Surrogate dies in childbirth, leaves behind two of her own kids

[ConfessionsOfTeenageDramaQueen]

"According to the post, Michelle and Chris decided to help another family who wasn't able to have children after they were done having kids of their own.

Michelle was on her second surrogacy for the same family when she lost her life.

Like any other pregnancy, surrogate pregnancies involve the same medical risks of carrying a child and giving birth."

This makes me really angry. Link below.

www.foxla.com/news/california-mother-of-two-dies-giving-another-family-the-gift-of-life?fbclid=IwAR2RgBrXZnWZa1DES4PQWDYMifkY7YCpLy6WVEOoHj6cD145L9Xof1Iy4mI

If surrogacy was banned, no gay male couple could have a child who was biologically related to one of them. Those who want a ban on surrogacy, are you happy with that scenario?

How is that worse than any other couple who is unable to have a child who is biologically related to one of them?

FannyCann

I've just read the link you posted - it's heartbreaking - and chilling

Are you promoting this group?

No. COTS is another one, or the Surrogacy section of MN. I would suggest that talking to people who are currently involved with surrogacy in this country might dispel some of the myths around victimhood, consent, slavery, money, outcomes etc. Surrogates are women whose voices you might like to hear.

Awful. I dont know how some people even think its ok to do this. Its messed up.

Schadenfreude it isn't better or worse. I just wondered if people had the same attitudes to both, or not.

Surrogates are women whose voices you might like to hear.

Why are they only women though?

Didn't you say surrogates are basically babysitters?

Why aren't about 50% of them men?

Altruistic surrogacy absolutely does exist. People have done it for their family members for no payment before, how is that not altruistic surrogacy? Oh they must have been emotionally exploited somewhere along the lines, I mean they are a woman right...

This woman offered to have a baby for her brother. So I assume it was an altruistic arrangement. She was 48, his wife already had children but he wanted his own. Apparently there was no discussion about twins versus Singleton so she made a snap decision at the time of the implantation.
Unsurprisingly there were complications of raised blood pressure, prematurity and difficulties with her relationship with her brother and his wife. Her mother (who was furious when she found out about it all) had to step in to stop a total family relationship melt down.

Altruistic surrogacy for a family member might sound more acceptable but it is fraught with risks and potential for family fall out.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/apr/27/secret-diary-of-a-surrogate-mother

Are you quite relaxed about poor Mexican women being paid little more than a pittance to be impregnated, have the baby (and after all that is what surrogacy procedures produce so let's call it a baby) forcibly removed, killed and tested to try to find a way to make it easier for rich people to have babies?

No. As I have made it quite clear, I agree that the method used is ethically unacceptable. It would not, quite rightly, have been approved in the UK.

If you had actually read or understood the paper, you would realise that it focused on uterine lavage - a completely different procedure to IVF. It really won’t have any impact on current IVF procedures either in this country or anywhere else in the world. Furthermore, it doesn’t even tell us anything new about uterine lavage, as we have been performing that on farm animals in this country for decades. The truth is, much of scientific research that gets published does little to advance our knowledge.

Your point about it happening in Mexico is beyond irrelevant. The experiment has happened, its results are known and will be used.
So my point is that the paper is almost irrelevant to fertility practices in this country (UK). Although even if it somehow was relevant, the UK has neither funded nor condoned this research, so I fail to see why it should be used as reason to not to perform IVF in the UK?

One more point - you say you are pro-choice on abortion, yet in order to further your own argument on this subject you want to call a less than 5 day embryo a ‘baby’? Bit hypocritical, no?

why should only women be asked to be so 'altruistic'

In a good arrangement the surrogate offers to help a couple as a friend, the couple should not "ask" her. They spend months getting to know each other better and going over everything in detail before going ahead with treatment. (Yes, a man could offer too but it probably wouldn't be the most helpful offer in the world...)

Why aren't about 50% of them men?

Why should they be?

Although it's only a tiny number of women choosing this route right now, what if employers put pressure on women in high-powered jobs not to 'waste time' with all that pregnancy and childbirth malarky when they can get a poor woman to do that for them? I know it sounds a bit extreme now, but Gilead didn't happen overnight either.

Very true IcedPurple

"Progressive" companies in the USA are increasingly offering surrogacy benefits as part of workplace benefits packages. What I would dearly like to know, if anyone can find an answer, are women who conceive their own babies naturally offered equivalent financial benefits? Bearing in mind the USA is notorious for providing the barest minimum of maternity rights or benefits. So increasingly there will be social and employment/financial pressure on women to keep working and pay someone else to have their babies for them.

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

In a good arrangement the surrogate offers to help a couple as a friend, the couple should not "ask" her. They spend months getting to know each other better and going over everything in detail before going ahead with treatment.

Treatment? And this all sounds very cozy for the commissing couple, but what does the mother get out of all this 'altruism'?

(Yes, a man could offer too but it probably wouldn't be the most helpful offer in the world...)

But .... you said quite explicitly that gestating and birthing a baby was absolutely no different to 'looking after' the baby.

Yet here you are acknowledging that it is of course entirely and fundamentally different. And that men cannot do it. Only women can do it. Only women can be mothers.

But people like you want to dismiss the enormous biological act of gestation and birth as simply a form of babysitting. I guess acknowledging that the woman doing this 'altruistic' babysitting is actually the child's mother is unacceptable to you?

The other biblical surrogacy story that springs to mind is that of Hagar. Who again was owned by Abraham and forced to have his child because his own wife, Sarah, couldn't.

And then both of them were dumped in the wilderness when Sarah had her own child, and didn't want Hagar's son, Ishmael to have a share of Isaac's inheritance.

