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Feminism: chat

Kerry Katona and surrogacy. Thoughts?

243 replies

ChocChipOwl · 25/10/2022 13:28

I'm just watching Kerry on tv ad I eat my lunch. She has 5 children and, because her partner doesn't have any kids, they're going to go down the surrogacy route as her last pregnancy and birth was difficult

She said - and I quote - 'yeah we are going to get a surrogate because that's safer.'

Safer for who, I wonder?

Anyway, it got me thinking. I always used to be ambivalent about surrogacy but now I'm opposed to it, although I do recognise that on some occasions it may have a place.

But does it have a place for a 42 year old woman who already had 5 children and is so blasé about it all?

OP posts:
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7
OhHolyJesus · 01/11/2022 09:26

You do realise it’s actually checked by a court right ?

Yes but it's a bit of a fait accompli by then isn't it, as money has been spent, the baby is born and the key question by then is legal parenthood.

Expenses include rent/mortgage, take aways and mobile phone bills under current law and these not 'costs of pregnancy'.

Did you not get maternity leave? Loss of earnings would relate to not working, or did you claim this for a partner or career? For what time period did this over and why weren't you able to work, did you suffer with post-birth complications? C - sections?

I don't understand how your family costs would be relevant to the surrogacy pregnancy costs either, it would help us all to understand how you managed to get to £15k, even though you claimed £8k. (I still find £8k a lot for a pregnancy, I can't imagine how you rack that up.)

I think if £8-15k that was the cost of a pregnancy and birth in the U.K. with the NHS treatment throughout it would 'price' many out of the market for having a family (so to speak).

AlienatedChildGrown · 01/11/2022 09:28

OhHolyJesus · 01/11/2022 05:44

so does every time of donation as blood or organs

Donated blood and organs saves existing lives, not creating new ones. The risks of donating blood are a bit of bruising and feeling dizzy. Cancer treatment also carries risk. No one is comparing that to surrogacy. Hardly the same as a 40 week pregnancy and birth is it? Goodness me. A kidney isn't a baby.

Correct. A kidney is not a baby.

Babies can be commission for a price.

Kidneys cannot. Well, outside of the black market you can’t.

Make that make sense. Creating tiny human beings to function as commodities / gifts is deemed not just ethical, but to be celebrated.

I think what many surrogacy/ donation activists, clients and human farmers forget is that babies become children, children become adults. The “seems fine” at 11 years old can look entirely different in later life.

I changed my mind (as in 180°) about gamete donation and surrogacy after reading 100s of stories written by adults (young and not so much) who were conceived, born and lived as a result of this trade. It’s fucking heartbreaking reading about a human falling apart on the inside because they tamped down everything they felt when young. From birth trained to the language required of them, which deliberately stripped away the reality of mother/father, dressed it up as “just cogs in the wheel of making you exist, emotionally irrelevant other than being grateful to them. Only for the “human created by mail order” to hit a wall at some point of their adulthood, quite a few when they became parents themselves.

As my username suggests, I’m more child-needs-centric than adult-wants-centric. My 180° turn on opinion happened because there were so many emotional overlaps between their experiences and my own. Except nobody tells me to be grateful for what was done to me. Whereas they run the gauntlet of adults on the commissioning, benefitting end of gamete donation/surrogacy constantly doing the “flying monkeys” & screeching at them. Calling them “vile”, “ungrateful”, the “occasional case” (they don’t say “acceptable tiny human collateral damage to get what adults want” but it is clear what they mean)

Yes there are children born of gamete donation and surrogacy who have no issue with how they came into being. Some of them grow into adults who will live a lifetime with no issues. The same is true of children of adoption, parental alienation, abandonment & bereavement. But only one of those is celebrated as a good thing to do to a person ON PURPOSE with an absolute refusal to heed the lessons we learned in the wake of attitudes towards all the others once being “no biggie”.

