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

All forms of surrogacy are banned in several countries.

That it’s not banned worldwide is abhorrent to me. We all agree buying and trafficking older children is offensive, but there’s a blind spot to newborns when it’s rich westerners who are the purchasers.

CrossStichQueen

She/he hasn’t

I’ll report your post so that MN can clear that up for you although a brief advanced search should have made that obvious we aren’t the same person

Clymene

There is nothing feminist about telling women what we can and can’t do with our own bodies. @Clymene . Nothing.

That idea assumes a default of choice being possible and doesn't protect women and babies from harm either. Its flawed logic

Society tells us all what we can and do with our own bodies. You can't sell yourself for sex. You can't sell your kidneys. You can''t drive without a seatbelt or bike without a helmet. You can't walk on other peoples land and you can't SELL A BABY that comes out of you (in civilised countries).

Fattoushi
But you can? That is the point surely…most societies agree that you can be a surrogate? The posters here are arguing that it should be banned in all circumstances but it’s not. And in that case, then there can be no argument that women also have to accept that you can’t abort a healthy foetus after (insert whatever number of weeks has been chosen by that country) weeks.

If we accept society has a role to play in limiting individual freedoms, then we accept that surrogacy can occur, abortions are limited, seat belts will be worn etc, kidneys can’t be sold but can be donated etc

RedToothBrush

Don’t almost all laws assume free will and choice? We usually write other laws to cover where that had been taken away, we don’t ban things in case someone abuses it.
We don’t ban all abortions because there are a small proportion of women who are forced into it by abusive partners.

CrossStichQueen

your post has been removed so hope that clears any confusion up for you. I do understand that 2 posters disagreeing with the MN hive is unusual but it happens!!

Coercive control laws don't.

Your argument doesn't track. We all know society limits out bodily freedoms. IT doesn't follow then that surrogacy can occur....the hammer hasn't nearly come down on that yet. In some countries all forms are illegal, in others you can literally sell a baby and legally lie about who the parents are. There is no consensus.
We're arguing it should be banned in all circumstances...and it might yet be.

I've read nineteenth century British newspaper articles, editorials and readers' letters, and all the same arguments about agency and bodily autonomy were used to justify children working in mines and factories or workers being exposed to dangerous, even lethal, chemicals. The most viciously libertarian capitalists used to argue that 7 year olds had the right to work down a mine instead of being 'forced' by interfering do-gooders into going to school. They argued that if people chose to work with bone-destroying, disfiguring, toxic chemicals then it was shameful meddling to deny them the opportunity.

When someone argues that something is a choice, I always question:

If that was the choice, what were the options?

Why do some categories of people make this choice and not other categories of people?

Was there a reward for making this choice and a punishment for not making it, or vice versa?

The upper middle class all educated their kids down the mines didn't they? Cos they had a choice... And those working class kids obviously chose education with that 'other money' they had.

Excellent post.

Yes yes yes yes

Conversation around this is rude and unneccessary.

No, conversation around this is absolutely essential. This is a human rights issue. Only poor women ever sign up to do commercial surrogacy and it is damaging to those women and the babies and society as a whole, to normalise this disgusting practice.

We need to talk a lot more about this. A lot more.

A lot more people on twitter are criticising Rebel - more so than the gay couples that buy a baby.

Yes of course. People are afraid to criticise gay couples who buy babies in case they get accused of homophobic.

Whereas no one is afraid of being accused of misogyny.

I think Jennifer Aniston is the only celeb I can think of that never did this its that normal now. Plenty of single celeb women have adopted Sheryl Crow, Sandra Bullock, Charlize Theron theres plenty of them and I like to think they find surrogacy as abhorrent as we do.

I am equal ops in who I criticise on this.

Its baby trafficking regardless of whether you are gay, lesbian, single or straight.

Anyone who indulges their ego and does it, gets the same criticism from me.

I'm not a great follower of celebrities but I think most of those adopters date from when adoption was the craze and predate the rise of surrogacy.

Many celebrity adopters (Mia Farrow, Angelina Jolie, Madonna) went to another country to scoop out an appealing baby. Did they think they were doing something special "helping" by giving orphans a home? (At least one of Madonna's did have family and there were issues around that).

With surrogacy they presumably use their own egg or male partner's sperm so it is very much about outsourcing pregnancy and childbirth to obtain "their own" baby.

Absolutely, this all normalises surrogacy and leads to the creation of a "breeder" class of woman and for the woman with a stellar career who would actually like to have her own children it will become much more difficult and literally socially looked down on. As well as the fact maternity leave is next to non existent in the USA and there are clear signs that the maternity rights we take for granted in the UK could easily be (and maybe) rolled back in the UK. With women like The Travelling surrogate boasting about having a baby and enjoying her year off to go travelling, well subsidised by the preferential maternity pay her company offers, you can see why some employers might have a WTF moment, especially if they are hit by a double whammy (as has happened in some cases that have been in the news/on tv) of having to give maternity benefits to the surrogate mother and parental/adoption leave to the commissioning parents. (I recall on The baby has landed both the SM and one of the commissioning fathers worked for Virgin).

Also agree with Mrs Jamin.

I try to make a point of using surrogate mother (although I occasionally slip up or get lazy typing) but I do think it is very important. Especially as, thanks to Freddie McConnell the status of a woman who has give birth has been confirmed by a judge to be a Mother.
If the Law Commission succeed in their plan to give parental rights, in law, at birth to commissioning parents where does that leave the woman who gave birth? Not even a birthing parent as she won't be a parent. And if she isn't a mother how can she claim maternity leave?

I really feel there are lots of very serious issues around the law and what it means for ALL women and the implications for ALL women are bad imo. We live in dangerous times.

For those who missed it first time around meet The Travelling Surrogate as she sold her story to the Daily Mail (who had been alerted by a thread on Mumsnet about her )

Wow. I have never heard of her but having read her blog I cannot help but feel that her own mothers choice to have 5 pregnancies for other people one which nearly resulted in her losing her life must have had a detrimental affect on her daughter who appears to be following in her mums foot steps.

Yes @CrossStichQueen she has absolutely been influenced by her childhood experiences of her mother's multiple surrogacies. I think she's the "only" child and has fond memories of post surrogacy holidays which had been gifts to her mother from commissioning parents. I would imagine most or all of her mother's surrogacies involved using her own eggs (maybe DIY home insemination as the TS herself did) as gestational surrogacy hadn't really taken off 20-30 years ago and yet she shows no curiosity (as far as I have seen) about her half siblings who must be out there somewhere.
She is adamant that this baby she gave birth to was not her own and was an altruistic gift. However it involved her own egg, so is absolutely in every way her own baby. And although she is a single woman with a good career and excellent maternity benefits somehow her "expenses" added up to £12k. It does make me laugh when you see SMs like her discussing their expenses (she did a YouTube about it) and they always list the vitamins, and maternity pads and maternity clothes. That's A LOT of vitamins, pads and maternity clothes.
Plus of course, the post birth gift of a holiday. I wonder if her CPs gave her a eurotravel rail pass or something to kick start the year of travel. I think we can be sure that if her maternity leave had been restricted to just six weeks to recover from LSCS (as I have seen suggested would be appropriate for surrogacy) that she would have been a lot less keen on the whole idea.
She originally talked of doing it five times like her mother did but as she ended up with an emergency LSCS she might need to reconsider that goal.