So upset by commercial surrogacy

[Soggiemoggie]

Considered posting this in AIBU but thought I might get some deeper more sympathetic discussion here...

I know it's a topic that really splits views but I am so upset to hear about distant family friend who has adopted a baby through commercial surrogacy in the US (they live here in the UK). DM told me a about this a few months ago and this week said she's seen photos of the baby and another family friend has visited them. DM has expressed (privately to me) that she thinks it is a horrible thing for the baby and that is equates to buying and selling of women's bodies. I wholeheartedly agree with this view. They happen to be a gay couple and before anyone calls me homophobic - I don't care a jot about that and it doesn't change my view at all that this is such an entitled and selfish act. I don't believe it is a human right to have a baby and if you can't have children of your own for whatever reason, why not look into adoption or fostering for the many children who are already in this world and in dire need of a loving family and secure home?

Anyway when my DM mentioned it again this week and I asked how old the baby was now and when she answered, for some reason I just burst out crying in front of DM and DF. So embarrassing (!) But I just had this overwhelming upset feeling thinking about the baby away from his mum and his mum who god knows how she must be feeling.

I myself have a 8 month old DS (PFB...) so obviously such strong feelings about this are because of my own bias about being a mum to a helpless tiny baby and having my whole universe revolving around DS...

So Mumsnetters please share your views on commercial surrogacy, tell me it's OK to be distraught at the thought of this, or tell me to piss off for being so judgey...

Sorry this is so long - I really needed to get that off my chest!

yes, it reminds me of the way the ancient Greeks thought that the man is the one who actually makes the baby and the woman is just fertile soil for it to grow in.

There is really such an air of entitlement when it comes to having children. It is not a human right to have your own child.

BIWI would co-parenting with a single woman or a lesbian couple be a possibility?

The involvement of the mother isn't a bad thing or an issue to solve is it?

I agree with you about adoption, but I don't think there are exactly loads of little babies available for adoption - and it seems to be a very difficult process to go through to 'succeed'.

There are many children waiting to be adopted. Your son would be lucky to have any child, baby or not. Yes adoption is difficult. So is conceiving for many, so is pregnancy and raising children. That’s not an excuse to use women as incubators.

My friend had a child and an open adoption. She is a member of the extended family of her child. It’s actually a really beautiful and special thing.

I know of a couple who paid a surrogate firstly in India, and now in Eastern Europe for their second child.

The worst thing for me is the fact they’ve clearly gone to a lot of trouble to get it “cheap”.

Adoption can be wonderful but I agree with PaintBySticker that it shouldn't be considered a "why don't you just..." option. Adoption is about finding families for children, not vice versa, and God knows we don't want a return to the days of 50s/60s adoption relying on pressuring teenage single mothers to give up their babies to 'deserving' families.

I've seen arguments in favour of surrogacy framed around newborns not being available for adoption anymore. The attitude I've come across is that surrogacy is the natural next step and if women aren't being forced to give away their babies via adoption anymore then the least women can do is gestate them via surrogacy, such is the entitlement to a baby. The onus is always on women taking physical and psychological risks, never on the other party to come to terms with not getting what they want.

As for adoption: A couple I know adopted (Continental Europe), cause he was infertile due to previous health issues. The waiting List was >2-3 years. But then they got a call a couple of months in. The Baby was mixed race (black Dad) and nobody higher up on the list wanted the Boy. My acquaintances adopted him on the Spot.
This Story did make me think. I can see parents may not be comfortable with the questions that come with a child of different Skin Color, but on the other hand, when you think what health issues or other issues one‘s kids can face, no guarantees, the insistence on having a color matching baby does appear a bit shallow. Idk. (Not having been in those shoes, who knows how I would decide. Always easy to judge from the Outside, but, anyway, the Story is an indication of how entitled we as a Society are when it comes to having children).

Nobody is talking about pressuring women to give up babies for adoption! But when couples prefer to pay for a poor woman to give them a biological child instead of adoption, I think it’s an important question to ask.

The onus is always on women taking physical and psychological risks, never on the other party to come to terms with not getting what they want.

This ^

You can have a biological child with a different skin colour though. Me and my Mum, siblings and most of the family I grew up around were all a different skin colour to me. Yes people asked- well in NZ they stopped, stared and asked Nan if she had stolen me! But we all got on with life and although often awkward it was really not the worst thing in the world.

