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.

seems that surrogate babies are the new plaything for women who have exhausted their career fantasies.

Thanks. I'll be sure to tell my much loved, very stable daughter.

Would people be judging her age so much if she was a man? Having gone through years of infertility and IVF I'm very happy for her.

@Eastridingclub

seems that surrogate babies are the new plaything for women who have exhausted their career fantasies.

Thanks. I'll be sure to tell my much loved, very stable daughter.

But did you wait until a time when fertility problems were likely, purely for career reasons?

Our reason for infertility was male factor infertility - azoospermia

@flipflop76

Would people be judging her age so much if she was a man? Having gone through years of infertility and IVF I'm very happy for her.

I'm not judging her on her age- I'm judging her for using surrogacy

@Eastridingclub

seems that surrogate babies are the new plaything for women who have exhausted their career fantasies.

Thanks. I'll be sure to tell my much loved, very stable daughter.

Are you still in touch with her mother?

Which one, the egg donor or my friend who carried her (described by her as the most fulfilling experience of her life and since repeated)?

She'd go through you for describing her in those terms in reference to my girl, especially to me.

But the answer to your incredibly rude question is yes, I suppose. I love the lady you're asking about. She's not my child's mother in any sense. She's a wonderful mother to her own children.

I'm sorry you think it's rude to acknowledge biological facts.

"Would people be judging her age so much if she was a man?'

This person would be, yes

A friend of mine had a baby through surrogacy as she had to have an emergency hysterectomy at 30 for a life threatening illness. Her friend was the surrogate but the egg and sperm were from my friend and her husband. I don't judge her in any way for having a baby through surrogacy.

I'm sorry you think it's rude to acknowledge biological facts.

I think you know what is rude.

I also think you'd struggle, from your perspective, to identify who you think is my daughter's mother.

My daughter knows.

Individuals don't need to display moral superiority by judging friends in difficult situations.

Society as whole should have learned by now that the buying, selling and forced gifting of humans rarely ends well.
Trade in humans shouldn't be legal.

The damage it does to children when the state does this for the benefit of the child is acknowledged and a high legal threshold has to met.

@verymiddleaged

Individuals don't need to display moral superiority by judging friends in difficult situations.

Society as whole should have learned by now that the buying, selling and forced gifting of humans rarely ends well.
Trade in humans shouldn't be legal.

The damage it does to children when the state does this for the benefit of the child is acknowledged and a high legal threshold has to met.

They need ‘like’ buttons on here. Excellent comment

@Eastridingclub

I'm sorry you think it's rude to acknowledge biological facts.

I think you know what is rude.

I also think you'd struggle, from your perspective, to identify who you think is my daughter's mother.

My daughter knows.

As I said earlier, buying and selling babies has no place in a civilised society, no matter how much people want them.

Altruistic surrogacy sounds lovely when things go right, but how much protection does the law give when things go wrong…

When the situation changes with the commissioning parents and they back out of the arrangement once pregnancy has occurred or beyond the date of termination?

When something changes with the surrogate - health, housing, one of her own children becomes ill etc etc and she can’t continue with the pregnancy?

If there’s a relationship breakdown between commissioners and surrogate?

The baby is not developing normally or is born with disabilities?

The surrogate is in another country and there is a pandemic or visa issue?

The surrogate mother suffers life changing birth injuries or worse?

I don’t know how all these risks can be realistically mitigated, and at the heart of it all is a baby who has no say in any of this, potentially becoming unwanted or orphaned if things go wrong.

20:08Clymene

And you still can't actually choose who my daughter's mother is.

That would be because I am.

No money changed hands other than very reasonable compensation.

Sometimes people are at their most obscene when they're self-righteous.

It’s a incredibly selfish thing to do and she isn’t having fertility issues. She is 50! She just left it far to late to have a baby so now she has decided she can buy her way out of it.

Surrogacy is banned in most of Europe and in many other countries in recognition that it is not in the child's or women's interests. It is human rights abuse. Carrying a baby is also the most dangerous thing a woman typically ever does in her life and no one should ask another woman to take that risk for her. Carrying a baby with another woman's eggs increases that risk. Stimulated cycles to produce eggs for harvesting is also risky.

