Gay surrogacy

[Queenieoh]

My male gay best friend and his husband are using an American surrogate to have a baby. I am anti-surrogacy and finding it so hard to be supportive about it. I want them both to be happy but I really don't think this is the right thing to do. I know my opinion won't change their mind and most of our friends think surrogacy is fine. I guess I am not looking for advice, just some solidarity in the fact that buying a baby (for a huge sum of money) is wrong! They're even choosing the sex which is just so creepy IMO. Also, they're both very busy professionals so will undoubtedly have a nanny to raise the child... Why do people think they're entitled to have children?!

I would tell them: is

strongly support your desire to be fathers and I think you’d give a loving home to a child and bring them up well, but i feel so uncomfortable about the method you’re choosing as it’s akin to organ trafficking and can be harmful and exploitative to the woman who’s body is being rented. I am really ethically opposed to the method, which is why I have stepped back a bit. I am pro you being parents but not the method you’re choosing.

@boxuponboxout of interest are you opposed to sperm donation on the same grounds? Or just mum as mum carried the baby and was connected for so long?

They tend to know of their father even if they don't grow up in the same household as him. However, there is always an impact on children who do not have a relationship with one or both of their parents.

However, I do think it is unnatural in the extreme to remove a child from its birth mother. That is a primal bond and there are long-lasting effects on both the mother and child when they are separated at birth.

It's pretty unusual to not know who your mother is. This used to be seen as a disaster. Sure, lots of people don't know who their father is, but mothers?

And the purchasing parents could give the child this info and even contact. Why not? Because it suits them not to, and the whole surrogacy industry supports this.

In adoption, there is a huge emphasis on the child knowing his or her birth family origins. Most adoptions include at least letterbox contact every year. Adopters are expected to honour this arrangement.

To think surrogacy born kids are somehow different and don't need to know is wierd imo.

I remember seeing a news item on lots of babies born to surrogates in Ukraine iirc, during covid. Travel restrictions meant they couldn't be collected by their intended parents for months, and they were looked after in a nursery, with rows of cots.
The piece featured a distraught couple who were upset that they didnt know when they would be allowed into the country to collect their baby. But literally no comment was made about the poor babies that were being cared for by the dozen, by nurses, or hcps, who obviously would meet their basic needs.... but wouldnt actually have a parent figure to love them, as an individual child...or the mothers that gave birth to them.

The fact that something is normal and common is a really bad indicator of its rights or wrongs. Slavery was normal and common in much of human society for nearly all of history. It’s only in the last 200 years - a mere half a blink in human history - that slavery had been seen as wrong.

Similarly for even more of human history, there has been absolutely no sense of women having autonomy and choice over their own bodies. Rape of wives by their husbands was only made illegal in the 1990s in the UK.

A quick google search will show there are concerns by groups of donor conceived people about being conceived in this way. It is, at the very least, questions and concerns that don’t exist for non-donor conceived children.

I just think it’s wrong to create children deliberately to never know one of their biological parents.

Yes, I don’t agree with sperm donation either. It’s wrong to deliberately create a child not to know their mother or father.

Bloody hell, that article. Not read all of it, but that first couple. The sneering from them about the idea a child needs a mother, the sneering of critics of surrogacy being like ‘puritans’ who are against ‘sex work’ (prostitution), the entire focus on their entitlement rather than any thought of the child’s needs.

The surrogate who enjoyed the bonding with the gay men she was surrogating for and her deep sadness when they disappeared from her life straight after the birth. Her acceptance that ‘this is just the way it is’. The erasure of the surrogate as an inconvenient fact to the dispensed with asap.

If I hadn’t been against surrogacy before, that article would have convinced me.

Did you get to the part where the gay man dismisses adoption as "volunteering" and is adamant that shouldn't be expected of the gay community? He sees having bio children as a right, and surrogacy is the solution.

Yes, children in care do often have complex backgrounds and early trauma, but that is irrelevant to the issue of identity, of knowing your biological roots.

In fact, even with all the early trauma, it is still felt to be advisable for the children to know. And the direction of travel is more contact, particularly direct contact, not just face to face.

Often this is with siblings, aunts, grandparents if the birth parents aren't suitably able to take part.

It is just bizarre to me that there is all this practice in adoption which is just being ignored in surrogacy - like doing checks on the prospective parents!

