Smug British couple using Indian Surrogate as 'receptacle' for their biological child

[Romilly70]

This article was in the DM (yes I do read it, although I know it's shit).

I was hoping this was a spoof article given their names.
I just cannot believe that people like this woman actually exist!

Iheardthat - exactly that - great post

Of course it's a life changing sum of money in India.

It would take some people six years to earn that amount

It's really not that life changing. It wont improve their standard of life by much. You can't buy a good house, or a good car or afford good schools with that much money. Also the clinics are not transparent about how the money is spent.

It's just a money making enterprise or the people who run th clinics. For them it's hugely beneficial.

saintlyjimjams - For a Westerner, a lot has to ride on choosing a clinic committed to medical ethics. I'm reassured by the requirement that fees paid to the surrogate mother must benefit her personally and are not released except for this purpose. In addition to the clinic not wishing to coerce women, it actually has little incentive to do so, as there is a high applicant/surrogate ratio. There are different degrees of certainty of course. The ideal would be to get an independent psychologist to take a look at the screening programme. Perhaps that would be possible, if enough women demanded it.

Perhaps just as we have a wide vocubulary to discuss the context in which different sexual relations occur ranging from marriage to rape, we also need to develop a wider vocabulary to describe the different forms surrogacy can take to avoid causing offence to the loving and to ensure we shame those who expoit the vulnerable.

Just as sex spans a range of moral, ethical & emotional boundaries from taking place within a loving, equal relationship to the exploitation & rape of a helpless trafficked woman with no real choices so does surrogacy.

At one extreme you have the totally altruistic gift from one woman to another, because the surrogate is an incredibly selfless human being. This form of surrogacy I wholeheartedly support. At the other you have the cold hearted exploitation of wombs for rent via 3rd world women with little choice in the matter. This latter form is I believe very, very wrong.

The middle men in these transactions should be prosecuted and punished to the full extent the law can allow. It's exploitation of the desperate in terms of BOTH parties - the purchasers of the child and the surrogate.

The issues of profit versus the optimum medical care for the surrogate, the amount of funds paid recieved by the surrogate, the fate of any disabled children born. The care of the surrogate's existing children. The choice as to whether or not be a surrogate in the first instance. The role of the husband in cultures where women may not have self-determination or control of their own fertility. All these issues have been raised, there are many more.

Sometimes you just have to draw a line and say - you know what? This is very, very wrong and shouldn't be happening. It's horrible. I used harsh language further up the thread as I believe it is totally justified. Evil occurs because good men stand back & say nothing & all that jazz.

......someone is going to start mentioning the Nazis soon.

darksecret thank you for being so open.

Maryz I couldn't agree with you more re: regulation, but even if the whole process was regulated, would it be possible to stop women being forced into it by their families?

I'm not morally opposed to paying for surrogacy in theory, but actually ensuring that women are the driving force behind the decision to become surrogates is always going to be difficult at best. For me there are parallels with the open adoption system in the US whereby the birth mother is pushed into giving up the child due to money troubles.

I really do believe people need to accept they can't have everything the want, however much they may want it

It supprises me how often you hear this from people who have children, I have never heard any women struggling with infertility say this.

I can see the woman in the article comes across as cold but so what, that won't change things for the surrogate mother, octavia could be lighting a candle and praying/positive thinking for the surrogate mother every night and it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference. Octavia had been through a really horrid experience and you could see that in the way she said she would be deverstated if the pregnancy didnt go to term. If she had had her own pregnancy after such a late miscarriage she may well have been detached and cold.

I would be a surrogate mother if I had the option, it's illegal in sweden. For me my own struggle with infertility made me realise the desperation couples go to to have a baby (probably no one would want my funny shaped womb anyway) I have adopted siblings and for me I wanted a child, it didn't have to be my biological child but i respect that for some couples the genetics or having a newborn are important and that is for them to decide.

I am pregnant at the moment with DC1 and I love it! I am much calmer and have been lucky so far with my symptoms, I havn't given birth yet so that could change my mind, but at the moment I feel like I could do this for another couple to help them build a family. I know people feel differently about their baby whilst they are pregnant, I feel tenderness for my baby and I like feeling him kick but I wouldnt say im fully bonded with him, if I was pregnant with a baby who was not mine I could veiw it as babysitting.

I have met a few south east asian nannies since living in Sweden, often they have children at home and move to a european country to look after other peoples kids long term. They dont see their kids for years on end, they send home money, but they tend to get an aupairs wage so it is pittance really in comparison to what I earn working in childcare. I think if they had the chance to spend 9 months growing a baby and then going back to their family that would be much better than what they have to do now.

People who say we shouldn't use money to buy what we want should only say this if they never buy clothes made by poor children and never buy unethical food.

I have met a few south east asian nannies since living in Sweden, often they have children at home and move to a european country to look after other peoples kids long term

That's an interesting parallel, I saw an awful lot of that in NYC. It's really a whole other thread entirely but in the sense that these women often do leave their families for years and then no doubt often grow to love the children that they look after, but are never considered part of that family...well, I suppose it's just another example of western exploitation, but yes, it does raise the question of, is it so much worse to 'grow' your child in the body of a woman in a developing country when many people are fully accepting of women from these countries to come and raise their children for them?

Sorry if I'm getting off topic, should probably go to bed.

Darksecret I wish you all the best of luck, thank you for your informative posts.

