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.

Fostering and adoption is not the same for a multitude of reasons

Fostering and adoption is not the same for one reason only, that is done for the welfare of the child.
Surrogacy is done for the wishes of the person paying.

Be kind, to adults, is not a sensible way organize policy in relation to children.
Be kind, to wealthy adults, is not a sensible way to organize policy in relation to more vulnerable adults.

But regardless of how adults treat each other children should not be bought, sold or gifted.

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

Do you know how much surrogates are paid in the UK? And how much money that is to them?

Surrogates are paid in the UK. It's about £30k. It's a lot of money if you're struggling with a young family. But it could kill these young mothers, and leave their young family orphaned, and no baby, no fee. It's disgusting.

All surrogates are poor. No one carries and sells a baby if they can afford not to.

People were outraged at Afghans selling their babies. Yet here we have an MP buying babies.

@HPrior the vast majority of your long comment was focused on the wants and desires of adults.
We shouldn’t cause harm and trauma to babies (separation from birth mother is accepted as trauma) purely for the desires of adults.

Yes the want for a child, a biological child, is completely understandable, but it doesn’t justify creating a situation where a baby has to be removed from his parents.

Adjust because someone might be willing to put their physical and emotional health at risk by carrying a baby for you, doesn’t make it right to allow them to.

My daughter knows.

I'm sure she does, she can know you are her legal and social mother whilst knowing her birth mother, one does not cancel out the other. It's not the same as adoption, where one replaces the other.

Being that your daughter was conceived from an egg from another woman she also has a genetic mother and potentially siblings (from additional harvested eggs from the same woman or her own children, now or in the future, assuming the egg harvesting didn't affect her fertility). Your daughter has several mothers in that sense and she has rights to know them all, though those rights, at least not the one to know her genetic roots, don't kick in until she is 18.

I chose not to respond to you @Eastridingclub because I don't want to make this personal and hurt your feelings any more.

I asked the question because if you'd bothered to read the thread, there is a list from a woman who was assured that she would remain in her child's life but that hasn't happened.

@Whatinthelord where is your evidence that separating a child at birth from its parents causes trauma for you to state it so resolutely?

focus on being kind rather than judgmental.
I think I'll focus on the damage that it does to women & babies thanks

I am judging our society for allowing the practice whilst legislating against puppies being removed from their mothers before 8 weeks of age.

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

Be kind?

If only that extended to newborns....

You are entitled to your opinion as much as the next person but minding our own business? It's in the newspapers, she is an MP, there is reform proposed for surrogacy law. It is quite literally everyone's business and those who aren't bothered probably would scroll on by.

@gordongrumpy I don't know how much surrogates are paid and neither, I expect do you, since it is surely something agreed on a case by case basis. If it is the case that commercial surrogacy is happening by the back door, and I don't know whether that's true or not, then there needs to be more regulation. Not an outright ban.

To make such a sweeping statement that all surrogates are poor is obviously not correct and shows the small extent of your knowledge and the low quality of your argument. So you know every single one do you and all of their financial circumstances?

[quote HPrior]@Whatinthelord where is your evidence that separating a child at birth from its parents causes trauma for you to state it so resolutely? [/quote]
First 3 results from Google;

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3115616/

www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/observer/obsonline/how-mother-child-separation-causes-neurobiological-vulnerability-into-adulthood.html

theconversation.com/a-sudden-and-lasting-separation-from-a-parent-can-permanently-alter-brain-development-98542

The Kennel Club mandates that puppies aren't removed from their mothers until 8 weeks. The only reason that babies are removed is to satisfy the people who are paying for the baby and contribute to the delusion that the mother is irrelevant.

There is endless discussion on here about the 4th trimester, whether it's okay to go back to work, attachment parenting etc.

And yet in surrogacy. all that gets ignored in favour of the adults who want the baby

I suppose it does depend if it's a known surrogate. For a family member or close friend is not the same - I would have carried a child for my (gay) brother if they had asked and possibly considered using my egg (obviously with his then partner) but it wasn't something they wanted and I'm past it now

Stranger surrogacy is more exploitative

@verymiddleaged there is obviously more than one reason why surrogacy is different from adoption or fostering and indeed why all 3 are different! Don't make sweeping statements that are plainly incorrect.

Surrogacy isn't selling a baby- if you insist on looking at it as a transaction - technically the surrogate is selling a service. If there were no "to be" parents initiating the pregnancy there would be no child. The birth parent would have to get pregnant with the child of their own accord and make the decision to give it up for adoption for money for the child to be "sold". This would be illegal and is not what surrogacy is.

Of course, if the law is applied correctly and only reasonable expenses are paid, surrogacy isn't a transaction at all.

@hardtobelieve you're right.

The shadow social care minister

Thanks, in my haste to comment I missed the key word 'shadow' so am mildly relieved. However Kendall will be voting on proposed law reform when it is tabled and I'm sure she will be lobbying from within HoP, still a privileged position to be in.

For others, this useful website to explain more about reform and the proposals. It is perhaps unsurprising that a women's organisation largely focused on criminalising the men that buy women, would also be covering surrogacy.

nordicmodelnow.org/2020/09/06/whats-wrong-with-surrogacy-recordings-of-the-webinar/

Go on, then. Find me one independently wealthy woman who is an altruistic surrogate for a less well off, but lovely, stranger?

I don't know what every CEO is paid, yet there's a 'going rate'. Of course, some will be paid more, some less, but these women are paid, and mostly they do it because they need/want the money. Some do it because they have their own issues of needing the attention etc pregnancy brings, this is equally exploitative.