In time (too much time for the number of people left to deal with how they came to be, and who they were given to, like a present or a product) gamete donation & surrogacy will come to be perceived in the same way the Magdalene Laundries are today. They didn’t think they were doing wrong either. They thought they were helping, doing the right thing. That the kids are OK. No doubt they called their own detractors “vile”, “unfeeling” towards infertile couple and morally bankrupt too.

AlienatedChildGrown · 01/11/2022 09:29

@OhHolyJesus (just for clarity, was agreeing with you, not aiming the post at you)

FannyCann · 01/11/2022 09:36

You do realise it’s actually checked by a court right?

Honestly it makes me laugh how proponents of surrogacy regularly state this. The fact is, if the courts do look it is generally a cursory look and even where they are not happy with the findings they still award the parental order on grounds of the child's best interests and there are no sanctions. Research from the Law Commission and other papers I could quote if I could be bothered to do a trawl clearly demonstrate there is a "going rate". Currently a tad under £15k.

Kerry Katona and surrogacy. Thoughts?
Kerry Katona and surrogacy. Thoughts?
RedToothBrush · 01/11/2022 09:40

So how do they eliminate and prevent emotional blackmail and coercion in 'altruistic' surrogacies?

AlienatedChildGrown · 01/11/2022 11:09

RedToothBrush · 01/11/2022 09:40

So how do they eliminate and prevent emotional blackmail and coercion in 'altruistic' surrogacies?

They can’t. Nor can anybody eliminate or prevent more complicated emotions developing over the years & decades. God knows I feel very differently about many things than I did 5, 10, 15, 30, 40 years ago. And that’s without having a child out in the world that I am the genetic or birth mother of.

Which I why I think the only ethical and workable way forward is a straight outright ban.

OhHolyJesus · 01/11/2022 11:59

AlienatedChildGrown · 01/11/2022 09:29

@OhHolyJesus (just for clarity, was agreeing with you, not aiming the post at you)

Thanks Alienated, and great post by the way, you expressed a lot of my own thoughts there.

The three surrogate-born children mentioned on this thread are 4, 8 and 12. None are at the age when they might be considering becoming parents themselves. We know at least one is female, so may one day (maybe not) be a mother herself. If she has a wanted pregnancy she will bond with the child and it might be only then that she begins to question the circumstances of her own conception and birth. Maybe she won't. Who knows. She doesn't that's for sure as she's 4.

I also appreciated your point of how when raised on a narrative of how deliberate it was, how wanted you were, how a kind lady 'helped' (maybe two, maybe more), how on a scale of difficult to impossible it is to discuss any negative thoughts or feelings you might have with the adults involved. This I imagine would be similar to how some adopted or donor conceived children have and do hold off until their legal parents have died before embarking on their journey to find their genetic/birth parents.

But the two mothers who gave birth to these three children tell us they are fine, so that's that.

OhHolyJesus · 01/11/2022 12:00

FannyCann · 01/11/2022 09:36

You do realise it’s actually checked by a court right?

Honestly it makes me laugh how proponents of surrogacy regularly state this. The fact is, if the courts do look it is generally a cursory look and even where they are not happy with the findings they still award the parental order on grounds of the child's best interests and there are no sanctions. Research from the Law Commission and other papers I could quote if I could be bothered to do a trawl clearly demonstrate there is a "going rate". Currently a tad under £15k.

Looks like you might have read one or two articles about surrogacy there Fanny...

Wiluli · 01/11/2022 13:35

OhHolyJesus · 01/11/2022 09:26

You do realise it’s actually checked by a court right ?

Yes but it's a bit of a fait accompli by then isn't it, as money has been spent, the baby is born and the key question by then is legal parenthood.

Expenses include rent/mortgage, take aways and mobile phone bills under current law and these not 'costs of pregnancy'.

Did you not get maternity leave? Loss of earnings would relate to not working, or did you claim this for a partner or career? For what time period did this over and why weren't you able to work, did you suffer with post-birth complications? C - sections?

