNhPKk

I've got to send another complaint letter haven't I?

Heartbreaking.

There can be no justification for this, at all.

It's a terrible news report @OhHolyJesus - totally incurious - oh those poor parents who can't get to their babies, how awful for them!!! Really shocking idiocy. Shame on Juliet Bremner.

It reminds me of the Romanian orphanages back in the day

People would go over and 'pick a child' as if they were going to the puppy pound

Other than the scene of the room with multiple cots and crying babies this is nothing like the Romanian orphanages and your comment is unfair to the people who adopted them.

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2002/jul/31/familyandrelationships.features101

"Despite healthy baby (and unharmed surrogate) surrogacy experience ‘ruined’ for Israeli couple..."

This is unfair. Right now there are multiple threads going on of women complaining their pregnancy experiences are being ruined by their partners not being allowed at scans. Or their birthing experience being ruined by their partner having to wear a mask and thus not seeing the emotion on their face as the baby comes out. All despite having a healthy baby at the end. People are allowed to complain that things have gone wrong for them or didn't happen how they expected even if the outcome was still good and happy.

"I'm sure the children who were disabled, had emotional issues (although in those situations, I'm sure most would) or those 'not cute' or 'too old' were left behind. So really for the benefit of the adults and not the child.

Maybe I am being unfair."

Yes you are being unfair. Plenty of people abort babies who show up with disabilities on the anomaly scan for a host of reasons. Sometimes because they don't feel they can cope with a disability, sometimes because they just don't want a disabled child. I'm the situation you describe a child is getting a home. And the people giving that child a home are taking the one they feel they can best provide for. Maybe these people adopting feel they wouldn't be able to cope with a disabled child on top of everything else they have going on in their life, they are still adopting and giving a child a home. Or in this case should no child be adopted because some won't be? And then none of these orphans will have a home or loving parents. In an ideal world obviously all the children would be adopted but we don't live in an ideal world so we go for the most ideal situation possible, which is Atleast some of the children being adopted.

A close friend of mine has adopted a 6 month old, the baby was likely to removed from the mother at birth but the entire process of adoption took 6 months.

They wanted a baby they didn’t care he wasn’t a newborn - if you go with surrogacy your very specifically wanting that newborn stage as well so I absolutely agree a lot of these babies won’t be ‘collected’

@louhotel

Not necessarily. Some people go down the surrogacy you're because they want a baby that is biologically 'theirs'. Or because adoption is a long painful process and plenty of times they can fall through which is an even more painful thing. Or a plethora of other reasons. Not 'just' because they want a newborn.

Please consider signing up for the Stop Surrogacy Now campaign, I won't link but it's easy to find

Signed it.

This is an interesting article by 1 of the 100 founding signatories.

www.cbc-network.org/2019/06/gay-lesbian-equality-movement-must-oppose-surrogacy/

it's just so heartbreaking

that guardian article really pissed me off - i notice they weren't talking to impoverished women in ukraine or georgia. still fucked up even if they are american women and presumably from the article doing ok. but like, you know what i mean. about how it looks.

"We want to avoid the possibility of the surrogate bonding with the child.” - grim. just grim