Surrogacy

[Annasgirl]

So I'm here in Ireland listening to a national radio show where they are promoting surrogacy.

It seems as if we are all supposed to think it is ok. Now to be fair, the host is not really on board but the young woke roving reporter (a girl) really is!!! And apparently only religious people are against it (according to the woke young female reporter).

I've just found out that there is a bill coming through the Dail to legalise the process in Ireland, although just for altruistic stuff in Ireland. And guess what - they want to make it broader because no woman in Ireland would really want to do this, (why, if it so wonderful) so they want the US and Canada and Ukraine etc included.

Any thoughts?

I know we had a chat on here about it recently and many of us seemed to feel that surrogacy was really anti-women, and yes I really believe it is.

So it has all ended and there was no absolutely no discussion on any ethical issues or women's issues - because clearly that is all religion and we don't do religion in Ireland any more.

Sorry, just needed to rant to you all.

• Post edited at OP's request.

What women do, that only women can do, is devalued in our culture. Yet all of us are here because of it.

This. And by devaluing it, and taking it away in the case of surrogacy, we simply don't know what the long term impacts on the child will be. They could be huge in terms of mental health. It's experimentation on children for what? For the entitled wants of rich people who want to own a baby. Not care for a baby, not do the best by a child, because if they did they could adopt children who really need help instead of use surrogacy. It's all about their wants and needs, with no thought for the child. In surrogacy you're starting out by doing something that could conceivably really harm a child. That is not a good sign for a parent.

The authorities try to prevent children from being adopted wherever possible. They provide enormous support because they recognise that it is best for a child to remain with their birth mother wherever possible.
That thinking logically can't change when a woman has a baby to order and yet it does. It's massive cognitive dissonance.

Exactly. It's because rich people are used to getting what they want, no matter the damage. But this is damage to a child. We have to fight any attempt to sell women and babies in this way.

sorry bold fail!

That list

Also Cristiano Ronaldo and Robbie Williams.

While broadly speaking I agree with all the issues about potential harm to children born this way, I would be interested in what posters think about the babies born in Cambodia recently. Where the surrogate mothers arw being forced to keep the babies. Many of these babies now face lives of abject poverty, cultural isolation as they may look nothing like their "family" as they have no genetic connection. Some will be Caucasian some Chinese... The damage to them could be immeasurable. Instead they could be with their genetic families, living very different lives and the surrogate mother's lives and families lives transformed by the money?
This is what made me realise that surrogacy should just be stopped.. No exception

I am definitely against commercial surrogacy.

As another poster on here said once - at what age does it become unacceptable to buy another human being?

Oh and Yotam Ottolenghi. Put me right off him.

There are plenty of women who have used surrogates.

Yep. I am part of a private FB group for women who have lifelong health problems, including subsequent infertility, entirely as a result of having catastrophically haemorrhaged post partum, resulting in permanent pituitary damage.

These women are pretty poorly, and entirely because of childbirth.
And yet, in a conversation about hiring surrogates for their next child, they all gushed about how great this was. I tried to raise the issue that they of all people understood the immense damage childbirth could wreak. Their condition is often fatal, and very life limiting. And to expect another woman to take on that risk on your behalf, knowing what you know, is just...well. I was shocked.

They told me to shut TF up in so many words. Some people will cheerfully let others take on horrible risks to get their needs met, and so much of that is society letting on that this is normal, everyone's doing it, its fine. If it's normalised by their own culture, people will wilfully blind themselves to a complete lack of ethical behaviour. And they'll shut up people who make them feel guilty about exploiting others.

C'est la vie.

A link to a radio 4 programme about the Cambodian surrogates. They outlawed surrogacy, recognising how women are exploited by wealthy couples seeking a baby gestator, but these women have been left in a terrible position.

Crossing Continents - A Stark Choice for Cambodia's Surrogates - @bbcradio4
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001bpp

If a country quite rightly outlaws surrogacy, it has to allow it to go ahead if the children have already been conceived. Or provide lifelong support to the exploited mothers. Punishing those women and their babies is clearly appalling

That is really shocking Barracker and I’m not shocked by much any more. Wow. How on earth can you go through that and have now qualms about inflicting it on others? That’s actually horrifying.

It was very depressing.

Jesus Barracker

The desire to have children can be so powerful.

It can. But nobody is entitled to them. Children have rights too. There are plenty of children that need a loving home through adoption.