Yes, the checks on parents. Safeguarding seems to be absent in surrogacy. One case I was reading about is of a single man using a surrogate. The article I read was not looking at his motivations or suggesting anything sinister. But my thoughts are its possible. Most sex offenders are men and paedophiles want to access children, even babies. I have certainly listened to an interview with a paedophile who was clear he wanted children as somehow he felt it would be 'ok' to abuse his own child. And of course, your own child is easy to access. Access to children is the difficult part for paedophiles who don't have their own kids.

The whole thing is just fraught with ethical issues which are just thrown out of the window in favour of 'the 'right' to parent.' (and the profit line or surrogacy companies).

It's really grim to think that children will be exploited in that way, and I say 'will; because with all these kinds of things if there is an opportunity for perverse sexual gratification, you can bet it will happen.

The lack of safeguarding for surrogate children just reinforces the idea that they are commodities.

It’s very selfish

There is no ‘right’ to have a child.

The lack of safeguarding for surrogate children just reinforces the idea that they are commodities

This.

I can not fathom the anti-surrogacy rhetoric on this thread. It is bewildering me.

There are huge considerations and possible issues with surrogacy, if not done correctly. But I see no harm whatsoever in a loving couple wanting to bring a child into the world.

The framing of surrogacy having harmful impacts on the child because it doesn't have its 'birth mother' in its life and also it being a form of human trafficking is abhorrent.

Plenty of single parent households raise wonderful children.
Science has proven that when males are the primary care giver, there is no difference in the way their amygdala responds to being in that role.
Children thrive from having a loving family, feeling wanted, having their needs met, and attributes promoted.

I do have some concerns around sex-selection but also recognise that there are benefits in doing this in some circumstances.

I do not accept that being in a same sex couple should exclude you from the right to family life.

I would consider being surrogate myself. I think you are being unreasonable and a terrible friend.

It shouldn’t be about what’s best for a parent but what’s best for the child.

I do not believe that every person ‘deserves’ or ‘has the right to create’ a child.

You would be a surrogate for a friend - that is how surrogacy started but now it is a huge international industry, with no rules or boundaries, and it leads to women being trafficked to be surrogates for one thing. And sex selection is the least of it - there is ahuge market in egg selection, where you can choose eggs from an Olympic athlete, or maybe a supermodel or Harvard graduate etc. It's eugenics by the back door. Most people just get together and have a baby and live whoever appears. These parents are making calculating decisions - what if the child doesn't measure up?

Man buying supermodel eggs so he doesn't have "ugly kids". https://nypost.com/2025/09/03/lifestyle/millionaire-pays-model-50k-for-eggs-to-avoid-ugly-kids/

Whilst I agree that not every person deserves to have children, taking away the right to choose surrogacy disproportionately affects gay couples. Do you believe that being gay means you do not have the right to create a child?

No, I have actually looked into signing up to a surrogacy agency in the UK which would be me asking as a host for a couple I do not know personally.

Surrogates should be screened and supported in their decision to carry a child for someone else. It should never be a forced situation and the fact that it does happen highlights that safeguards around the arrangement needs to be tighter. Which is difficult if someone is seeking international surrogacy. But that does not make surrogacy itself a negative thing. It just needs proper procedures in place.

It is the same for sperm doners. Wanted a good genetic profile doesn't mean you would be disappointed if said child doesn't align with the profile you chose. I very much doubt a couple who chooses eggs from a woman who is highly intellectual will love the child any less if they have struggles in that department.

Sensible people choose a partner to conceive with that has attributes they value. I don't see a huge difference.

The right? What does that even mean really? The fact is that they don’t have all the necessary things to make a child and shouldn’t be able to buy them. It’s not in the interests of the child.

It should not be about anyone’s ‘right’ to a child.

It should be about what’s best for the child, and a lot of evidence points to the fact that a child fares best when raised by their two biological parents in a low conflict and loving relationship.

Yes, it is very wrong regardless of their sexual preference. There is some shocking stories about surrogacy that so many people choose to ignore.

"Disproportionately affects gay couples". I wonder why that could be!

And quite frankly tough. We can't always get what we want.

I also don’t think it’s nice for a baby to removed from its birth mother - that must be traumatic for them, disrupting critical early bonding, causing distress, and potentially leading to attachment issues, anxiety, or regret, with significant psychological impacts on all parties due to the sudden separation from familiar sounds, smells, and touch.