Surrogate couple filmed without permission on reality TV and humiliated by comments about her body

[Kokeshi123]

variety.com/2018/biz/news/flipping-out-bravo-trent-1202844060/

Wow.

According to the suit, the producers agreed to that condition, but then filmed it surreptitiously from behind a curtain. Neither she nor her doctor were aware that the cameras were rolling as the baby was born. She can be heard on the show screaming in pain, and according to the suit her blurred-out vagina is shown on screen.

Trent said she was unaware the birth had been filmed until well after it had aired, when a business associate informed her of it at a networking event. She then watched clips online, and was humiliated and distraught.

The gestational surrogate was bringing a child into the world for a TV celebrity couple Jeff Lewis and Gage Edward. His comment on Twitter in response to this has been "I guess we won’t be using her again" (yes, really).

twitter.com/JLJeffLewis/status/1006945374865539072

I am fine with properly-regulated altruistic surrogacy (expenses-only), but cases like this may perhaps draw our attention to the problems that can occur with commercial surrogacy.

So awful, how are they going to raise a daughter without abusing her with this attitude to women? Hope someone's reported their comments to the us equivalent of social services.

I came back to this thread as I kept thinking about it. Some of the worse misogyny I've experienced has been from gay men, eg the editor of Pink News told me he was against abortion and it's women fault if they get pregnant, accidentally or not they should be made to have the baby. Lovely chap he was.

I think with all the celebs using surrogacies, it's seen as common place option to buy a woman's body and use to create a child. We don't have "a right" to have a child, unfortunately some of us can't, like me, it's painful and it is sad but that is life. I could have down the surrogacy route in another country, I have the means but would never see it as ethical. Some countries have banned it, I think Thailand after that awful story about the Down's syndrome baby boy from that Australian couple a few years ago. And in the U.K. there are different laws, but I'd love to see maternal health orgs/women's charities pushing for the end of this exploration loop hole in other places, eg India, South East Asia and South America.

I'd love to say the USA as well but frankly they spearheaded this whole thing and as country don't seem to like women very much, they are unlikely to ban or control this.

I've been thinking about this a lot today too.

I don't like the way the women are generally referred to as 'surrogates' and not women or surrogate women or surrogate mother. To me it's referring to her not as a person, but as the job she is doing. Surely the relationship should be more personal than that and it's not just a job, it's all consuming for the best part of a year and could lead to long term health problems.

Maybe it is different in America, surrogacy seems more common and more of a financial transaction?

The way she was filmed, the comment and allowing the comment to be broadcasted, shows how little respect the makers of the show had for her.

It's a total lack of empathy and understanding of women. Do they realise and do they care that pregnancy for a woman risks physical harm, mental harm and also risks death? It's a huge ask of another human being. Their comments are appalling and show a cruel lack of regard for the person risking everything for them.

He will face absolutely no comeback with this - if he had insulted the body or appearance of any other group of people his career would be finished. But women's bodies are fair game - who cares?

And the sad thing is even women will read this and defend him, so used are they to comments being made and insults flung about them that it won't even register.

Lewis is probably sitting at home wondering what he said that was so wrong.

I don't think he's even thinking about it, probably don't care.

Also crossed my mind, that while children of sperm donors have a right to information about the father, children of surrogate mothers probably won't have a right to that information, maybe in the U.K. as the mother has to be named in the birth certificate and then adopted by the family but what about in other countries? I know carrying a child and birthing one does not a mother make but equally those who have used the eggs of those women, that's their biological mother and only right the children have access to that information. It all feels very 'A Brave New World/Handmaiden's Tale' the more you think about it.

I don't know who those two men are but they're providing a fine example of class male exploiting class female for our biology thinking of us and treating us as some kind of livestock that exists on the planet for males to farm for their sexual, emotional, domestic and reproductive wants and needs.

I can just about stomach surrogacy between close family members such as sisters, or maybe very close friends. However I think it's fraught with potential problems and could go horribly wrong. Otherwise surrogacy appals me. It is a disgraceful exploitation of women for the use of their uterus, and straight up buying babies. When women like Kim Kardashian do it I think I find it even more offensive than men buying babies. She has been through childbirth. How can she think it so easy for another woman to do that for her? On a par with the cleaner, the cook, the nanny and other women who service her life I suppose.

"It will always be the people who need money who are selling; the wealthy will be the consumers/buyers."

www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/11/20390/

When rich fertile women start having babies for poor infertile women I will reconsider my views.

Oh and I have seen a report that KK paid her surrogate $45,000 and the agency $68,850

How the f** does the agency get more than the woman who actually carried the baby and gave birth to it?

This is just disgusting. The comments under the article are very depressing too mainly from men who seem to have no concept that bearing a child presents significant risks, both physical and mental, to the mother's health.

Yuck. Blessed be the fruit indeed. Poor woman, poor little girl.

Oh my goodness, that is so upsetting. That poor woman. I'll probably get deleted for saying this, but he's a fucking wanker

Totally agree with PP regarding how wrong it is to conceive a child with the outcome being for the child to never be with it’s mother. Carrying a child in your womb regardless of whether it is from your own egg, means that the DNA from the mother and child pass over between one another. The child is part of the mother and this relationship is meant to naturally continue through breastfeeding. Surrogacy disconnects the role of mother and child and completely disregards the natural rights of the baby

I'm struck by how pregnancy is downgraded and minimised as if it's a passive 'sit there for 9 months and then you can go' thing.
Women don't just 'carry' babies.

We literally create them from our bodies.
We're not housing them like a loaf of bread put and kept in a fridge until it's needed.
We are building them cell by cell FROM us.
They are made from us, of us.

And we are often damaging ourselves irrevocably in the process. Both with the pregnancy and with the birth.

That they should treat her like a farm animal is inhuman.
I wonder if they will ever comprehend that other men will treat their daughter the same?
How will she grow up believing women are people due respect with fathers like those?

You cannot gift a human. I was concieved using donor sperm and I grieve that my biological father sold his legal parental rights to me. It is cruel to separate children from biological parents in the absence of abuse, not a kind or altruistic act. When money changes hands it turns children into a commodity

Interesting comment.

"children of surrogate mothers probably won't have a right to that information"

I believe that surrogacy in the UK is much less common (as only medical- and work-related etc. expenses can be paid) and usual involves people who know each other well; when strangers are matched up, it is usual for surrogates and recipients to form a relationship over many months---I can't imagine that it would be kept secret. I think children should have a legal right to know, in any case. Same as with egg donation and sperm donation.

A friend of mine donated eggs a couple of years ago. The child has the right to know that he or she was the result of a donated egg from the start, and has the right to gain the donor's contact when he or she turns 16. My friend and her family hope that he or she will make contact when the time comes although of course there is no obligation.

In the UK the woman who gave birth to a child has to be named on the birth certificate. It would be impossible to exclude her.