Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Feminism: chat

Surrogacy

110 replies

ffsonly46 · 10/08/2022 17:08

Wasn't sure where to put this but feel the posters on here will have plenty of views!

Watching the documentary last night by Tom Daly and I mention to DP that I was put off by his TWAW stance as this is all well and good but clearly they are not when you're not asking them to lend their womb for him and his DH to have children. I said I didn't like the commodification of women's bodies.

He pointed out that in this country no one is coerced or paid, I replied it's not so around the world and in general I was uncomfortable with the donation/selling of eggs and sperm.

We don't know anyone who has used a surrogate but do know people who have purchased and also donated sperm, he asked if I was against this also and I'm not sure, it is still commodifying children, all be it consensually.

Please can you share your thoughts on this?

OP posts:
BeenHereAWhileNow · 11/08/2022 00:44

Sperm donation doesn’t come with increased risk of dying.

Child birth does and surrogacy pregnancies are higher risk than non surrogacy pregnancies.

Delphinium20 · 11/08/2022 01:00

I look at surrogacy and gamete donation from two angles: Feminism and child rights.

For the first, surrogacy and egg donation are far, far more exploitative and risky to women than any sperm donation (pretty sure no man alive has been harmed from a single wank). Women are not broodmares, women are not wombs for rent, women are not egg givers to strangers. Very young women, almost always white/blonde/blue-eyed/green-eyed/Japanese/athletic/pretty/smart, are those sought after for egg donation. In unregulated countries, egg donation is advertised to young women who are going to college. It's a sick business of exploitative advertising and taking advantage of young women, majority who have never had children of their own. No one should have the right to buy women's body parts.

For the second angle, the idea of a child being created to purposely be taken from its birth mother is a recipe for birth separation trauma. Unlike surrogacy, adoptive parents are counseled on this and how to help their adopted children. Surrogacy is vastly different because commissioning parents are given rights to create a child at will using a birth mother's body and I find this does not take into account the child who only knows her birth mother's voice/smells/sounds.

I don't see sperm donation as exploitation of men (in rare cases, it could be, but not aware of any) and I don't have the same ethical issues surrounding it as I do egg donations and surrogacy. That being said, children of donors are not always happy about their origins. I believe it's critical for all donor-conceived children to have a right to know who their bio parents are.

TinaYouFatLard · 11/08/2022 01:15

It’s renting a woman’s internal organs and buying a human being. It’s disgusting.

HinchcliffeandMurgatroyd · 11/08/2022 01:23

I’m okay with gamete donation, I think, as long as donors are traceable and the children are told.

Ideally, I’d like to see biological, genetic and legal parents all listed on birth certificates.

Surrogacy is just too far. Too big an ask. Too open to exploitation. Too risky. Too traumatic.

ffsonly46 · 11/08/2022 08:46

@Delphinium20 thank you, I think this is where I'm at.

@BeenHereAWhileNow how are surrogacy pregnancies higher risk?

@HinchcliffeandMurgatroyd not sure about all on birth certificate but definitely recorded do the children are able to access important health background information.

Thanks, DP and I have had another good debate around this tonight!

OP posts:
BeenHereAWhileNow · 11/08/2022 09:19

Surrogacy pregnancies are higher risk for pre-eclampsia blogs.bmj.com/medical-ethics/2018/02/19/surrogacy-obstetric-risk-and-the-kardashian-wests/

Pre-eclampsia can kill the mother, it can still kill the mother up to a few days post birth as well. Many mothers think it’s ‘just’ high blood pressure, it really isn’t every one of your organs starts to shut down. There has been very little research on long term health impacts for women that survive but there has been a little www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6736667/

BeenHereAWhileNow · 11/08/2022 09:25

This looks to have more info on medical complications including pre-eclampsia www.legalizesurrogacywhynot.com/surrogacy-health-risks-to-women-and-children

Harvesting eggs carries a host of risks as well www.legalizesurrogacywhynot.com/surrogacy-health-risks-to-women-and-children some of the inducements to women undergoing ivf like a free cycle if they or a (female obviously) friend/family member share eggs are immoral in my view as they are preying on vulnerable women desperate to have a baby hsfc.org.uk/treatments/egg-sharing-treatments/

Terfydactyl · 11/08/2022 09:27

not sure about all on birth certificate but definitely recorded do the children are able to access important health background information

Why not all on birth certificate? It's hardly going to be a secret and never should be a secret who gave birth to and who bought the baby.
Years ago a lot of adopted children were never told they were adopted, they often found out later in life and it was distressing. This is setting up for the same thing happening.

ffsonly46 · 11/08/2022 10:22

@BeenHereAWhileNow thanks for the additional information and links.

