Couple angry over surrogate DNA mix up - don't want child because of their race. Opinions?

[tirednhungry247]

Surrogate gives birth to wrong child after hospital mix-up
mol.im/a/7369307

So saddened and shocked for the family expecting and the little baby. What do we think is the right thing to do here?

Crikey that's a mess! I'm not sure what the answer is. The child doesn't belong to the surrogate, she was only carrying it for them. The child isn't biologically the parents. Whoever the bio parents are, they didn't know someone was carrying their child. There's no good solution here.

Never the man's wife is the baby's biological mother.

@TrainspottingWelsh - in the last reported mix up no surrogates were used and the mother (to whom there were no genetic ties to the kids) wanted to give them up too. The issue in common with both mix ups was race - pretty sure if the babies had been the same race as the parents in both cases they would have been kept. Not that the reasons behind this are relevant - IVF is expensive and based on a contract of trust. If the clinic cocks up then that contract is null and void.

But does it not sound horrendous to you @Teddybear45 that you're talking about breach of contract in relation to actual human beings? That's where this is all kinds of wrong. Babies aren't commodities at all & shouldn't be able to be bought, sold or returned due to breach of contract. It's disgusting.

@BrienneofTarthILoveYou - that’s easy for you to say if you can, presumably, easily conceive / carry your own child. Ivf and surrogacy is difficult at the best of times and I can’t imagine the pain the biological parents would have had to go through, the false hope, only to be told the babies aren’t there’s in the first place. These decisions to give up a baby aren’t easy in the slightest but this is the US and not the UK - there may be huge legal implications if the biological dad decides he wants to be involved later on.

@Teddybear45 - that’s easy for you to say if you can, presumably, easily conceive / carry your own child.

So you think just because a person has difficulty conceiving that it's OK to exploit vulnerable women and buy a child? I really think that anyone who sees surrogacy as a commercial transaction is not fit to be a parent.

@whyamidoingthis - did you mean to sound cruel? I hope not. People don’t use surrogates for fun or a first resort. It’s usually a last ditch attempt to have kids and in the UK generally isn’t even attempted until after adoptions fails.

For all those saying surrogacy is immoral and should be banned - it's easy for you to say that when you've happily had your own kids, no problems.

My sister in law is going through the surrogacy process now. She had cancer 5 years ago which means she can no longer conceive nor carry her own child, and she is not allowed to adopt under UK law.

She is utterly desperate to have a child and after years of heartbreak and scrimping and saving the money she has found a surrogate in the US. The egg and sperm are hers and her husband's, the surrogate is just carrying the child for them as she cannot. The surrogate has 3 kids of her own, and wants the money to send her eldest to an Ivy League university. She has easy pregnancies and was registered with a surrogacy agency before they even made contact - no coercion involved and she gets a handsome payment at the end of it.

Just stop and think before you start handing out black and white judgement. It's so easy to be harsh on the internet.

I wasn't talking about IVF @Teddybear45 but surrogacy - the exploitation & endangerment of women (generally poor) should be illegal in my opinion.

Why is she not allowed to adopt @ArtichokeAardvark?

I feel desperately sorry for your sister but doesn't mean it's right to exploit another woman to get what she wants. It would be different if a sister / mum / friend was carrying the baby on her behalf without payment involved but done out of love & compassion. However, a poor woman in another country using all she has available to her to support her family. How can you not view this as exploitation?

@ArtichokeAardvark - exactly. I hate all this judgement on here. Easy to judge a stranger when you’re hiding behind a fake name. None of the people saying ‘surrogacy is immoral’ on this forum would have the guts to post it on SM in their real names or talk about it so vehemently in their real lives. I just hope, one day, they or someone they love doesn’t have to go down the surrogacy route.

For all those saying surrogacy is immoral and should be banned - it's easy for you to say that when you've happily had your own kids, no problems.

The thing is, you don't really know what anyone posting here's circumstances are. And if an infertile person who'd chosen to adopt or just not have children at all spoke out against surrogacy the goalposts would change to 'it's easy to say when you're happy with adoption, some people feel a strong and overwhelming urge to have their own biological children' or 'it's easy for you to say when you've clearly never felt the strong urge to have kids so can easily decide to just not have them'.

Surrogacy is abhorrent and should be banned

www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-20/ukraines-commercial-surrogacy-industry-leaves-disaster/11417388?pfmredir=sm&fbclid=IwAR09qWbfNOkomkYL5FSEsRNm5_wY9Ts8SRB4VfAZ54kzGvOUHH5kScK9YeU

I know being unable to conceive is heartbreaking - I sadly know many women and families in that position. None of them have paid another woman to risk her life for them.

@BrienneofTarthILoveYou - Cancer survivors often can’t adopt. I have an illness that may / may not cause health issues and so I can’t adopt either. It’s very hard to adopt in the UK.

Babies should not be bought and sold. Women's bodies should not be used as incubators. This whole process devalues human lives to commodities

This. In spades

@BrienneofTarthILoveYou she cannot adopt because she had cancer and is a carrier of the BRCA1 gene so UK adoption agencies view her as too high a health risk to adopt a child. By law the agencies carry out full health assessments and she couldn't find one even to consider her.

Every case is different, but from what I hear, the surrogate is not some 'poor woman'! She has been a surrogate once already and views it as a means of securing the finances for her own children's future. And if she finds it easy, why shouldn't she?

artichoke but that is why I don’t agree with it. We shouldn’t be in a position where somebody is making that choice because they feel they have to for the benefit of their existing dc. Someone wealthy doing it for altruistic reasons and expenses is entirely different to taking advantage of someone else’s vulnerability.