My sister is married to an Indian national, they are both based in the UK and she has been considering using a surrogate after several miscarriages. I dont think she has looked into it in too much detail at the moment, but it has made me think a lot about this subject and your post raises some important thoughts that I might share with her about protecting the surrogate.

Maryz your posts are very eloquent. Having gone through ten years of infertility myself, I always suspect those who say "just because you want a baby doesnt mean you have a right" are not those who suffer from years of infertility themselves somehow.

I think the whole article has been slanted to make Octavia sound terrible. It is disappointing as it discourages people who have used surrogates, egg or sperm donors or other fertility treatment from being open about it. I see this a bad thing.

In theory I don't have a problem with commercial surrogacy. But I do worry about the situation in India as it is so unregulated.

If it could be regulated (not least so that the women got most of the money) then it could be a good thing.

Incidentally Jennifer Weiner (who wrote "In their shoes") has just published a book about a fictional commercial surrogacy. (Called something like "then came you"). It's very interesting.

Surrogacy in the UK is very tightly controlled and the rights of the surrogate are protected. I find it sad that couples are prepared to go abroad where laws don't protect the surrogate. Ie. choosing a country where the surrogate can't change her mind about handing over the baby.

However painful infertility is, there are other issues. The pain of women who cannot hold the baby they have given birth to is real.

Tbh the article makes me think we need to reassess surrogacy and adoption laws/rules/ethics etc right here in the UK and potentially the EU as a whole.

Something is seriously broken in a system that unwittingly directs its citizens to make choices like that described in this article. While I may have offended maryz with my harsh language towards the expolitation of Indian women, I did take on board the current barriers to transparent, reliable surrogacy taking place right here in the UK. The current UK adoption process seems similarly unfit for purpose in many respects.

An open and honest public debate into sorting out our "own backyard" in this area seems a good place to start; as if it were possible for more to find a surrogate/adopt here in the UK the number of potential Western customers for these overseas "clinics" would reduce somewhat I would hope?

Infertility affects 1 in 6 couples in the UK currently I believe, so it's not an issue that impacts a tiny minority of lives. The more open discussion on the subject the more help and emotional support people will be able to access, and the more good practice will become the norm hopefully. As it is currently people just seem to be left to negotiate a minefield in isolation.

Bochead (& crackcrackcrak) I am with you on this.
Developed & developing nations need to discuss the issues involved in cross border surrogacy and act uniformly to ensure the vulnerable are protected as much as possible.

Not just surrogacy though, adoption & fostering also need to be looked at.

The couple in the Mail have been portrayed rather unfavourably. I think they believe what they want to and are sticking their heads in the sand so they don't see anything that could cast any doubts in their minds about the path that they've taken. I feel for them. I have friends in similar positions. One set took the surrogacy option but in UK. The other couple split up, probably because of the infertility issues.

I could discuss this all night but need to get to bed. Also am on phone so hard to get all I want to say down! Dratted auto correct keeps changing what I've painstakingly typed! So on that note I will bid you all good night!

a lot of people battle with infertility and dnt have such little compassion for fellow humans. however you dress it these surrogates are going thru a very risky process for not much.

to use infertility as an excuse to exploit very vulnerable, poor women is horrible. also the couple in the article already have a child.

also why is so little of the money going to the surrogate? only 3000 out of the 20000

and calling the place baby factories says it all.

no maryz i have been TTC for 5 years now with no children, but i still have some compassion for other humans. also i have been in a developing country for many years and also been to India so i am very doubtful of how the regulations will be enforced.

i doubt the woman sees much of the 3000£.

poor women have next to no rights and one would hope that the educated couples going down surrogacy route would ensure that the women are not forced and get a fair share. informed consent is drilled into us in the west. the same should be extended to the Indian women.

i do agree that more should be done to bring it in the open but the quotes from the couple are just vile. completely without any empathy. and saying that they hope she will buy a house is naive in the extreme. you cannot buy a house for that amount. its laughable. the indian surrogate in the article dsnt have a husband so what will happen to her children if she has medical problems bcz of the surrogacy or even if she dies?

i dnt oppose surrogacy but it is extremely naive to think that the indian surrogates are getting the rights surrogates in the west are.

the reason i mentioned their child is that she has already gone thru pregnancy so how can she say that the surrogate is just a vessel, and has no connection to the child. i guess i wasnt expecting her to be so cold about it.

Actually nancy I was thinking more handmaids tale.......

I want must have seems to be the mantra of the day these days.

MummytoKatie I read Then Came You and also found it very interesting.

The thing foremost in my mind was that where I live the names Dominic, Orlando, and Octavia are all...well...I don't say "chavvy", but if I did that's what they'd be. Anyway, not the point of the article! :)

I am also not opposed to commercial surrogacy, but something about this doesn't sit right with me.

Something about this reminds me of Michael Marshall Smith`s novel, Spares.

If the clinic is so unscrupulous to be paying the mother less than a call centre wage in India for carrying the child what assurances do the English family have that their unused eggs and sperm are not growing in other wombs too, to be sold off to the highest bidder???

Are there any actual reasons given by those opposing the statement that children are not a right? I don't have kids but agree that they are not a right, or a commodity, no matter how much you want them. I know it is hard when you really want something but that's not a reason in itself.

In my opinion renting a womb is unethical, unless it is in the close friend or relative scenario.