In GENERAL terms, all forms of surrogacy, altruistic included, is problematic

[NotBadConsidering]

And requires a woman - adult human female.

MNHQ have made it clear both here and on Twitter that this can be discussed in general terms, with no names being mentioned, even when a person with thousands of followers tweets about it in the public domain.

So please, adhere to the rules and discuss generally why it is an issue. Personally, regardless of the sexuality of the intended parents, even the most altruistic surrogacy arrangement - as in UK law, providing it doesn’t change - is drought with problems. Someone always gives up rights regardless. It’s inevitable. Either the intended parents do during pregnancy, and the mother and child certainly do regardless.

We have strict laws that mean a soon to be born child cannot be removed from a mother unless there are serious concerns for that baby’s welfare, yet in surrogacy, that is always the intention. This is not changed regardless of it being an altruistic arrangement. Nor is the risk to the mother.

And it requires a firm grasp on biological reality to make this happen. Two gametes are required, from one of each of the two sexes. The female sex - which exists despite recent attempts to deny its existence - does all the work and takes the greatest risk in surrogacy, even the most altruistic arrangements. It is therefore baffling how anyone could deny the existence of biological sex knowing this.

So, keeping it general, and not discussing names, please add your thoughts and experiences.

And in advance to those who have previously gone to the effort to discuss their experiences only to see them disappear.

If a surrogate is self employed with no sick pay/needs to take a significant period of time off work

If the surrogate mother is employed why should her employer paid for these expenses? Because she fancies having a baby for someone else. Women fought hard for maternity rights, in the UK we are much better off than some countries and much worse off than others. This isn't what was intended when legislating for maternity rights. Employers paying out for someone else to buy a baby. What if the woman is a repeat surrogate mother and does it many times? There is one woman in the UK, a legal secretary, who has had TEN surrogate babies.

@NotBadConsidering We discussed ALL of your scenarios and many more when we developed our surrogacy agreement. I also took out life insurance (paid for by my IPs).

No pregnancy is risk free. Life is not risk free. We all take risks all the time - when we cross the road, get behind the wheel of the car.

I have an itemised line by line breakdown which was good enough for the Family Court.

Family courts sign off whatever expenses are recorded. Sorry, for some reason I can't post screen shots just now, but the law Commission noted that whilst some people kept careful records of all their expenses, keeping receipts, others simply wrote "Expenses".

Try that on the tax man! Who incidentally may be interested in extra income of £20K. And if a woman is on benefits the benefit agency have a lower acceptance of what constitutes allowable expenses.

And it definitely adds up. I have a senior job and primark clothes are just not appropriate for my role. I spent about £1.2k on clothes shoes and underwear for during pregnancy and for after birth, until I fit back into my own clothes.

With respect though, many surrogate mothers aren't going to be the types of women in senior roles spending that much on clothes.

A Cafcass report noted the following:

"A clear example of the constraints on the court in determining whether the HFEA s54 criteria are met is the level of payments made to the surrogate as part of the arrangement. The data showed that this was often high and that payments are either accepted as reasonable expenses or authorised retrospectively by the court in order to secure the best outcome for the child. The retrospective authorisation by the court of commercial payments for surrogacy highlights the dilemma faced by the court that by acting in the interests of individual children born through surrogacy arrangements, they may be undermining the regulations prohibiting commercial surrogacy which serve to uphold children’s rights in general, preventing children being acquired for payment. It should also be noted that the high costs associated with
surrogacy mean that surrogacy as a means to solving problems of involuntary childlessness is limited to those couples who are able to afford it."

www.cafcass.gov.uk/download/3848/

[quote Anon992]@NotBadConsidering We discussed ALL of your scenarios and many more when we developed our surrogacy agreement. I also took out life insurance (paid for by my IPs).

No pregnancy is risk free. Life is not risk free. We all take risks all the time - when we cross the road, get behind the wheel of the car.[/quote]
Yes, a framework needs to exist that protects all surrogates in all scenarios with all types of intended parents. What if the intended parents had refused to pay the premium for your life insurance? What framework do you propose to prevent that from happening with others? Should a life insurance policy for the surrogate be mandatory?

If so, then the costs escalate. How then can altruistic surrogacy be for anyone other than those that can afford it?

When looking at the idea as a general principle, it doesn’t seem right, however there are cases where a woman has a medical condition that means pregnancy and child birth is life threading, e.g. cystic fibrosis, heart and lung issues, etc. These women are relatively well thanks to medication and if they were men and all that were required of them would be to ejaculate, they could become parents. Instead they are potentially denied this because they have a health condition PLUS they are biologically female. In these circumstances I think surrogacy could be valid.

Anon992

You’re basically assuming that because you and your intended parents successfully completed a pregnancy, had an arrangement that didn’t need to be challenged in court, and no one suffered any medical consequences then it’s feasible for every other arrangement to be as successful.

But the protections need to cover everything and everyone. The flaky, the variable, the dishonest, the unscrupulous, the penny-pinching, the cruel, the exploitative, the scenarios that end up in court challenging the legality of such arrangements, the insurance companies who don’t like paying out and so on. Show me THAT framework, not the one that worked, through luck, for you.

[quote Anon992]@NotBadConsidering We discussed ALL of your scenarios and many more when we developed our surrogacy agreement. I also took out life insurance (paid for by my IPs).