I don't understand how your family costs would be relevant to the surrogacy pregnancy costs either, it would help us all to understand how you managed to get to £15k, even though you claimed £8k. (I still find £8k a lot for a pregnancy, I can't imagine how you rack that up.)

I think if £8-15k that was the cost of a pregnancy and birth in the U.K. with the NHS treatment throughout it would 'price' many out of the market for having a family (so to speak).

Sorry but you are misinformed , no surrogacy expenses include rent or mortgages or mobile phones , where on earth did you get that from ?

Wiluli · 01/11/2022 13:38

OhHolyJesus · 01/11/2022 12:00

Looks like you might have read one or two articles about surrogacy there Fanny...

How I got 8k ? I just had my own pregnancy last year and racked up 12k in costs due to being ill .
8 k is less than 3 months of wages to most people ! Expenses include anything caused by pregnancy so loss of wages , extra childcare , clothes , extra transport for appointments. You really have nil clue in the legalities of surrogacy in the U.K.

FannyCann · 01/11/2022 14:53

Sorry but you are misinformed , no surrogacy expenses include rent or mortgages or mobile phones , where on earth did you get that from?

Have you looked at the Law Commission document on surrogacy law.
Following on from screenshots in my earlier post here is a continuation of the list of expenses encountered:

Mobile phone bills
Gas and electricity bills
Rental payments

And don't let's forget post birth holidays and post birth gifts.

Kerry Katona and surrogacy. Thoughts?
FannyCann · 01/11/2022 15:07

Interestingly the Law Commission lists one case where the total payment to the surrogate mother was £470 whilst a CAFCASS report into par two orders cited four cases where NO payment was made to the surrogate mother. It might be argued that where the motive is pure altruism, no money exchanges hands. I suspect if the law required NO payment at all to be paid to surrogate mothers that suddenly the number is women claiming to desire to be kind and give the gift of life would reduce significantly.

Kerry Katona and surrogacy. Thoughts?
OhHolyJesus · 01/11/2022 15:25

You really have nil clue in the legalities of surrogacy in the U.K.

Like @FannyCann I have read the whole consultation document from the law commission, all 502 pages of it, (thanks for sharing that screenshot Fanny you beat me to it)!

Here is the full document if you would like to read it.

https://s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/lawcom-prod-storage-11jsxou24uy7q/uploads/2019/06/Surrogacy-consultation-paper.pdf

We started talking about this when the consultation launched in 2019, so no, I haven't given away two babies but I have been reading and learning for three years now. Here are some threads from a quick search on surrogacy - you can check my posting history for more:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4225575-International-Surrogacy-during-Covid-and-history-of-sex-offencess_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4225838-new-feminist-campaign-stop-surrogacy-noww_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/feminism/4204001-baby-born-to-surrogate-mother-still-with-her-nearly-one-year-onn_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4205637-Gay-Man-rejects-Surrogacyy_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4198876-Chinese-woman-s-unanesthetized-surgery-exposes-risks-of-illegal-surrogacy-running-riott_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4266878-surrogacy-can-create-orphans-a-surrogate-mother-diess_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4236078-rejected-by-35-women-two-men-become-fathers-through-surrogacyy_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4239144-Surrogacy-ends-in-abortion-and-ends-a-friendshipp_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4149123-Another-gushing-story-in-The-Times-about-surrogacyy_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4198047-sunday-times-style-sexism-on-surrogacyy_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/amibeing_unreasonable/4254035-surrogacy-and-covid-vaccinee_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/feminism/4274981-surrogacy-in-the-new-statesmenn_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4223469-Altruistic-Surrogacy-in-a-family-and-Medical-Negligence-in-Belgiumm_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4216517-surrogacy-for-a-sister-account-of-jealousy-from-redditt_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4190209-Surrogacy-again-why-is-the-BBC-selling-thiss_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4192171-Where-New-Zealands-surrogacy-laws-could-be-headedd_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4183102-Disturbing-Surrogacy-Front-pager-from-Ireland-this-afternoonn_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4182042-FFS-re-Hilaria-Alec-Baldwin-and-normalisation-of-surrogacyy_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/amibeing_unreasonable/4248703--With-science-I-can-have-a-baby-whenever-I-wantt_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4175168-single-man-looking-for-a-surrogate-bbcc_
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4166241-NHS-Psychiatrist-speaks-up-about-Surrogacyy_
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/feminism/4489939-CBeebies-promoting-surrogacy?msgid=115383001#1153830011_