The reason ethics exist is precisely because desire powerfully subsumes one's sense of right and wrong.

People will justify heinous acts because of personal and overwhelming desire. Which we are all capable of succumbing to.

Thank goodness for other people to continue to think about what is right and fair for all people, instead of letting personal desire and selfishness harm others. We all should be grateful for the laws we put in place to prevent exploitation, because we're all capable of unethical behaviour in our desperation.

The reason ethics exist is precisely because desire powerfully subsumes one's sense of right and wrong.

^ so well put

Annasgirl, can I ask what the programme was? Would like to listen on playback.

I think it is possible to have an enormously strong desire to have children, and to try and think of what is best for the child. I had IVF. We had three viable embryos, and due to my age the clinic were legally allowed at the time to implant all three, which they offered to do. I thought "can I look after triplets properly?" and decided the answer was "no." I said "we will wait till Monday (day 5) and implant the most promising blastocyst."

He is upstairs now. He's an only child - that's the price I paid. But it was absolutely the right decision. Having one baby was hard (I had PND). My mental health (as it turned out) would not have been up to the task of looking after three children properly, the way they deserved and needed to be looked after.

"Just adopt" they say

I have many friends that are adopted male and female. I don't think I'm equipped to raise an adopted child. Knowing that as soon as they are able to understand that I am not their birth mother they will likely feel betrayed by me and the world. I'm strong and I can do a lot of things but I don't think my heart is strong enough for that challenge.

"Just use a surrogate" others say

The surrogate option has always made me uneasy. It was a hard decision to come to even though the idea of surrogacy just felt wrong. I've had two friends offer - they have already had children and are aware of the dangers more than I. But I just have never been able to consider accepting their offers.

Conversations with my mother and friends about mother/baby connection in relation to adoption and surrogacy have only yielded heavily veiled pity. I seek insight and am given platitudes.

They lie to me because their hearts ache for me.

Tens of thousands of dollars and two rounds of IVF (no donors) under our belt with one round left to go before we call it quits.

We are happy, we are strong, we are hopeful, we share an enduring love of 24 years. We really would like to have the opportunity to give a child our love, to share with them the wonders we see in the world and all of the beauty we see around us.

DH has a beautiful heart and would be an amazing father. But we are not entitled to parenthood, we do not have a right to parenthood, and we have no desire to purchase a child via surrogacy or otherwise.

This is all so very hard but it's also part of being human. If we aren't granted the opportunity of parenthood we will continue to love each other and enjoy our lives together. Que será, será...

I think surrogacy can be altruistic. A very close friend of mine approached me a couple of years ago to ask if I might one day consider being a surrogate for them. They made it very clear they knew it was the biggest thing they could ask of anyone. Had they not adopted in the end, I might have been prepared to do it.

There was no question of my being bought.

For this reason I am uncomfortable with the idea of a blanket ban on all surrogacy. I wasn't wrong to consider doing this for a friend.

Surrogacy where you pay a stranger? Completely different and should be illegal globally.

Just to pick up on a point made on p 1 or 2; Sweden may have banned surrogacy in Sweden, but that hasn't stopped close to 200 Swedish couples in the last year 'bringing home' babies born to surrogate mothers abroad. Hypocritical AF. So disappointing. Luckily, writers and activists like Kajsa Ekis Ekman won't be taking their eye off the ball, despite calls to allow altruistic surrogacy.

Commercial surrogacy is unsettling to me on an ethical basis. It is becoming so normalised now though. Just that list of celebrities alone is unbelievable, mostly older women whose fertility issues are largely due to age, it has to be said (although also some heart breaking stories in there of illness and cancer survivors).

To me, surrogacy is like abortion: not ideal, shouldn’t be a default option but at times necessary for various reasons and if women freely choose it, it’s entirely their business what they do with their own bodies.

It’s the free choosing that’s the problem though. Kind of like how I support a woman’s right to choose but am disturbed by forced abortion under the one child rule in China or forced abortion of female embryos in sexist cultures. Is a low-income woman from Nepal with poor access to information really making a free choice? I think surrogacy based on altruism for a friend or relative is less disturbing.

Altruistic surrogacy is less disturbing but you’re still intentionally creating a child that will be seperated from its mother. For all the reasons mentioned before this puts the desires of the intended parents ahead of the rights and health of a child.