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?

Thanks for your comments - we're reading through all of them.

We can confirm that this content page is not an advertisement - its purpose is solely to provide factual information to anyone seeking guidance on surrogacy.

Who created the page please YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet?

Because if this is Mumsnet's own copy I want to complain about the blatant pro-surrogacy bias.

But I did suspect this content has been placed by a third party.

Can you please confirm WHO created this copy?

The cognitive dissonance needed to hold that:

In IVF, babies that are born from donor gametes are the children of the woman who carried them

AND simultaneously that

In surrogacy, babies that are born from donor gametes are the children of the gamete donors

is quite astonishing to me.

Both cannot be true.

@GreatestShowUnicorn
I would consider doing an AMA if @Mnhq asked me.

People often don’t want to hear the views of people like me though. They get angry and say I should just be grateful to be alive.

The ultimate red line is our own body.

Noone can or should ever have a claim over the inside of another person's body.
You can't reclaim a donated kidney, or blood, or egg. Once it is inside another person it is part of their body, their sovereignty, and all claims over it are forfeit. Forever.

If it's within my skin, it's mine.

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.

It's not whataboutery, it's a discussion where people share different viewpoints.

I don't see it the same as you. That doesn't make your view more important or more right. It is an opinion.

Some of the arguments against surrogacy on here apply equally to adoption and also to pregnancy in general.

Yes, surrogacy is a deliberate act but so to is getting pregnant from a ONS and then bringing the baby into a chaotic home where its needs aren't met.

If it's a baby born as a result of an altruistic surrogate, loved and cared for I think that is less harmful than a child being dragged up in a terrible family situation.

For me, it's not a black and white choice

I had fertility issues and we had to use IVF, so I understand how much you can long for children of your own, but if we hadn't succeeded with IVF we would have adopted. Not taken advantage of a woman's bad financial situation.

Some of the arguments against surrogacy on here apply equally to adoption and also to pregnancy in general.

No they don’t.

You’re entitled to your views on surrogacy. But the comparisons you’re making are whataboutery as they’re entirely different things. ONLY surrogacy deliberately sets out to separate mother and child. That’s the point we are making and one of the main reasons people are against surrogacy. Comparing it to kids who end up in bad homes is nonsense. Not the same thing. At all.

Some adoption is wrong IMO. I always found the film Juno really uncomfortable personally. The baby scoop era adoptions in the last century were also morally dubious.

ONLY surrogacy deliberately sets out to separate mother and child

The choice to proceed with a pregnancy with the intention of giving the child up for adoption also sets out to separate mother and child.

@DonorConceivedMe as mum to a donor conceived child I'd be interested in your story.

Adoption and surrogacy are different Imho, especially in the UK. A massive majority of adoption is through the none consent of the birth parents and newborns are rarely adopted unless it's done via foster to adopt.

Surrogacy bothers me massively but, most of the coverage I have seen is in the UK. Usually family members or friends offering to be a surrogate and being okay with it. I was also under the impression that commercial surrogacy was banned in the UK?

If it's a baby born as a result of an altruistic surrogate, loved and cared for I think that is less harmful than a child being dragged up in a terrible family situation

The child will probably be a lot better off than a child born into a war-torn country or a child born in a 19th century workhouse.

@DecomposingComposers I agree.
People wouldnt bat an eye lid at a woman who decides to carry on with the pregnancy to then give it for adoption rather than chose to abort. What's the difference for the child?

I also think that a lot of the posts on here are based on the american system where women can be paid to carry a child. Its a totally different thing imo. Just as I am against someone selling body parts, such as a kidney, for money, I am also against women selling their uterus for a child. If this is happening, then it should be done as a gift. Just like a woman could CHOOSE to give one of her kidney to someone she doesnt know, despite the risks associated with it.