Morally it’s no different to buying a kidney. Hell yes I’d want to buy one if it was my child’s life on the line, but that doesn’t mean we should live in a world where I have that choice or that the person desperate enough to sell it has that choice. Same for surrogacy.

That doesn’t mean I don’t sympathise with her, nor am I blaming her for wanting to. I just don’t believe it should be an option. There’s a reason the states donor registries aren’t dominated by wealthy women wanting to donate the fee to charity.

@ArtichokeAardvark & @Teddybear45 thanks for the explanation - I didn't know that cancer survivors weren't allowed to adopt at all & I'm truly sorry that it's not an option for you / your sister.

It doesn't change my view on surrogacy at all, but please believe that I'm not trying to be deliberately hurtful to you.

Nobody is hiding behind user names. I would clearly say to anyone in real life that I am against surrogacy. It is not an unusual position. Those running all the European countries listed who ban surrogacy aren't hiding either. Buying children is not ok.
There is always judgement involved when we discuss the rights of children.

So what number of abandoned and rejected babies is acceptable as collateral damage in order for all the nice people to have children?

Some of the parents stories are heartbreaking and I wouldn't wish that on my enemy, and I'm sure many babies grow and lead many happy,fulfilling years in loving families.

But what about the ones left behind?

According to Natalia Syvoraksha, and in child welfare documents seen by Foreign Correspondent, the Americans sent a legal letter asking that Bridget's life support be switched off when she was five months old and gravely ill.

One parent went as far as demanding the baby to be taken off life support AFTER abandoning them.

What about the ones with disabilities,left to struggle often in countries with inadequate support?

What about the ones separated from their twin? "Sorry love,mummy and daddy only wanted your sister" .

What about the ones that neither surrogate or parents want and end up in foster homes/orphanages?

As much as I can empathise and feel for everyone struggling to conceive I can't support surrogacy when it means that babies are collateral damage,discarded as some kind of reject product,not fit for consumption.

It's easy for you to say stealing someone else's newborn from a hospital is wrong, you've never been infertile and desperate to raise a child from birth.

The fact that a desire for children is a commonly held, deep seated one doesn't mean it's OK to go to any lengths to meet it. No one would allow the above as a reasonable argument - the equivalent argument for surrogacy doesn't immediately work either.

I appreciate there's a massive difference between surrogacy and stealing someone's baby without their knowledge / approval, but it shows there are some ways of making a family no one would back - it's not automatically horrible or unsympathetic to not support surrogacy.

Teddybear45 it's all about what adults want in your posts, with the adults wanting to buy a baby the only humans worthy of empathy and the designer baby a commodity to be bought because they want one and sent back if no delivered as ordered.

Lots of things in life are absolutely shit and life isn't fair. This does not make it ethical or indeed human to use poorer women as incubators nor, even more importantly, to purposely create human babies intending to remove them from their gestational mother at birth, deny them the fourth trimester, shrug off massive issues this may store up for the individuals created in later childhood, adolescence and adulthood, and send them off to foster care or to be adopted if the "commissioning parents" don't get what they paid for.

There is no justification for renting, buying and selling human beings, and reducing them to items to be thrown away or sent back for a refund if not as ordered, no matter how shit the hand life's dealt the would be purchaser.

There are differences in surrogacy between the UK and the USA. USA surrogacy is very commercial, in the UK we do not have that. I have no issue with surrogacy in the UK, which is often from a friend or family member assisting a couple.

To be honest, I have no issue with commercial surrogacy if the surrogate willingly enters into it, as a pp has experienced. I do have issue where women, particularly in third world countries, are exploited as surrogates.

I understand the desire to have your own child. Not everyone has that (my SIL has absolutely no interest in having children) but I do. As others have said, when you have fertility issues, you often get told to adopt, but a lot of infertile couples are not able to adopt because of that - for us the issue was from a medical condition DH has which meant in the UK we cannot adopt. It is not a simple option and children in care need a certain type of person to adopt them and not everyone is cut out for it.

We had IVF and I am currently pregnant, so surrogacy is not something we have needed. Clinics in the UK are very stringent, but there is always a risk that the embryos were muddled and I have someone else's. I can tell you know that if that had happened and this baby turns out to not be biologically mine, they are not taking her from me and it will be over my cold dead body that I give up my baby.

I understand that you may not have the same connection with a baby via a surrogate, but to want a child and have a child (even if only half a genetic match) I cannot understand any circumstance where you would want to give the child back. I wonder whether it is just the father who wants that.

I do believe that the rules around surrogacy should be stricter and that there is no 'refund policy' - if you create the child you take the child regardless of how the child arrives. Yes it may be awkward for him to have people questioning the genetics/affair, but that is their burden to carry, not grounds to give up a baby.

@Teddybear45 - did you mean to sound cruel? I hope not. People don’t use surrogates for fun or a first resort. It’s usually a last ditch attempt to have kids and in the UK generally isn’t even attempted until after adoptions fails.

Do you really think that it is acceptable to view surrogacy as a commercial activity, whereby the baby is a product to be bought? I stand by my statement. Women who sell their services to surrogacy services are generally vulnerable. Exploiting these women is wrong.

Add to that, a baby is not a product to be bought or sold, whether through surrogacy or dodgy adoption services. Slavery was abolished quite some time back. I would rather not return to the days when human beings are bought and sold.

Nobody has a right to be a parent. While I sympathise with people who can't have children themselves, that does not mean they are entitled to exploit vulnerable women or turn children into commercial products in order to satisfy their desire to have children.