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4506457-21-babies-stuck-in-a-bomb-shelter-in-Ukraine?watched=1&msgid=115923326#1159233266_
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4486282-Surrogacy-in-Ukraine-Times-articlee_
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/feminism/4381931-surrogacy-in-georgia-channel-4-investigationn_
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4493409-surrogacy-and-child-trafficking-in-thailandd_
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4497831-men-can-do-anything-women-cann_
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/feminism/4434628-sperm-donation-a-feminist-victoryy_
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/feminism/4293769-egg-donation-selling-canadaa_
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/feminism/4284142-comparing-surrogacy-in-colorado-to-the-u-kk_
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/feminism/4274981-surrogacy-in-the-new-statesmenn_
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/feminism/4414494-ivf-reform-from-new-hfea-boss-what-is-a-motherr_
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4380578-husband-of-surrogate-mother-who-died-speaks-outt_
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4266878-surrogacy-can-create-orphans-a-surrogate-mother-diess_
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/feminism/4373138-surrogacy-promoted-at-modern-family-show-object-now-inside-reportt_
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/amibeing_unreasonable/4357653-how-can-this-be-ok-surrogate-baby-born-from-meeting-on-facebookk_
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/feminism/4301798-surrogacy-regret-from-a-single-mann_

OhHolyJesus · 01/11/2022 16:04

I just had my own pregnancy last year and racked up 12k in costs due to being ill

I'm sorry you were ill from your 5th pregnancy but I'm confused. It cost you 12k in out of pocket expenses or you had a 12k loss of earnings?

If it cost you 12k as you were ill and needed treatment then this can only be in private treatment (and if you earn 8k in three months so maybe you can afford private health care is it bad but your treatment wasn't covered and you paid in addition to the cover?) then perhaps you base this on private healthcare costs. Did you have to do this as the NHS couldn't treat you, or couldn't treat you fast enough? If so, then you must be in a position to afford it and are not an impoverished woman looking to make money from 'surrogacy expenses' to cover rent, bills etc, and you felt physically able to do this twice before having another child you kept.

If it cost you 12k in a loss of earnings then I can only guess that you are freelance and lost work as a result of a difficult pregnancy following the previous 4, and for this I am sorry. Pregnancy and multiple pregnancies are risky as has been pointed out and can take a toll on your body. It is also unpredictable and months of something like for example hyperemis gravidarum would be hideous to cope with alongside raising a family and working.

Did you agree the 8k upfront for out of pocket expenses (and was this 8k for each surrogacy pregnancy?) or did you find there were costs unaccounted for and had to be added in as you went along? Did you get a monthly payment as has been noted in the consultation documents and appears to be standard procedure or did you have a different type of private arrangement?

I still don't understand how you got to 8k in loss of earnings as under a U.K contract you would have had sick leave, extended sick leave and maternity leave - was this somehow not applicable under your employment policy (and U.K. law) due to it being a surrogacy pregnancy?

OhHolyJesus · 01/11/2022 16:42

RedToothBrush · 01/11/2022 09:40

So how do they eliminate and prevent emotional blackmail and coercion in 'altruistic' surrogacies?

