Explaining surrogacy to kids when I'm anti surrogacy

[Sussyknowsthemeaningoflife]

Apologies for the clunky title. We have just found out a member of extended family is expecting via surrogate. I am deeply deeply uncomfortable with this, but I'm capable of keeping my views to myself ( forever more?) But how on earth do I explain surrogacy to my own kids?
I'm not anti this new baby who is due any day, I'm not anti this family member. But I very strongly disagree with the route they have chosen to take.
My dd in particular (12) is going to watch me very closely and ask how I REALLY feel. We have age appropriate feminist discussions all the time. How do I discuss this with her?

Well it is

No need to worry, she knows that her aunt carried her ;) No it was implanted embryo. Youngest sister was told at 15 she would need hysterectomy and my parents paid for her eggs to be frozen as she needed more medical treatment that would have affected the ovaries. My older sister didn’t experience any problems but obviously this can happen and is something you are aware of going into. I guess we had this in our minds for years, it wasn’t unexpected infertility and my sister really struggled to be told she would never have children naturally at such a young age.

I am amazed that some people haven't ever contemplated why their might be an ethical consideration about commissioning a baby and renting the womb of a woman and all the risks entailed in pregnancy and child birth and then separating that child from its mother at birth and... can't understand why some people might be against it?

Yes and with adoption, efforts are made and other adults are involved to keep the baby with the birth mother, unless the child is at risk. The child is very much prioritised in adoption.

In surrogacy, the child is removed from the birth mother at birth, despite all we know about the mother and baby dyad and the fourth trimester.

I've heard the term 'state sanctioned' parenthood for both adoption and surrogacy and that explains it well for me - both are made possible by the state, (or not where surrogacy is banned) so why are the requirements and restrictions around both so wildly different?

@29052022J no one here is doubting how loved and wanted the children are but my own personal issue is for the welfare of the birth mother. All the talk is about the babies, the mothers are almost erased from the child's story. I'm in Ireland and I feel that down the line surrogacy will be looked at like the mother and baby homes.

I'm extremely against all forms of surrogacy op and my friend recently used a surrogate - a poor Ukrainian woman - and I found it incredibly hard to keep my mouth shut! But I did, somehow.

With the 12 year old I'd just keep it factual and brief. You could explain that while you don't agree with surrogacy, other people do and that's their choice.

It's hard.

@sashh yes I am with you in terms of using surrogates from third world countries, but if its a decision made by two consenting adults in the UK, where the surrogate isn't being taken advantage of, what's the moral issue here?

I also agree if the surrogate is getting pregnant using her own egg, then the baby is being taken away from her genetic mother. But where the baby has been formed from an implanted embryo, and the baby is born and placed into the warm and loving arms of the genetic parents, again whats the moral issue here? I bet that is a more loving environment than a number of babies are sadly born into who stay with their birth families.

Genuinely not trying to troll or be argumentative, I'm actually interested in understanding both sides to this argument. It's not something I had considered before. What I will say is that I may not be able to have a second child and would consider adoption in a few years time if I am not able to, so I am interested in this conversation based on some of the comments re. Adoption too.

The intention of surrogacy is completely different though, which will add a different dynamic for the child as they grow. The surrogate chooses pregnancy for altruistic or financial reasons. The surrogate child has future parents. Adoptees do not. A woman, who gives up or is forced to give her baby up for adoption is not likely to have purposefully become pregnant with a view to giving the child away.

I don’t agree with surrogacy. After rounds of ivf and a very difficult pregnancy, it didn’t occur to me to find a surrogate to gestate our remaining embryos. I just knew we would only ever have one child.

I forgot to add

surrogacy in families is often more honest and open from the beginning....

But it is also more likely to be coercive. In the case of your family @29052022J your sister experienced a loss of 'future fertility' at a very young age. That is of course tragic and your entire family was prepared for this as something that would need a solution of some kind at a later date. Both sisters offered themselves up as that solution and it may have been that also, from a young age, there was a subtle expectation that this would be something that would be done as a family. To come together to support the unfortunate sibling who had suffered. Families with strong bonds can also have some mild elements of coercion. This may not be the case with your family but stories of organ donation and surrogacy come up more often than I had expected when I first started learning about this.

I don't think these two things are not connected. If a 12 or 13 year old sister knew her sister aged 15 couldn't ever have children by giving birth herself she could have a couple of decades of thinking that she herself was the solution before it came to be a real situation that went ahead. This can be an individual, independent choice that has also been discussed as a family for a long time.

I find the fact of surrogacy actually quite distressing to think about. Everything, from the renting of a woman, the dehumanisation of that woman to a 'carrier' of a baby, the idea of buying and selling babies, the cruel separation of the baby and mother at birth, the baby being raised without knowledge of its birth parents - all of it is deeply distressing to me.

