Rebel Wilson has had her first child via surrogate

[ShirleyPhallus]

Rebel Wilson (who I love) has announced via IG that she’s had her first baby via surrogate this week. Lovely for her to have a baby.

But the topic of surrogacy rears its ugly head and once again I’m wondering why so many rich and famous women choose to have a surrogate. Rebel has had significant publicity with her weight struggles and is currently in a relationship with a woman (she doesn’t name her as co-parent).

she hasn’t publicly said why she used a surrogate but I feel a bit uncomfortable by this as being a step yet again

I’m not disagreeing with you on surrogacy.

But you should know that in the UK, children can join the armed forces. You can start your application to join the army, navy or Air Force at 15 years and 9 months old. And if you’re accepted you’re bound to serve for six years. Bound by a contact you signed as a minor.

You can join at 16 - let that sink in. Two years before you’re considered old enough to vote, to sign contracts, to buy an 18 rated video game or watch a violent film. The UK is the only country in Europe, the only member of NATO and the only permanent member of the UN Security Council to do this.

Other than from the Quakers there is precious little opposition to or awareness of this. Which suggests than in the UK plenty of people are comfortable with their country allowing children too young to make the decision to sell themselves into six years of potentially fighting in a war.

I am well aware that you can join the army at 16 in the UK. That is wrong and should not be allowed. I have been in opposition of this for as long as I have been aware of it, which is a very long time now. Not sure of how any of that is relevant to surrogacy though.

Which suggests than in the UK plenty of people are comfortable with their country allowing children too young to make the decision to sell themselves into six years of potentially fighting in a war.

For many people of a certain age signing up or being unemployed were the only options available and as deployment doesn't happen until 18 it was and maybe still is seen as a career choice.

I dont agree that the armed forces at 16 should be the only career available to some people but I also know many who have loved their career and believe it was a good choice at 16.

However this is a thread about surrogacy so I shall not labour the point.

Don't you need parental consent to join the army at 16?

I remember contributing to a consultation on surrogacy in the UK a few years ago. Does anyone remember any outcome from that?

It’s relevant because a previous poster said that the idea that you can do something that puts you in physical risk in exchange for money - like joining the army or surrogacy - is widely accepted as okay.

You said this point wasn’t relevant because people could chose to join the army because they felt the external threat (of invasion perhaps or war) was great enough to justify putting themselves in physical danger.

My point is that in the UK we allow children who are too young to decide how much risk they can tolerate or whether it’s worth it to overcome the external threat, to sign up. It’s great that you’re aware of the fact that we allow children to do this in the UK and oppose it, but it’s not widely opposed at all so must be widely tolerated.

I guess it’s also relevant to the surrogacy question because in both situations the rights / the negative impacts on children are being neglected or not considered and this is widely tolerated in the UK in the case of child soldiers.

It is literally the buying and selling of humans.

Ukraine was, until recently, a huge centre for surrogacy. Mainly because you could buy an egg, buy a woman to gestate the egg, and buy a birth certificate at the end of if it that named you, the "commissioning parent" as the actual mother, with no biological, genetic or physical connection to the child, all fully legal in Ukraine.
All for about 50, 000 euro. A fraction of which went to the poor women exploited for their bodies (and abandoned and unpaid when things went wrong).

How is that NOT buying and selling babies?

@PlumPudd and I agreed with you that children aged 15 signing up for the armed forces is wrong. As is surrogacy. The fact that both are legal in the UK is an issue and something I'd like to change. In my original post, when mentioning people taking part in medical trials or fighting in wars, I was referring to adults, not the unusual case of minors in the UK being eligible to sign up.

@CrossStichQueen

Yes for many kids who join at 16 it’s a choice between signing up or being unemployed. This isn’t a good thing it’s an awful thing. It means the kids that make this choice are making it even less freely, and are more likely to be vulnerable and have few other options. So it’s very exploitative. In much the same way that surrogacy probably appeals to women who have few other options and need the money.

You don’t get many well educated middle class kids joining the army at 16 and you don’t get many well educated middle class women choosing to be surrogates.

Yes they don’t get deployed and put into kill and be killed situations until they are 18, but they are bound to serve until they are 22. Bound by a choice they made when they were a child, and very ill equipped to make that decision on their own behalf, let alone on behalf of their 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22 year old self.

It’s not very unusual in the UK, just under a third of the armed forces new recruits are under 18. That’s nearly two thousand kids a year

I meant unusual in that many other countries don't allow it, not unusual in how many people join this way.

Plum you make some great points but you are derailing the thread.

I haven’t yet read the whole thread but wanted to add that the reason for her weight loss a couple of years ago was because of fertility problems. She did a really interesting IG Live on it. She was approaching 40, very overweight and wasn’t conceiving.

Then she lost the weight but was dating a bloke who wasn’t serious about her. That ended and then… well you know the rest.

I haven’t looked into it but epigenetics and pregnancy is an interesting topic when it comes to surrogacy. How the prenatal environment alters gene expression. I don’t know if it has been looked at in the context of surrogacy but there is a lot out there on epigenetics and pregnancy.

I think it’s interesting and relevant that in the UK the majority of people happily tolerate potentially vulnerable people choosing to put themselves at risk for money (surrogates and army recruits, not to mention Amazon pickers, prostitutes, deliveroo drivers etc.)

And that in the UK we happily tolerate things happening to children that some people think they aren’t morally or developmentally able to consent to (being born to a surrogate or signing up for the army).

Says a lot about what the UK public think is okay

You need to look harder - there's plenty of studies. Removing a baby from its mother causes trauma and changes to the brain.

Why are you so intent on denying this?

Anyway, derailing over. Though there are a LOT of surrogacy threads on mumsnet and not a lot about other child rights issues. It does seem to be one of those mumsnet hot button issues

Plum like many I have the ability to care and be concerned about many different things and on this topic about surrogacy I am like many giving on opinion on that. I will if you choose to start a thread about child exploitation by the armed forces or Amazon join that thread too but please don't be childish because you have been asked not to derail a thread.

Surrogacy feels very exploitive. As a ftm of a 4 month old little girl, I cannot imagine carrying a baby for 9 months, giving birth to it and then handing it over...

I know lots of the real housewives of XYZ have had their children via surrogacy. Mainly to maintain their figures and lifestyle.

I guess it's sad that there are so many children in the world awaiting adoption...

@Walkden this may have already been said as I’m just catching up but in case it hasn’t the issue isn’t what the child remembers, it’s how its developing nervous system is affected. Additional stressors on infants affects their brain development so more stress early on leads to more reactive nervous systems later on and that can lead to the full range of mental health difficulties.

The difference is surrogacy created these conditions on purpose. When a mother dies in childbirth, it's acknowledged this is a loss for the baby. While breast milk is optimal, if a baby can't be fed breast milk from its mother, the next best choice is found.

It's sad to see so many women cheerleading for their own disadvantage.

When women's bodies can be used as commodities, it is bad for ALL women. Even the ones who are using other women.

If you want to know if it's exploitative, have a look at how many rich women are queuing up to be surrogates.

I had a stillborn baby, and terrifying pregnancies with my subsequent children.

I still don't feel that I had any "right" whatsoever to have a child.

It's absolutely grotesque that celebrities like Rebel are buying babies, passing them to Nannies to raise and taking the bits that they want to from raising kids. Who thinks of what's best for the child?

Of course she did. She was prepping the world for the fact that she was renting a woman's womb.

France's family expanded again with the addition of Ismail, who was carried by a surrogate — a process that he says was shockingly expensive and stressful. (A surrogacy can cost between $90,000 and $130,000.)

back to Tam France, apparently buying a womb and risking a womans life, health and quality of life is "shockingly expensive and stressful".

And now he's considering doing it all over again, though this time outsourcing all the bits he doesn't like, such as night feeds and childcare.

Misogyny on full tractor beams.

It's got nothing to do with you or anyone as to why she chose that route, however she has publicly stated it is due to health issues. Conversation around this is rude and unneccessary.