We get our data about how damaging it is to separated at birth from the only person you've known, whose heart beat with yours, who you expect to love and care for you, from those who it has happened to, adult adoptees. Of course, there may be the odd case where no trauma occurred, but the overwhelming wisdom these days is to recognise this as a trauma. The difference in adoption is that it happens for the sake of the baby's wellbeing, not for the sake of a trafficker buying one.

I would be fascinated to know the household income of the woman who Liz Kendall is paying for the hire of her body, and how much they are paying. If it is truly altruistic and only 'reasonable expenses', neither of those facts are identifying, and could allow the public to judge how transactional this is. I bet the birth mother isn't a fellow MP, or Cambridge graduate, for example.

technically the surrogate is selling a service. A service which produces an 'end product' which happens to be a human life.

If there were no "to be" parents initiating the pregnancy there would be no child. Yes the parents commission a child into being or order the conception, buying the 'ingredients' and paying for the 'service' of fertility clinics of it's done via self-insemination.

The birth parent would have to get pregnant with the child of their own accord and make the decision to give it up for adoption for money for the child to be "sold". Surrogacy is probably better termed, planned adoption, in that it is decided before conception that the child will not be raised with his/her/their mother. Even babies who are fostered or adopted don't leave their mother until 6 weeks old. I remember one home birth on a BBC documentary where the baby was taken after 6 hours. Why are is surrogacy different from other situations?

This would be illegal and is not what surrogacy is. Selling humans is illegal yes. Calling it something else doesn't make it any less illegal. Bit like "sex work is work", when it isn't.

Of course, if the law is applied correctly and only reasonable expenses are paid, surrogacy isn't a transaction at all.
And yet money changed hands, for sums of money that are way beyond what a pregnancy actually costs. It's almost as if the 'expenses' is a way of calling it something it isn't...

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5908423/Couples-paying-60-000-babies-surrogate-mothers.html

Removing a child from its birth mother is a last resort in every other circumstance. Unless someone has paid that mother to gestate that baby for them.

Surrogacy goes against everything we know about what is best for babies' development and wellbeing

A mother, whether she parents the child or not, whether it was her gamete or not, will carry the baby's DNA in her, likely forever. She never stops being that child's mother, no matter how much you pay her.

@Clymene

Removing a child from its birth mother is a last resort in every other circumstance. Unless someone has paid that mother to gestate that baby for them.

Surrogacy goes against everything we know about what is best for babies' development and wellbeing

This puts it very succinctly and, when I also realised it a few years ago, was the lightbulb moment for me in seeing surrogacy as what it really is, rather than how I thought of it before - as just a fluffy right-on way of being a generous woman.

And the PP who compared it to the adoptions of the 60s, the widespread and long-lasting trauma of which is only NOW being truly recognised, is spot on.

[quote HPrior]@Whatinthelord where is your evidence that separating a child at birth from its parents causes trauma for you to state it so resolutely? [/quote]
Where is you’re evidence that it doesn’t cause harm?
Surely if you’re arguing to be allowed use of another woman’s body to create a baby that is then removed from the only person they know, the onus should be on you to prove it isn’t harmful shouldn’t it?

I don’t think there’s any research about surrogacy trauma. Maybe they should do some before continuing to allow the practice? There are a lot of people adopted as infants sharing their adoption trauma, many who went straight to adoptive parents from hospital.

We do know that shows infants recognise the smells and sounds of their mothers, that they hear their mothers voice and heartbeat in the womb. That they respond to and are settled by their mother.

Really though, do we need research ….we accept that we shouldn’t remove puppies from the mother dog at birth. If we were to forcibly remove a child from their parent we would be concerned about the harm…we all recognise that our own babies have a connection to us from birth.

Yet, when it suits, we’re expected to believe that removing an infant from the person they grew inside, bonded with prebirth, causes no harm?

I’d have more respect if you recognised the likely trauma or at least the potential of it. If you don’t then I really can’t see how you’ve given any thought to the needs and rights of the baby within surrogacy.

I’ve heard of expenses up to £30,000. As if most pregnant women would usually spend anywhere near that amount.

What expenses does one have during pregnancy?

In 1990 I bought, near the end, 3 voluminous dresses, a pair of loose cotton trousers and an overshirt from Laura Ashley and Monsoon. They weren't maternity wear. Can't remember what they might have cost but both shops were mid - range high street, so let's say £50 per item.

My feet went up a size so a couple of pairs of cheap shoes. Again, say £25 per pair?

Occasional taxi fares from office to ante- natal classes and other times I didn't feel like walking- say £100 and add another £100 just for anything I might have forgotten.

Factor in also I like spending money and had no need to budget. That's £500 in total - which is overestimated. Allowing for inflation that's £1,162.

What expenses does one have during pregnancy?

I watched this ages ago but had it saved, I'm not sure if this is the right one but I think this woman who has had several babies for others (with her own eggs, so half siblings to her children) mentions that 'expenses' can include a gardener.

@gogohm

I suppose it does depend if it's a known surrogate. For a family member or close friend is not the same - I would have carried a child for my (gay) brother if they had asked and possibly considered using my egg (obviously with his then partner) but it wasn't something they wanted and I'm past it now

Stranger surrogacy is more exploitative

So, in theory, you would have happily conceived and given birth to your own, biological child and then given it to your brother to satisfy his wants? Would you have wondered how your child might have felt knowing that its own mother, who is now its aunt, conceived him/her to be given away to her brother/ child's uncle thus depriving it permanently of any mother? A messed up head at the very least?

So-called surrogacy within a family adds another layer of complications; it doesn't make it any simpler. You're right. It isn't the same, but it's not any more acceptable.