@Terfydactyl good point

OP posts:
ProfessorFusspot · 11/08/2022 12:52

He pointed out that in this country no one is coerced or paid...

If you're in the UK, it might be worth noting that since the Brexit vote, the pro-surrogacy lobby has been pushing hard to dismantle the "altruistic" surrogacy framework under the Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985 and promote the UK as a paid surrogacy centre for Europe. (The EU's fundamental charter of rights prohibits commercial surrogacy, although only some EU countries explicitly outlaw the practice).

Interest in the UK has risen even more this year as some of the few European countries with legal commercial surrogacy (Belarus, Russia, Ukraine) are less accessible or attractive to foreigners due to the war. It's believed that language, location, demographics, and projected cost reduction due to the surrogate's regular health and prenatal care being subsidised by the NHS would make the UK a destination of choice over places like the USA or former USSR for European buyers.

A 2019 joint consultation by the Law Commission and Scottish Law Commission detailed proposed changes including legally enforcible commercial contracts, increasing the pool of UK surrogates by loosening the rules on payment up to and including "unrestricted payments", and lowering the minimum age for surrogates from 21 to 18. Here's a recent article from the Observer setting out detailed concerns re commercial surrogacy in the UK.

Current UK laws don't prevent residents from engaging in paid surrogacy arrangements abroad, and in fact policy normalises these cases, allowing the buyer to be recognised as the legal parent with little scrutiny or safeguarding compared to (for example) an international adoption. In 2019, an English court awarded £500K for a claimant, judged to have become infertile due to medical error, to pay for commercial surrogacy to obtain four babies in California.

In Scotland, the NHS has started paying full surrogacy costs as "equal infertility treatment" for male couples, so taxpayers are forced to fund surrogacy even if they find it unethical. The couple profiled in the linked article hired a private surrogate through an agency and NHS Scotland paid a total of £45K (that was only one baby). While surrogates in the UK currently can't be directly paid for the baby or for the work of having a baby, "even" the promise of a safe place to live, all expenses paid for nine months, and whatever else can be classified as allowable gifts/funding can be a incentive for desperate women to do something they would not otherwise "choose" to do.

In places where commodified surrogacy is legal, women are often directly forced to take part by parents, husbands, etc. or compelled by circumstances that limit their access to earning an income/providing for their own and their family's basic needs. In other places where paid surrogacy is illegal - for example in Brazil, where it's classified as organ trafficking and punishable with prison terms of up to eight years - there are still reports of women offering paid surrogacy services online in spite of that risk. The "right" to family life, as it's called, the same "right" to have and raise one's own baby that's so important to people who can afford commercial surrogacy, often doesn't seem to extend to these women and their families.

BeenHereAWhileNow · 11/08/2022 13:28

Well said ProfessorFussPot

and lets not forget there can be a lot of coercion and glossing over the risks for Altruistic surrogacy without any of the safeguards there are currently in place for coercion for altruistic organ transplants (kidney & liver)

ffsonly46 · 11/08/2022 14:10

@ProfessorFusspot thank you, I had no idea about most of the detail in your post.

In the further discussion with DP I was also concerned about the "less than perfect" babies, if they (buyers) decide they then don't want the baby, what happens then?

I knew I'd get good info here, it is a subject that, along with other Feminist issues, I'd like to be able to discuss openly, but I've been caught out with a friend's strongly held view before and often keep off these topics!

OP posts:
FannyCann · 11/08/2022 14:43

Great post @ProfessorFusspot

In the further discussion with DP I was also concerned about the "less than perfect" babies, if they (buyers) decide they then don't want the baby, what happens then?

The likelihood is they will be rejected. There have been several well documented cases in the news, the best known perhaps being Baby Gammy, a little boy born with Down's Syndrome to a Thai surrogate mother, who was rejected by the commissioning parents who took his twin sister back to Australia. The commissioning father was later discovered to be a convicted paedophile but inexplicably the courts decided the little girl should stay with him.

doyourememberwhen · 11/08/2022 14:44

Wrt to sperm donation, there is a good podcast by a writer called Georgina Lawton which describes her experience of searching for answers about her own heritage when she confirms her long held suspicions that her father isnt her biological father.

There is a section in that which describes her as connecting with adult children born by sperm donation and their profound distress at having no solid links to their own genetic heritage. I found that quite thought provoking.