I have to say Im not so sure about the whole story that the mother is the one who carried the baby. Sure the baby will know that parent very well. (they wont know the smell though but they will know her voice).
I know someone who was adopted shortly after birth. His main thing when he met his birth parents was to discover that he had the same interests than his birth father. That actually his temperament was also very similar. So clearly genetics had a big part in it.
Same when they say that children whose grand parents were in concetration camps still bear those hardship in their brain etc... Genetics again are at play.

Basically what I am saying is that its extremely complicated. When you look at the effect on the child (rather than the effect on the woman carrying the baby), then its not just the woman carrying the baby who has such an impact. Its who the 'genetic' parents are too.

Last word regarding women who have IVF with donor egg.
of course these women are called mothers! the same way that an doptive mother is called a mother. I wouldt dare calling them anything else. Its nothing to do with carrying the child or not (otherwise how do you deal woth fathers?). It's to do with the fact they are the one who will care for the baby as their mum.

The choice to proceed with a pregnancy

Again, not the same thing. How hard is this to grasp? The inception, is planned and undertaken with the intention to separate mother and child. There is no other situation like it.

@ComeAndDance

I agree completely with your post.

@Barracker I disagree, the people who CREATED a baby are the two genetic parents, the ones who gave the egg and the sperm. They will always be the ones who created the baby.

The the woman does CARRY the baby, giving him/her the right envrionement for them to develop. But a woman who is carrying a foetus from a donor egg has no more created the baby than the father who has a child from a donor sperm.

I also think that a lot of the posts on here are based on the american system

No. Most here are saying they’re opposed to any form of surrogacy.

Has anyone studied the effects on the child of being born to a surrogate? What are the long term effects on the children? Is it known to be detrimental to them?

Why don't you ask the child referred to above born with Down's syndrome and cruelly rejected causing a country to change it's laws?

On that basis ComeandDance, you're saying that women who have used donor eggs to conceive are not mothers. They're just incubators.

But that isn't how the human body works. Our bodies make the placenta. We feed the foetus, everything we eat affects it, as does everything we do.

And commercial surrogacy is not legal in the U.K. at the moment. But there is a massive push to allow it. And a public consultation taking place.

Which is why I think MN's sudden decision to include a pro-surrogacy piece is a bit questionable

a woman who is carrying a foetus from a donor egg has no more created the baby than the father who has a child from a donor sperm

You need to revisit your studies of the mechanics of human gestation. Do you think that child is grown from fresh air and rainbows?

Has anyone studied the effects on the child of being born to a surrogate? What are the long term effects on the children? Is it known to be detrimental to them?

It's not a surrogacy study, but in "Childhood Disrupted" by Donna Jackson Nazakawa, research shows that a stressful pregnancy affects the foetus and can lead to higher chances of depression, anxiety, autoimmune disease, amongst others. The research shows if the HPA axis (fight, flight, freeze) response is firing often in the mother, bathing her in inflammatory chemicals like cortisol and oestrogen, it can have a direct impact on key developmental pathways in the foetus.

Which is why I think MN's sudden decision to include a pro-surrogacy piece is a bit questionable

Yeah it is and I’m a bit surprised.

@OrchidInTheSun, actually if you read my post tp the end you will see im calling 'adoptive mothers' mothers. becayse thats what they are.
mothers who conceived through egg donor didnt conceive the baby (thats why they couldnt have a child in the first place!). So no they are not mothers as in the ones who conceived them. I think they are coser to adoptive mothers.

But still a mother. (unless you are saying that adoptive mothers arent mothers? i doubt it)

The woman who grows and gives birth to the baby is the biological mother unless we are pretending that pregnancy and childbirth is not the fundamental biological process through which reproduction occurs and instead claiming that pregnant women just carry foetuses around in a backpack for a bit.

Comparing the role of pregnant women to that of men is however a good way of minimising the seriousness (sometimes life and death) of pregnancy and childbirth and will undoubtedly make it easier for those who would like to be able to rent the bodies of desperate women and can now claim it's no big deal and just like donating sperm.