MN editorial on how wonderful surrogacy is

[anothernotherone]

This is on the MN homepage: www.mumsnet.com/pregnancy/surrogacy

Isn't this a massively controversial issue related to the exploitation of the female body as an incubator?

Are MN picking sides on a massively controversial issue, or has whoever's written and selected this rosey whitewash coverage of surrogacy not engaged their brain fully?

There's not much evidence for the long term effects on the surrogate and donor sperm/egg children, especially as adults. We know from adoption and fostering that being separated from or not knowing birth parents can cause profound issues for some. It's one of those situations where we are so focused on the new parents and their needs, we don't give sufficient thought to the consequences for the child. I can't agree with it. And that's a factor for all sorts of surrogacy and donation from ethical issues of buying poor women's bodies etc.

@DonorConceivedMe have you considered doing an AMA?

DecomposingComposers creating babies via a surrogate doesn't reduce the number of unwanted or unloved babies conceived - the unwanted babies exist, regardless of what is or isn't better, but the surrogate ones don't if surrogacy is illegal or socially unacceptable.

drspouse I read up on attachment issues in infant adoption several years ago around the time of an infant adoption in my extended family. I googled very quickly but can't find exactly what I read several years ago. The studies were not decisive because of the lack of clarity about mothers alcohol and drug use in pregnancy and other biological and environmental factors during pregnancy. There were indications of reactive attachment disorder in a statistically significant number of children as far as I remember, but I'm sure not all.

Removing a newborn from it's mother is always going to be trying to make the best if a suboptimal situation, just as neonatal intensive care units have great outcomes for premature babies often, but nobody sane would deliberately choose to perform an unnecessary caesarean section or induction at 28 weeks gestation and replace the third trimester in the womb with 3 months of the best neonatal intensive care unit in the world...

I'm with JessicaWakefield, it's not right to deliberately create a baby that has to be taken from their mother.

Life long infertility in a country that fetishes parenthood and makes adoption exceptionally hard is also complicated and problematic.
If you are not suitable to be an adoptive parent you aren't suitable to parent a child born through surrogacy either. So if the process is too hard for you, you shouldn't be adopting any child.

I don't think it's a case of anyone making adoption hard, it is hard, it will bring different challenges to raising a child you gave birth to. If we try to make the adoption process easier there will just be more failed adoptions.

But you are creating a very much loved and wanted child hopefully born into a living and caring family.

Why isn't that better than a child possibly conceived deliberately into an unloving or possibly harmful environment, or simply not wanted?

Well why are you comparing? Just because there’s another bad situation doesn’t make surrogacy a good option. Neither is good. Babies aren’t objects. They have rights too. This is about intentionally creating it, using the body of the mother who is then separated from them at birth. Why the fuck would anyone want this situation?

I didn't say it should be easier.
If you can't cope with the current assessment for adoption you shouldn't be raising someone else's birth child.

Dr spouse, that's my point, we can't "make adoption easier" because adopting a child isn't an easy thing to do.

I was more referring to adoption being hard because we do not support international adoptions and uk adoptions often wait for a child to be really quite damaged before they are placed for adoption.

I am adopted myself. I wholeheartedly believe in the rigorous process for selecting adoptive parents. I am less comfortable with the damage we allow birth parents and temporary placements to inflict on young children before we place them in a permanent new family. But that’s another thread.

@LadyGardens it's a mistake to think that children from international adoptions will have fewer difficulties than children from the UK. I think you may have a slightly outdated picture of adoption.

But your argument, while correct (children who are going to need adoption should be adopted sooner), has not got much to do with surrogacy. It is also hard to raise a child born through surrogacy, you have many of the same issues to consider as adoptive parents, and the training should be the same, as should the approval process. Surrogacy shouldn't be an "easy option".

If you support surrogacy do you support all surrogacy? What about social surrogacy - women who use surrogates because they don't want to impact their career, or lose their figure?

• Equating an organ and a potential human life?... Really? I noticed that on the opt out list that one of the 'not for donation at present' list was also womb and feotus.... This 'at present' really worries me!*

No, of course not, I clearly expressed myself badly.