FannyCann · 11/08/2022 14:48

Here's a bit more about the case:

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/14/baby-gammys-twin-sister-stays-with-western-australian-couple-court-orders

"An extensive safety plan has been developed in partnership with the state’s child protection service and is already in place, prohibiting Farnell from being alone with the child.
It also involves a “words and pictures story” being read to Pipah every three months that details in terms the toddler would understand the “history and method” of Farnell’s crimes and why he is unable to be alone with her."

He has since died.

But this is what surrogacy inevitably leads to, as commissioning parents have very few checks.

FannyCann · 11/08/2022 14:50

One of the best known cases in Ukraine is that of poor little baby Bridget who was abandoned there by her American commissioning parents who did not want a damaged baby.

FannyCann · 11/08/2022 14:57

And to top it off here is a case from the UK - the commissioning mother did not want "a dribbling cabbage".

Woman rejected disabled surrogate baby as a ‘dribbling cabbage’.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/906372bf-1f6f-4195-b75b-d18202b12bd6?shareToken=08a512b7725067307d775f4cc719383ff_

Fact is the baby buyers can cancel the order easier than if you decided not to buy that car after all. Just don't turn up to collect. I think that's all it takes.

BeenHereAWhileNow · 11/08/2022 16:25

This report is concerning, particularly the secrecy around any problems

cbc-network.org/2020/01/breaking-another-us-surrogate-mother-has-died

gogohmm · 11/08/2022 16:40

I'm very much against commercial surrogacy however I am open to altruistic surrogacy following extensive checks and balances, with appropriate expenses paid. I know to male gay couples this sounds like I'm discriminatory against them, but I don't think anyone can rent a womb for money, but if their sister wanted to help them I don't think that should be banned outright, equally heterosexual couples where the female cannot carry a child eg following cancer surgery, altruistic surrogacy should be an option

OhHolyJesus · 11/08/2022 16:41

There is a U.K. campaign that is looking at surrogacy in the U.K. - their blogs have been quite informative (both on egg donation and the ‘altruistic’ nature of surrogacy in the U.K.) you could check out:

www.stopsurrogacynowuk.org

There was also a really good podcast series on the BBC about sperm donation called Male Order, you may appreciate OP. As PP said there is quite a push towards ‘ethical’ surrogacy under the guise of ‘altruism’ so to distance U.K. and Ireland surrogacy from the recent COVID and conflict scandals in Ukraine.

Surrogacy has been discussed regularly on the sex and gender board and I would recommend the resources thread which I would share if only I could find it!

VerveClique · 11/08/2022 16:48

I used to think altruistic surrogacy was ok.

Theb I became loosely acquainted with a surrogate mother in the U.K., and with the FWR pages here.

it’s absolutely not ok.

Yes some people may be devastated that they can’t have a child due to reproductive incompatibility or infertility.

But this is a Pandora’s box.

Just because something can be done, doesn’t mean it should be.

Classicblunder · 11/08/2022 16:48

I am not sure what I think. Pregnancy and childbirth are dangerous and I don't know that I think it's ethical to pay someone to do that for you. But then I think, isn't that sort of true of allowing 18 year olds to sign up to being in the army? And similar dangerous jobs.

ffsonly46 · 11/08/2022 16:54

@FannyCann I remember the Australian couple, I hadn't known about the "Father" though.

@gogohmm I used to think that but have become much more of a mind of you can't have some surrogacy being OK when all the risks are still the same.

@OhHolyJesus thanks for the link I'll check it out. As said earlier, I do believe there are issues with sperm donation.

OP posts:
OhHolyJesus · 11/08/2022 16:56

But then I think, isn't that sort of true of allowing 18 year olds to sign up to being in the army? And similar dangerous jobs.

I understand the comparison to a point but the narrative around U.K. surrogacy is that it isn’t a job (otherwise where are the health and safety policies, pensions and benefits and annual leave - all apply to dangerous and life threatening jobs like working on an oil rig or being a paramedic) and another human being (with rights) isn’t produced as a result of being in the army.

There is no conscription in the U.K. and we are told through the media that no one is forced to give birth for others but both the army and surrogacy are options taken when your choices are limited. That’s why the ‘sex work is work’ argument is used to normalise prostitution, which is comparable to surrogacy as it’s using your body to earn money.

ffsonly46 · 11/08/2022 16:58

@VerveClique indeed!

@Classicblunder not sure I would compare pregnancy and child birth as with a dangerous job.

OP posts: