Famous men and surrogacy

[Annasgirl]

OK, so this is not to bash the specific person involved but last night I was heading to bed and a story came up on my phone - a person from Westlife was announcing the birth of their baby - through surrogacy (he is gay) and showed a pic of him, his boyfriend and the baby - there was no mother.

So, I totally lost it and poor DH had to listen to me rant for about an hour - but when, oh God, when, are we going to stand up and be counted and take back the rights of women and children?????

DH mentioned that there will always be women poor enough to agree to do this and I countered that you cannot sell a kidney (legally) or buy one so why should you be able to buy or sell a baby???????

BTW, DH agrees with me, but why do I feel I am the only person alive who is angry about this?

And I live in Wokesville (AKA Ireland) and I am worried that we are so keen to be woke and the most liberal place to be gay in the world, that we will soon legalise surrogacy or at least make it easy for people to legally buy a baby overseas and then take it home here. That is what the person was arguing for on his gushing post.

Camsie30
If you Google the story all you will see are positive articles about it, "Dad's welcome baby girl" ect...

Babies know their mothers, they spent nine months inside them. A mother must be able to hold and nurse her baby for a while and if the child is going to be adopted, the prospective adopters are gradually introduced. It can be traumatic for a child to be taken from it's mother immediately after birth, used to happen often when people had babies out of wedlock. They never even saw their baby. We now know how damaging that can be.

We don't know this baby isn't going to spend time with his or her mother ( I now see this thread has gone on to five pages so this may have already been addressed).

I know Elton and David involved their children's mothers in their baby's lives and actually had (maybe still have) a good relationship with them.

There's a good book called 'The Primal Wound' by Nancy Verrier about this very issue. It is extremely interesting and spot on.

India and Thailand are closing the surrogacy industry down, as the scandals and abuse of women & children become public, leaving only the Ukraine. There are good summaries of the issues here

t.co/Y9CpbqH27h

Why don't we see celebrity women acting as surrogates, only celebrity men and women as beneficiaries of surrogates?

If surrogacy is so awesome and wonderful why aren't rich women in positions of privilege queuing up to be seen to be doing it, in the ultimate virtue signally for the magazines?

It always comes back to the fact that they don't want to because of the physical effects on the body or the fact that money means they have a choice which is not universal and is only available to the wealthy.

I dislike it whether it be Robbie Williams and wife Adya adding a third child to the family 'to complete it' via surrogacy or Tom Daly and his husband or whichever celebrity couple it happens to be.

All these celebrities only serve to glamourise surrogacy as a life style choice to aspire to as fabulously wealthy.

The reality and the women involved as surrogates are always invisible. That in itself tells a story.

The words “surrogacy farm” should send a shudder straight down every woman’s body.

Surrogacy farms existed in India until India outlawed them. Now they’ve moved to another country. Nigeria just shut one down. But another will open upon another country.

Wrt medicine, the US is now the Wild West — anything goes as long as someone can pay. I fully expect surrogacy farms to open there. Who knows, the way things are going, Planned Parenthood might open the first one. Right next door to the Amnesty International brothel.

I’ve said before and I’ll say again: economists are predicting 40-50% unemployment in the developed nations within 1-2 generations, largely due to automation.

Large numbers of unemployed men are dangerous to governments,

Both the left and the right are grooming women NOW for the future work for all but a sliver of elite women: work that can ONLY be done by a female body, the work done by that class of people Marx and Engels identified as performing reproductive and sexual labour.

Absolutely agree RedToothBrush

BickerinBrattle this process is well on the way with surrogacy finance being offered as a workplace benefit in woke companies in the USA. Something I'd like to know is if women having their own babies get identical maternity leave benefit $ for $? The USA is famous for having minimal maternity rights/benefits so it would be an interesting equality case for someone if this is not the case.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190906-the-workplaces-that-will-pay-for-surrogacy

The problem with increasing use of "social" surrogacy (ie women who use a surrogate mother rather than carry their own baby) is that as it becomes socially acceptable it gradually becomes normal. Then taking time out of work to have your own baby becomes abnormal and socially unacceptable. Remember how Linda, in Brave new world, was disgusted and appalled at having a baby? She was socially conditioned to view pregnancy as the worst farmyard practice.

I'm not going to wade in on this one but I just popped on to say that this:

In a perfect world gay men would find it easy to adopt unfortunately many adoption agencies refuse to work with gay male couples because they are homophobes who literally believe gay men adopt children in order to rape them. So I do feel for the gay men here.

Is simply not true for the majority. In the uk, anyone can adopt a child regardless of sexual orientation etc and I have worked with many gay couples who have adopted. In recent years it has become far far more acceptable and I don't know any social workers who believe gay men want to rape babies so that is an offensive and ridiculous statement to be spouting as fact.

Yes I meant to call out that comment ThisIsTheThirdTime

My memory is that agencies that refused services to same sex couples were forced to close down.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7952526/Last-Catholic-adoption-agency-faces-closure-after-Charity-Commission-ruling.html

By the way @Annasgirl you can still reply to the consultation even though you are in Ireland.

Thanks @FannyCann - I will.

what group of women would consider this, for the sake of 'expenses'...wealthy, self made women like Kim Kardashian, or women living in poverty who think this was of using their biology might find their way out of it?

No doubt the choosy-choice fans would be overjoyed if impoverished women were given a greater variety of ways in which to have their bodies exploited.

As an unwilling woman of the underclass I hope like hell commercial surrogacy never comes here, because frankly I don't want to be enabled to sell a baby in hard times. Opening up the option feels unethical - I shouldn't be put in a position where my only choice is between selling a baby or being homeless and starving.

If it came down to a choice between surrogacy or prostitution I'm honestly not sure what I'd do. How do the mortality rates compare? (And how does the morality compare when you're weighing up the psychological damage to all parties?)

Plus I dread to think what the DWP would make of it. A whole new avenue of 'employment' to chase vulnerable poor women into!

Imagine is awful like they are wheeling a shopping trolley
Which they kind of are 😰😰

How rude and disrespectful to know thank the mother

Is simply not true for the majority. In the uk, anyone can adopt a child regardless of sexual orientation etc and I have worked with many gay couples who have adopted.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. In the US where I am at it is still the case the the majority of adoption agencies are run by churches and as religious organizations can and do refuse gay couples (and sometimes they also refuse atheist couples). And some of them have stated publicly that it is to protect the children from being sexually molested.

I’m relieved to hear things are better in the UK.

Either way women’s bodies are not to be sold for use by another person.

American adoption system is nuts.

All sorts of men can’t have babies on their own, not just gay men.

Can any man contract with a surrogate, or does he have to be gay and partnered? That would seem discriminatory.

So why can’t, say, men who own huge farms contract with surrogates to birth children they’ll raise to pick crops?

Or why can’t a single straight man contract with a surrogate to birth him a daughter to grow up and cook for him and then take care of him in old age?

Or worse, as happened recently in Australia, I believe, where a man was arrested for sex abuse of the daughter he and his wife had contracted a surrogate to gestate and birth for him?

Can brothel owners contract with surrogates to birth girls for them? I suppose that’s one way to reduce trafficking.

What about drug companies in need of test subjects? Can they contract with surrogates?

If I were any kind of artist, I’d draw a picture of a heavily pregnant woman on her hands on knees. One chain would lead from the from the foetus to a gay male couple. One man would be fucking her from behind while another had his dick in her mouth. Two chains would lead from her breasts to cartons of Nestles Mothers Milk, ready for sale. Someone else would be shaving her head, to sell her hair.

The female body produces and reproduces products for men to sell in global markets they control.

Because they control those markets, they can control, or permit, who may purchase and just what purposes those products, including children, can be used for.

But all of this is premised upon the commodification — as opposed to the humanity — of the female body. That’s the Original Sin.

I don't want to be enabled to sell a baby in hard times. Opening up the option feels unethical - I shouldn't be put in a position where my only choice is between selling a baby or being homeless and starving

This. And the same goes for prostitution. The state should be protecting its citizens from exploitation, not enabling it.