Just today I was reading this and granted it's not through an agency (done via an online arrangement) but I have heard of this happening from other court cases and to be honest I'm not sure how you easily you could prove or manage this remotely as pregnancy tests can be faked and women can have miscarriages.

news.stv.tv/west-central/louise-kimmet-from-glasgow-conned-couple-in-10000-surrogacy-scam-by-claiming-to-be-pregnant

Once surrogacy agencies have assisted with the forming of the 'team' and basic agreements are made (how many months you will try via IVF etc) then much of the hopes of the commissioning parents depend on the honesty of the woman who will become/pretend to become, the surrogate mother.

RedToothBrush · 01/11/2022 16:45

Wiluli · 01/11/2022 13:38

How I got 8k ? I just had my own pregnancy last year and racked up 12k in costs due to being ill .
8 k is less than 3 months of wages to most people ! Expenses include anything caused by pregnancy so loss of wages , extra childcare , clothes , extra transport for appointments. You really have nil clue in the legalities of surrogacy in the U.K.

I wonder whether you would have been this ill if you hadn't had two surrogate pregnancies you didn't need to have.

Spottybluepyjamas · 01/11/2022 16:52

I think it's also that the baby can't consent, even though though the adults do. My opinion is that it's essentially glorified child trafficking.

NiceParkingSpotRitaThanksJanet · 01/11/2022 16:57

AlienatedChildGrown · 01/11/2022 09:28

Correct. A kidney is not a baby.

Babies can be commission for a price.

Kidneys cannot. Well, outside of the black market you can’t.

Make that make sense. Creating tiny human beings to function as commodities / gifts is deemed not just ethical, but to be celebrated.

I think what many surrogacy/ donation activists, clients and human farmers forget is that babies become children, children become adults. The “seems fine” at 11 years old can look entirely different in later life.

I changed my mind (as in 180°) about gamete donation and surrogacy after reading 100s of stories written by adults (young and not so much) who were conceived, born and lived as a result of this trade. It’s fucking heartbreaking reading about a human falling apart on the inside because they tamped down everything they felt when young. From birth trained to the language required of them, which deliberately stripped away the reality of mother/father, dressed it up as “just cogs in the wheel of making you exist, emotionally irrelevant other than being grateful to them. Only for the “human created by mail order” to hit a wall at some point of their adulthood, quite a few when they became parents themselves.

As my username suggests, I’m more child-needs-centric than adult-wants-centric. My 180° turn on opinion happened because there were so many emotional overlaps between their experiences and my own. Except nobody tells me to be grateful for what was done to me. Whereas they run the gauntlet of adults on the commissioning, benefitting end of gamete donation/surrogacy constantly doing the “flying monkeys” & screeching at them. Calling them “vile”, “ungrateful”, the “occasional case” (they don’t say “acceptable tiny human collateral damage to get what adults want” but it is clear what they mean)

Yes there are children born of gamete donation and surrogacy who have no issue with how they came into being. Some of them grow into adults who will live a lifetime with no issues. The same is true of children of adoption, parental alienation, abandonment & bereavement. But only one of those is celebrated as a good thing to do to a person ON PURPOSE with an absolute refusal to heed the lessons we learned in the wake of attitudes towards all the others once being “no biggie”.

In time (too much time for the number of people left to deal with how they came to be, and who they were given to, like a present or a product) gamete donation & surrogacy will come to be perceived in the same way the Magdalene Laundries are today. They didn’t think they were doing wrong either. They thought they were helping, doing the right thing. That the kids are OK. No doubt they called their own detractors “vile”, “unfeeling” towards infertile couple and morally bankrupt too.

Exactly all of this. How do we know these children are 'fine' with no attachment issues or other problems as a result of how they came to be? For one they aren't adults yet and haven't become parents themselves (many issues can arise during this time).

What baffles me is how celebrated it all is and how the poor woman and baby are hardly mentioned when you hear of surrogacy in the news. The woman is barely acknowledged and the baby is almost like a prize to be won. It literally would be more ethical to commission kidneys - they aren't sentient beings!

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