Surrogacy is human trafficking dressed up as kindness - buying and selling human beings.

Children are a privilege, not a right.

20:21Clymene

You asked if my daughter's mother and I still knew each other. Apparently you can ask such an offensive question with impunity because it's a biological fact. I realise now you had no idea who you were actually talking about and are continuing to waffle in the absence of having a biological fact to respond with.

My response: my daughter knows.

I was adopted as a young baby. I was voluntarily put up for adoption by my birth mother rather than being removed by social services, which is unusual for someone my age. I had a happy and stable upbringing and love my adoptive parents as much as I do anybody. I'm well adjusted, have healthy interpersonal relationships have been very successful academically and professionally.

None of which changes the fact knowing that my birth mother- the very first person who was supposed to love and look after me- willingly gave me up is nothing but painful. She had a child before me, she had more children after me and, while she might not have been mother of the year, she was a reasonably competent and loving parent to them. Even if, rationally, I know there was nothing wrong with me, it is painful to know that I was given up.

I, at least, have the comfort of knowing that I was not conceived for the purpose of being given up. And that no one profited from it. And that the people who brought me up, whom I love and trust, were not complicit in creating the situation. Surrogate children, especially in commercial surrogacy, will not get that.
And I'm also gratified that my adoptive parents did not try and insist that, because I wasn't crying and rocking in a corner,or running wild as a teenager, that the situation was ideal. A situation in which a baby is removed from it's mother for whatever reason is far from ideal, whatever happens next. It is not one, in my opinion, that anyone should be purposely creating.

"She's not my child's mother in any sense."

As an adoptive and birth mother, I very much disagree. Anyone who births a child is that child's mother, they literally grew that baby. Sometimes, a child has more than one mother, and you being her mother doesn't change the fact that the woman who grew and birthed her is her mother.

Adoptees have been quite clear that pretending that 'primal wound' doesn't exist can be damaging. I think there will be a scandal as these trafficked, sold, children grow into adults.

I am opposed to baby selling- 'compensation' is still money. It's always poorer women doing it for richer people. You don't find well off women offering to be altruistic surrogates for Debbie and John on the council estate who can't afford IVF, but will be lovely parents.

@TheCloudBotherer

I'm sorry for your pain. I love my children deeply, and equally, whether I grew them inside the womb, or just outside. For those who didn't grow in my womb, they were loved by their first mum. She couldn't look after them, and I can see the pain caused by that loss, and yes, I think it's wicked to create that on purpose. Ignoring that pain, minimising it, pretending it doesn't exist for the agenda of people who buy babies, is not going to be good for anyone.

She's not my child's mother in any sense

That's simply not true. You can tell yourself that as much as you like but the person who gave birth to your daughter is her mother.

I assume that you acquired parental rights through a legal process and are legally recognised as "mother" and the woman who gave birth renounced her legal rights but it doesn't alter the original physical fact.

@OhHolyJesus

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.)

She is a Labour MP so how can she be working for the Department?

I can't believe what a judgemental lot you all (or so many of you) are.

Surrogacy is not buying/selling a baby or renting a womb. In the U.K. you can only pay reasonable expenses to a surrogate.

It is ignorant and patronising beyond all measure to assume surrogates are poor people doing it for the money and that all people who resort to surrogacy are rich people seeking to exploit someone less fortunate. The majority of surrogates do it out of genuine altruism. How could this not be the case when they are only paid expenses.

Many people are unable to have children the traditional way be it because of infertility, age, risk to health of being pregnant or a same sex relationship. If medicine allows it and there are people kind enough to offer their bodies to make it happen, what right do others have to judge those decisions.

Fostering and adoption is not the same for a multitude of reasons and I don't think anyone could honestly say that either options compare, apart from perhaps the adoption of a baby.

Similarly, there is nothing wrong or strange about wanting a child that is genetically your own. That is precisely what every living create on Earth has evolved to strive to achieve.

And why shouldn't a woman of 50 have a child. Men are able to have children 30 years older than that. The reasons for waiting until you are 50 is no ones business and is irrelevant when compared with the importance of giving a child a loving, stable environment to grow up in.

I think you should all mind your own business and try for a change to focus on being kind rather than judgmental.