DD has been told uterine transplants are a "thing" (professor of gynaecology, highly respected in her field) and will escalate over the next 10/20 years. So in terms of organs absolutely nothing is off the table anymore.

@MNHQ is this a paid advertisement, and if so who is the advertiser?

Did you agree to receive money from a third party in exchange for them gaining the opportunity to pitch to women - yes, they seem to know which type of women to pitch to oddly - to use us as breeders?

I'm bloody appalled that a site for women with the most active women's rights forum on the internet is RECRUITING us for our female body parts.
Did you take money for this? Who from? To basically pitch our bodies as potential commodities to a lobbying organisation?

That clearly isn't a balanced discussion of surrogacy - it's an advert recruiting rented wombs.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, MNHQ?
Have you lost your minds?

There's a panel on surrogacy at FiLiA this year.

twitter.com/FiLiA_charity/status/1144878309148364801

Hmm I’m in two minds about that.

I know a woman who is a surrogate. She did that to help a couple having their own child. It was totally selfless, just like some people decide to give a kidney. I think that’s how it should be.

Re. Separating a mum from the child. Who is the mother? The one who carried the foetus/baby or the one who gave the egg?
What about IVF with donor egg?

I once offered to be a surrogate for my sister after she suffered multiple miscarriages. She turned me down.

Then I realised how fucked up and abusive her marriage was and I was relieved I didn't give away my baby to be raised in that environment. I'd never been supportive of commercial surrogacy, but that was what turned me against altruistic surrogacy as well. I realised that all I cared about was easing my sister's heartbreak, and not about the consequences for the baby.

Babies aren’t objects. They have rights too. This is about intentionally creating it, using the body of the mother who is then separated from them at birth. Why the fuck would anyone want this situation?

But you could use that argument about all babies - no child asks to be born. They only exist because parents made a decision to have a baby.

I think that surrogacy can be done responsibly and sensitively. I feel that your objections are more to do with your fear that the surrogate is being exploited rather than the effects on the child.

ComeAndDance the mother the baby knows at birth is the woman whose voice and heartbeat she's known in the womb. Of course if adopted the adoptive mother becomes her mother, but around the time of birth the baby is oblivious to that process, which lies in the future.

Genetics also muddy the waters ling term where a child is created with a donor egg, that gives the child an extra layer of potential confusion which needs careful handling, but as a newborn the baby is attached to the smell and sound of the mother whose womb they grew in. She's not medical equipment.

Who paid you to recruit our wombs, MNHQ?

I don't agree with surrogacy. I appreciate wanting a child and not being able to have one but when we were considering a second child, (major complications with 1st) we looked into adoption, surrogacy was never even an option.

With adoption there are strict regulations and a lot of assessment of potential parents, with suragacy there does not seem to be the same stringent checks.

^Re. Separating a mum from the child. Who is the mother? The one who carried the foetus/baby or the one who gave the egg?
What about IVF with donor egg?^

The mother is the one who grew that child from a few cells, for 10 months. Who's voice, and heartbeat that child felt from before it could feel, or was a child.

Buying babies is wrong. You shouldn't be able to commission a human like you would a painting for the living room.

Who is the mother?
The one who carried created the foetus/baby

Yes. The one who created the baby. We don't 'carry' other people's babies like cantaloupes in a bag for life.
Babies are created FROM the body of the mother. The mother is the one who created the baby in her body, and from her body.

Otherwise, we'd be condoning third parties having legal claims to the inside of a woman.

Slavery is outlawed. Let's not reintroduce it.

But you could use that argument about all babies - no child asks to be born. They only exist because parents made a decision to have a baby.

No. The difference is, you’re separating it from its mother, as part of the plan. You keep ignoring that part and engaging in whataboutery. Only surrogacy intends to separate mother and child from the outset.

All these people who approve of altruistic surrogacy and know people who have done it... do you know anyone who changed their mind? Like a sister that couldn’t do it and kept it? What happens to the entire family then?