*Why aren't about 50% of them men?

Why should they be?*

Because you compared pregnancy and childbirth to babysitting. That's why. Funny how it's only women being asked to be 'altruistic', isn't it?

So my point is that the paper is almost irrelevant to fertility practices in this country (UK). Although even if it somehow was relevant, the UK has neither funded nor condoned this research, so I fail to see why it should be used as reason to not to perform IVF in the UK?

You are completely failing to grasp the point that what happened in Mexico is just part of the ongoing continuum of turning babies into commodities.

One more point - you say you are pro-choice on abortion, yet in order to further your own argument on this subject you want to call a less than 5 day embryo a ‘baby’? Bit hypocritical, no?

No not in the slightest. Just using the language that those promoting surrogacy use. Surrogacy's end result is a baby. In this particular case I think it is useful to point out that the embryos in the Mexican case are babies.

I think anyone supporting surrogacy should think long and hard about the morality of research in deliberately creating an embryo, implanting it in a woman (which if left in the womb is more than likely to emerge as a baby) extracting it and killing it.

In this particular case I think trying to hide how vile that is by calling it an "embryo" deserves to be called out.

Iced why do you find it so difficult to believe what so many altruistic surrogates have said themselves? If they were very happy to become a surrogate with all that entails, they did not consider the baby to be 'theirs', they remain great friends with the parents, and they report having had a very positive experience at all times, why don't you believe them?

But you again miss the point spectacularly - we live in an imperfect world and babies will be born into imperfect circumstances. However, we don't go out of our way to create babies with the express and unavoidable intention of being born into less than ideal circumstances - except when it comes to satisfying the selfish desires of adults in surrogacy.

I don't think I'm missing the point at all. Statistically a tiny number of babies are born via a surrogate. The number of babies therefore having an adverse outcome will be tiny in comparison to the number of babies born and raised by their mother who experience adverse outcomes.

I think this one shocking case is rather missing the point that pregnancy isn't safe at all

The number of women who are left with damage to their bodies/ incontinence is really high but it is rarely talked about. It's hardly a case of 1 in 12500 dies and the rest are absolutely fine.

I became anti-surrogacy over male couples having surrogate babies. It absolutely feels to me in that case that the woman is a commodity. I am in no way homophobic btw but if two men want a baby then they should adopt - neither can carry one and give birth. And yes before anyone asks lesbians having babies is fine I think. I guess in one way it makes the man a commodity but in another the risk to him is zero, he will produce the sperm anyway is my view.

Iced why do you find it so difficult to believe what so many altruistic surrogates have said themselves? If they were very happy to become a surrogate with all that entails, they did not consider the baby to be 'theirs', they remain great friends with the parents, and they report having had a very positive experience at all times, why don't you believe them?

I never mentioned the feelings of individual surrogate mothers. You presumably are doing so to change the subject from your horrible comparison of pregnancy and childbirth to 'babysitting'.

But since you insist, I'm sure many of these mothers have had a positive experience. I doubt the 'agencies' you keep linking to would allow you to read about less positives ones, but that's not the point. It's not about the experience of individuals. It's about the many ethical and moral issues raised by the commodification of women and babies. Ones which you seek to ignore through the use of twee language.

Treatment? And this all sounds very cozy for the commissing couple, but what does the mother get out of all this 'altruism'?

Stretch marks and a knackered pelvic floor? 🤷🏻‍♀️

I don't think I'm missing the point at all. Statistically a tiny number of babies are born via a surrogate. The number of babies therefore having an adverse outcome will be tiny in comparison to the number of babies born and raised by their mother who experience adverse outcomes.

Again, you don't get it. I'm not sure if you're being obtuse or you genuinely don't understand.

It's not about numbers, 'tiny' or otherwise. It's that surrogacy deliberately and intentionally causes babies to be born into difficult circumstances purely to make adults happy.

In almost all situaitons, we priorities the needs of children above those of adults. With surrogacy, this is inverted. Why is this and why are you arguing in favour of it?

we don't go out of our way to create babies with the express and unavoidable intention of being born into less than ideal circumstances

As children born through surrogacy are statistically no worse off than others, I can't agree that it brings children into "less than ideal circumstances" more than with any other family.

Infertile couples often have to go through far more scrutiny in order to have a child, than the majority who have children with no intervention.

Stretch marks and a knackered pelvic floor?

If she's lucky.

But hey she's given the 'gift of life' by babysitting a baby in her womb for 9 months so provided the 'intended parents' get the product they commissioned, who cares?

If you had actually read or understood the paper, you would realise that it focused on uterine lavage - a completely different procedure to IVF

Furthermore, it doesn’t even tell us anything new about uterine lavage, as we have been performing that on farm animals in this country for decades

Yes , let's treat women like brood mares.

I don't think you have understood the report. The point was to research whether humans can be used as brood mares for the extraction of embryos. To test that human embryos were deliberately created, implanted and then destroyed.

Uterine lavage offers a nonsurgical, minimally invasive strategy for recovery of embryos from fertile women who do not want or need IVF and who desire PGT, fertility preservation of embryos or reciprocal IVF for lesbian couples. From a research and potential clinical perspective, this technique provides a novel platform for the use ofin vivoconceived human embryos as the ultimate benchmark standard for future and current ART methods

As children born through surrogacy are statistically no worse off than others, I can't agree that it brings children into "less than ideal circumstances" more than with any other family.

You consider separating a tiny newborn from its mother at birth to be 'ideal'?

You consider the fact that we treat this as a last resort in almost all circumstances - not just for humans but for animals - to be misguided?