That photograph was horrid, and very upsetting.

I don't agree with any form of surrogacy. I'm blessed that I had children (1 who was stillborn) but I have never felt that I had a "right" to become a parent.

We live in such a world of entitlement these days but handing over a child for money can never be right no matter the circumstances.

Wow. This is from 2005 but I hadn't heard about it before. Death of a surrogate mother in UK.

www.bionews.org.uk/page_89547

Wow Fanny I had not heard of that either. The commissioning couple had already 5 adult children between them. Natasha the surrogate had only 2 herself. It does not feel right that people who had what most people would consider as plenty of children could put another womans life at risk for their desire to have more.

I'm glad I'm not the only one to have a problem with surrogacy. I honestly feel that not enough status is given to childless people and also no one has a right to a baby. A baby is a wonderful gift but if you can't have one, another door will open.

I say this as an adopted child who never knew real mother and father and was taken straight from hospital at nine days old.

If I had been infertile I believe I would have accepted the fact and found something else to do which was worthwhile - of course I'll never know.

Jesus, with all the damage we know has been done over the years with forced adoptions! This is no different. A baby is removed from its birth mother. Not because she died, or is unable to care for it, or some tragic reason but because somebody wanted a baby so they "made arrangements" and just took her.
The mother may be quite content with her role in this situation. We don't know.
But we also don't know if she'll come to regret it, or what the psychological effects will be for the baby girl.
How many stories have we heard of children searching for their birth mothers in later years. The tales of feeling something vital is missing for them.
We have , as a society, condemned the years of forced adoptions from single mothers or mothers of certain races.
Mass apologies to the stolen generations of Australia and Ireland for example .
We rightly condemn what was done to those mothers and babies.
Surely surrogacy is throwing up the same issues?
That photo made me sick. Like they were posing with a trophy they just won.
If I was a gay man who craved parenthood I would be desperately looking at options I'm sure. I feel deeply for anyone whose dream of parenthood is thwarted. It's such a strong urge for so many of us.
But I would hope that even if I was desperate I wouldn't decide my need for a baby trumped the needs of that baby.
I hope my conscience would not allow me to ignore the nagging doubt that surrogacy is simply not the right way to become a parent.

I want to qualify what I said earlier. If a couple cannot have a child naturally I don't think it is wrong for them to have her egg fertilised by his sperm and implanted in a surrogate mother. A surrogate mother must know all the risks, be healthy and very willing; she'll be paid expenses of course, not paid for doing the job, expenses can be generous. I also think she must have contact with the baby in the early stages because the baby will know and 'look' for her.

I don't like the idea of surrogacy when a baby is not the biological child of either parent.

It is a controversial subject.

Mummyofmytribe said she hoped her desire for a baby would not trump the needs of a child and I agree. In fact her entire post is very good.

Fanny I think that article you posted up thread should be on your Law Commission consultation thread. Poor Natasha

So we already see examples of death and exploitation of surrogates in the UK, yet this government advisory body’s proposals are to make surrogacy even more widely available.

What will it actually take to protect women? I am worried that there won’t be a floor to the acceptable human cost to women‘s lives (and never mind the cost to poor Natasha’s motherless children ), because already surrogates are on some level not seen as fully people, because they are providing a baby for someone else. Making those women very vulnerable to legitimised exploitation therefore. Patriarchy in action.

I find this idea that if the surrogate mother doesn't provide the egg, then they are not the biological mother to be an odd one.

They didn't provide the genetic materiel, but from a fertilized egg up, they provided the matter to build every cell of that child's body! If that doesn't make them the biological mother, I don't know what does!

After growing that child inside them, they will forever have some of that child's DNA in them (from what I understand), and that child will forever be made of that woman's body (some parts of us are never renewed).

For me it boils down to that buying a human is wrong. No amount of fluffy feel-goodness can make it right.

Hmm so do women not have the bodily autonomy to choose whether or not to do this themselves, fully aware of potential consequences?