Liz Kendall, baby by surrogacy

[womanity]

www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/24/labour-liz-kendall-having-baby-surrogacy

I love Liz. Disappointed she’s chosen to rent a womb and buy a baby.

Interesting that she works for the very department that will be proposing law reform.

(I had a friend who worked in HR once, she wrote the new adoption leave policy at the time she was adopting. Clever.)

Does she? Oh.

Well. That’s going to make opposing it harder.

I’m surprised no-one else has commented. Usually surrogacy is a hot topic round here.

I saw a headline about expecting a baby but didn't spot it was surrogacy- vaguely thought "isn't she a bit old to be pregnant"?

Answer - yes. She's 50.

I didn't know Oona King had also done this.

I don't support surrogacy and this hasn't changed my mind.

I had to Google Oona King tbh.

Gutted that this will further "normalise" surrogacy especially to those that write the law.

Why isn't she adopting an older child? Or getting a cat/dog?

Having a baby at 50 isn't fair on the baby, she'll be retiring when it is in secondary school.

I honestly don't have time for any 50 year old renting out another woman's body for anything.
And even less time for anyone who deliberately sets out to remove a child from their birth mother.
I did this as a social worker and it is hard enough when there is a clear safeguarding reason.
It is shockingly self centered to set up a situation where this is done deliberately.

But I would like to say that adoption and fostering needs to be done for child not the would be parent.
The criteria is strict for both.

www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/i-just-knew-oona-and-tiberio-would-be-great-parents-9071792.html

Article about Oona King's surrogacy. She and her husband did adopt 3 children and then went for a 4th by surrogacy.

I don't really understand the driving force that the child should be biologically theirs. I understand the driving force of wanting to be pregnant and experiencing carrying a child but without that physical experience the genetic aspect seems irrelevant.

I do wonder what the 3 adopted children felt about this.

Oh and whilst obviously paying a surrogate in the UK is not legal the young woman who bore the baby is a million miles from the vastly privileged world of King and King's husband.

@Waferbiscuit

Grim.

The liberal in me feels I should be pro surrogacy but the feminist in me knows it is wrong.

More rich white people finding a way to get what they want by exploiting those who need money. No and no. Just because technology makes it possible, doesn't meant it is right.

As others have said adopt or foster.

It's not limited to white people. Kendall is following in the footsteps of Oona King.

I did adopt as it happens, so I’m very aware of what it’s like to be staring down the barrel of infertility and involuntary childlessness, but that didn’t make me blind to the exploitative nature of surrogacy.

(And that’s before I even think about the baby being commissioned to be removed from its mother - to my shame, I only really saw the horror of that once I was raising children who’d been removed from their mother… )

Surrogacy is exploitative and I wonder how the DCs feel when they grow up and learn about it.

I honestly don't have time for any 50 year old renting out another woman's body for anything.

I do really feel for infertile people on an individual level, and often feel sympathetic to those who use surrogates, despite not actually agreeing with it. But when you're 50 years old I'm afraid my sympathy runs out. This isn't infertility, it's being no longer in your reproductive years. I don't know how long she has been trying for a baby, but presumably if it was that important to her she could have explored baby-having a decade ago or more, even if she was single at the time. At 50 this is just selfish.

I don't really understand the driving force that the child should be biologically theirs. I understand the driving force of wanting to be pregnant and experiencing carrying a child but without that physical experience the genetic aspect seems irrelevant.

I find this comment quite odd. Fathers don't carry their children within their bodies, but most still find meaning in biologically related to their children.

I'm not defending her choice, particularly, for other reasons. I can understand her reasons for doing so, though. I would want my child to be genetically related to me.

The egg quality of a 50 year old is unlikely, I think, to result in a pregnancy, or one without issues. I would take a guess that Kendall and her husband exploited at least two women in this process: an unknown egg donor who is the genetic mother of the child the surrogate mother who is currently carrying the baby who is biologically hers. It could do course be that the woman who is pregnant used her own eggs I she is genetically and biologically the mother in all senses, Kendall will have to apply to become the legal mother.

I hope both women are ok, that the woman who had her eggs harvested didn't suffer from OHSS (and comes from the U.K. where we have the donor registry so the chosen can find her later on in life) and the woman who is currently heavily pregnant, I hope she hasn't suffered (though let's face it pregnancy sucks) and she isn't deeply regretting her choice, unable to withdraw consent. I also hope she doesn't have a difficult birth resigning in birth injuries or any complications that leave her actually infertile.

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/venus-rising/id1481872967?i=1000523842088

I also wonder how much she got paid in 'expenses'...

Really grim, this. She said that she has been through infertility, which I really sympathise with. But she is 50 and has been with her partner since 2015 at the longest (that's when wikipedia says she broke up with her previous partner). So she can only been trying for a baby with this partner, at most, since she was 44. As PP said, this isn't actually infertility. This is just being older. There comes a point when you need to accept the facts of life.

Renting the body of a younger woman, so that she can remove a baby from its mother at birth, is wrong.

I do think it is a bit entitled to wait til your mid 40s then decide you want a child, presumably to not interfere with your career. Biology affects us all. It's not really a reason to delve into surrogacy and as an MP, and a Labour one at that, you'd expect she'd do some research into the ethics of the practice and whether it's something she wants to be associated with

The number of women who can conceive a healthy child and carry it to term at 50 is vanishingly small.

So of course she can't get pregnant. And if she started a new relationship at 44, she should have just accepted that having a baby together wasn't going to feature in her future.

Renting another woman's uterus and buying a different one's eggs is grim and exploitative behaviour.

Zarayna, the surrogate for Oona, left her job because it was too high risk during the pregnancy. Plus being pumped full of hormones and suffering a miscarriage. Surely this is all too much price to pay?

I wonder how much thought people who do this give to the feelings of the individual they produce - the one person in this set up who has no say about what goes on. None I suspect.

Commentators always refer to “the child” but those children grow up and the legacy of being separated from the birth mother does not end when they reach the age of 18.

Yes, she broke up with Greg Davies in the last five years or so. So, she hasn’t been with the current guy for that long, certainly not before mid40s - the point at which most reasonable and sensible couples accept that parenthood won’t feature in their lives unless they adopt. I feel for couples who’ve missed the boat but surrogacy isn’t the answer.

She is 50.
No wonder she was “struggling to conceive”
Such a load of hyperbole and spin.

It’s unethical behaviour and a clear conflict of professional interest.

I knew Oona King had three adopted children - can't understand why she would be so dissatisfied with that situation and pursue surrogacy, particularly as I understand she is with the same husband throughout.

And hard for the young (poorer) surrogate who first had a miscarriage.

Is surrogacy always exploitative? A friend of mine was unable to carry a child, a woman in the UK who had had children of her own volunteered to be her surrogate, she states she did it as she wanted give another woman the joy of having a family, as she had herself.

Another friend of mine is considering surrogacy, again for altruistic reasons.

Is it always exploitative? And if two willing parties who are not being co-erced into anything, voluntarily undergo surrogacy, who are we to police what these women do with their bodies?.

I don't think surrogacy is something I'd consider, either as a surrogate or as an intended parent, but I would try not to judge others if it was being done on a purely voluntary, altruistic basis.