This person has a series of articles in the Times charting her 'journey' to buy a baby. There are normally very few comments under the article - partly because I reckon people want to be kind but also because any challenges are normally jumped on by supporters of surrogacy:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/i-know-the-real-cost-of-having-a-baby-by-surrogacy-3v6vltpvr?shareToken=cf6c7d9085978206f4f3226357e1903f

I'm uncomfortable with it for much the same reason. I think intentionally creating a baby that will have to be separated from their mother is wrong.

I think there is a wider lack of respect for new mums and babies and this is a part of it.

Penny you are absolutely right. Just trying to rationalize what feels so wrong and trying not to be judgemental as an Outsider who Never was in the position.

I haven't read the whole thread but I find it distressing, that's not homophobic.

That article is a classic case of denial. Pretending that she and her husband decided to use a commercial surrogate in the US because it 'absolves the potential for exploitation' and at the same time admitting it is because the UK laws are 'draconian', in a mindset where draconian apparently means acknowledging that the woman who has gestated and birthed a baby is the legal mother and that surrogacy contracts (which sanction the terms for selling a human being) aren't enforceable.

Very Handmaid's Tale

If you were genuinely concerned about the potential for exploitation of a surrogate you wouldn't pay tens of thousands of pounds to a woman living in a country with extreme levels of poverty, the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality in the western world, where in many states it is all but impossible to access an abortion and where such intrusive contracts can be sanctioned that effectively give you total control over a woman's body along with the legal right to drag the baby she's just delivered out of her arms against her wishes.

My thoughts exactly TwistedStitch. That she could actually say this:

"Imagine having to implicitly trust a stranger to carry and deliver a baby with the knowledge that they could change their mind up to six weeks after the birth because of the lack of regulation in the UK"

and not imagine the corresponding situation, having to hand the baby you've carried and delivered over to strangers even though you desperately don't want to because you signed a contract before you got pregnant, is horrific. I appreciate that infertility is hell but FFS.

Yanbu, treating surrogacy like a buisness transaction, ie commercial surrogacy is sad, it’s very cold and as a surrogate myself i hope it is not made legal in the U.K.

In poor countries it’s exploitative and in America it gives intendedparents way too much control over the surrogate (ie down to Wether shes allowed to dye her hair for example.

@branleuse the surrogates name wouldn’t be on birth cert as the parents apply for a parental order, which, once granted relinquishes the surrogates rights over the child and replaces surrogates name with the mothers name. IT is not rewriting history as the original cert I still still kept so child as an adult would easily be able to find out the truth.

IME some go to America purely as they have pre birth orders and they feel safer than using a U.K. surrogate, others just don’t wan to wait and there are more surrogates in the US.
In the surrogacy world, we hold a dim view of those who choose to go anywhere other than the US.

This Story did make me think. I can see parents may not be comfortable with the questions that come with a child of different Skin Color, but on the other hand, when you think what health issues or other issues one‘s kids can face, no guarantees, the insistence on having a color matching baby does appear a bit shallow.

In continental Europe, and with white people refusing a mixed race child, definitively.

The US is a bit different, considering that the police seems to be allowed to shoot black people just for looking a bit threatening, there's no way to tell what they might do if they saw a black man with a blonde, blue eyed toddler.

For comparison with the Tom Daley thread, here’s a thread from a few weeks before about “would you ever use a surrogate?” which removes the potential homophobia angle. I haven’t reread both threads recently but my memory is that this one is still full of some very strongly felt arguments against commercial surrogacy but tends to be more gently worded and sympathetic to the feelings of women with medical infertility.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3166421-If-you-had-money-to-burn-would-you-use-a-surrogate

In poor countries it’s exploitative and in America it gives intendedparents way too much control over the surrogate (ie down to Wether shes allowed to dye her hair for example.

I agree in principle, but I'd like to add:

The US might not be "a poor country", but there's certainly no shortage of poor people. Poor people who aren't just "Can't afford luxuries"-poor but don't even have access to medical care.

Frankly, I consider the notion that it is not exploitative to pay an US-American woman for surrogacy thoroughly ridiculous.