OP, I'm not sure how much help I would be in this situation, because I do find it all morally untenable, and don't know if I would or should keep those feelings to myself. I guess the best you can do is give her the facts and answer her questions as factually and honestly as you can. I don't think you can avoid the possibility of her having an emotional reaction or revulsion when she has all the facts, though. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, either. Although I do appreciate it's very complicated because it's within your family.

There are definitely moral issues with women in poverty being exploited for surrogacy - no doubt about it. But many women are happy to surrogate, even with the risks to their health. Also as another poster has said, ‘surrogacy’ has been around since the beginning of time with women family members of infertile wives being impregnated by the husband. It’s just that today it’s more medical and embryos can be implanted etc. It’s not agreeable for everyone a bit like abortion and the sex trade but it seems it’s always been there. The mother and baby homes/workhouse are more around the shame of young or single mothers being ostracised from society by the church and thank goodness we don’t have them anymore.

Keep it factual - keep your views to yourself unless asked, and then express them in a tactful way that will not cause family division. Stress above all the joy of new life and the love that you will all feel for this brand new human being.

When I was younger surrogacy was in its infancy and I remember thinking, its amazing for women who can't carry children, I remember seeing one woman who had done it 6 times or something.

Its only recently (last year) it has come up again. Since my first impression I have gone onto have a child, am much more aware of the dangers of carrying a child and giving birth for women in the UK let alone in other countries.

Other things in the world have happened as well, to make surrogacy come to the surface, although I have no doubt it has been bubbling away for years.

Basically I am not sure it has been on a lot of people's radars but I think its one of those things, that is going to become a big issue

Oh shit, she’ll be after my kidneys next. I won’t be giving them up!

Or you could express the controversy in a neutral way - some people think this, others think that. But ..... only if DD brings it up. You do not have to come down on one side or the other for your DD. YOU are going to have to be very careful how you express yourself.

But above all else we welcome this child and the happiness they will bring. That is the message she needs to hear.

@Cindy1802 "But where the baby has been formed from an implanted embryo, and the baby is born and placed into the warm and loving arms of the genetic parents, again whats the moral issue here?"

Pregnancies of this nature come with a lot more health risks and complications because they are not natural. For example in the situation you describe the birth mother is 4 times more likely to get pre-eclampsia which can be a life/threatening condition. So there is the moral issue. Women's health and sometimes lives are being put at risk.

I’m going to try very hard to be polite here but my blood is boiling. My baby was very much meant to be. Your views aren’t normal at all and I would NEVER normally say this but I would really recommend keeping the view that ivf children maybe weren’t meant to be in the future as it’s hurtful, nasty, and if you really struggled with infertility I would have thought you’d have known better than to say that on here.

re surrogacy a lot of you seem to know very little about it but be judging it very harshly

Set aside the individuals involved for a moment and the sad and hopeful stories that pull on the heart strings

Do you think it is ethical for children to be brought into the world under financial contract and property laws? Is that where we are with capitalism?

@Carla2601 I was not talking about your baby. I stated clearly that it was my INTERNAL struggle with how I felt about MY fertility journey.

I DO NOT think that IVF children were not meant to be. I struggled with whether MY child would have meant to be.

It is a perfectly valid concern that I had about MY issues.

Nothing I said was about YOU.

Most people seem happy to take medicine, vaccines or use products that have been tested on humans for financial compensation. Where do you draw the line? Denying your child medicine because it has been tested on humans that were paid to potentially have permanent health issues?

@Twizbe you said I struggled with the idea the child might not have been meant to be. So we’re supposed to assume you are able to think all ivf children were meant to be just not yours? It’s not a normal world view and it’s a nasty thing to say. Im not going to say I’ll agree to disagree. Things like that shouldn’t be written down here it’s a completely normal way to have a child it’s 2023 fgs!!!

Can I remind women posting that this is the feminism board? There is nothing abnormal about questioning big fertility or the commodification of women's bodies.

I think at 12 it's fine to say ethically you disagree with surrogacy everyone has different views but a baby is a blessing.

Just interested to know whether you feel the same about “what was meant to be” for other medical interventions? A baby that would have died at birth without heart surgery, a woman TTC having surgery to remove endometriosis scarring to become pregnant etc?

I'm not talking about YOU.

I am allowed to have had concerns about undergoing a medical procedure. I'm allowed to feel and explore those emotions. Don't you DARE tell me how to feel about my own fertility journey.

I was not talking about you or your child or anyone else's IVF baby.

I was saying that i, ME, NOT YOU, struggled with a feeling that my body wasn't letting me get pregnant, maybe I shouldn't be pregnant, maybe I was playing god and maybe I shouldn't do that.