No pregnancy is risk free. Life is not risk free. We all take risks all the time - when we cross the road, get behind the wheel of the car.[/quote]

How much comfort would the life insurance have been to your children if you'd died in childbirth?

Again. I post this link.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/20/us/surrogate-mom-dies-trnd/index.html

San Diego. 2020.

I'm also curious how you'll react if/when the baby you birthed comes to you with questions in a decade or two.

Or even, if they're aware from a young age of their unusual birth circumstances, how you'd feel if they turned up at your door at 11pm on a Monday night age 16 because they'd had a fight with their parents and want to come stay with you.

You’re basically assuming that because you and your intended parents successfully completed a pregnancy, had an arrangement that didn’t need to be challenged in court, and no one suffered any medical consequences then it’s feasible for every other arrangement to be as successful.

No I’m not.

I answered a series of questions asked of me.

I haven’t made any comment about other arrangements or frameworks. And it’s late now so I won’t start posting about that tonight.

But how can you dissociate yourself fromthe child you are growing in your body.

The kicks the hiccups

The wanting to protect that baby growing in your body

The thinking every week well now my baby has toes or can do this

Must take such a toll to cut yourself off from these feelings

@Anon992

You’re basically assuming that because you and your intended parents successfully completed a pregnancy, had an arrangement that didn’t need to be challenged in court, and no one suffered any medical consequences then it’s feasible for every other arrangement to be as successful.

No I’m not.

I answered a series of questions asked of me.

I haven’t made any comment about other arrangements or frameworks. And it’s late now so I won’t start posting about that tonight.

I didn’t ask you any questions but you responded to my general pondering with the expression that you managed to cover all eventualities in your arrangement so I naturally assumed you think it can be applied across the board. Apologies if you don’t think that. But then I’d ask you to think, if not post, about how likely is it that your scenario can be successfully replicated with every other arrangement.

As I said, it’s basically “hit and hope”. If everything goes swimmingly, it’s seen as a life-affirming miracle. But no one can adequately explain how to protect all parties. Something has to give. In all scenarios.

And inevitably it the women - adult human females to those who aren’t sure - who would bear the brunt.

fail to see how it would have been exploitation in this case.

No it doesn't sound like it would have been but a law has to cover every single case in the nation and has to be able to deal with everything: all the motivations women might have, all the potential outcomes. The fact that there are unproblematic cases still leaves the problematic ones.

I'm a solicitor, am an equity partner in my own firm with a very successful husband who earns three times what I do. I have one dog, two degrees and three children.

I've been an altruistic surrogate, twice.

I know this doesn't make a "flurry" of "rich, successful women" but I'm certainly not the only one out there.

Thank you so much for your openness, taking on the questions and those fascinating, comprehensive answers.

I was and remain very curious.

We had a surrogacy agreement. You cannot have a surrogacy contract in UK law. It was hugely helpful and comprehensive and independently facilitated by an experienced surrogate. It covered everything from antenatal tests, termination, announcing the birth, expenses, finding out the gender, planning the funeral.... a level of planning I never went into with my own pregnancies, but which ensured we were all aligned in our thinking before we started treatment.

Planning the funeral?

Dying?

That sounds darker than me asking who you gave your baby to. That may seem a an offensive way of putting it, and it is not my intent to cause deliberate upset. However, I do want to be blunt. The plain-speaking business of surrogacy is people who want kids making agreements with women they intend to impregnate so those mothers will give up the resulting child at birth. Will this baby you gave to your friends know that you're its birth mother?

What did your agreement mean, in real terms? What would have happened if you didn't meet any of your points? What would have happened if your friends no longer wanted to meet part of their points?

but which ensured we were all aligned in our thinking before we started treatment.

I missed this. What if things change? I seem to remember a surrogate doing an “ask me anything” on here and one of the very first questions was “what if the intended parents die in a car crash before the birth?” and it hadn’t been considered.

What if everything is arranged beforehand and one of the intended parents dies unexpectedly? Or both do? Or they divorce? Or get cold feet? Or lose their job? Or decide that actually, although they decided before they’d pay for costs they now feel like the surrogate is taking the piss and want to renege on the deal?

There’s too much reliance on goodwill seeing it through.

merrymouse

www.organdonation.nhs.uk/get-involved/news/500-people-have-now-donated-a-kidney-to-a-stranger/

I've answered my own question.

I regularly have dealings with people with kidney problems at my work. Not dialysis. Surgical type interventions. People needing a kidney removed for primary cancer for instance. Or an intervention to help protect their remaining kidney when one is damaged.

Whilst I would donate a kidney to my children or other family members in a heartbeat, I'd never donate to a stranger just for the sake of it.
Two kidneys means you have a spare. Just in case. Things happen. I've known someone get stabbed in one kidney.

I really wouldn't recommend doing it. The exception being an occasion when the NHS works out a complicated chain, where someone who isn't a match for their own family member but who is a match for another person on the transplant list whose relative happens to be a match for someone else and it ends up being a full circle - the NHS really can work wonders, I have known someone be in a chain of four. Brilliant.

@littlbrowndog

But how can you dissociate yourself fromthe child you are growing in your body.

The kicks the hiccups

The wanting to protect that baby growing in your body

The thinking every week well now my baby has toes or can do this

Must take such a toll to cut yourself off from these feelings

Not everyone feels that way about pregnancy though. I certainly don't. I don't feel bonded while I am pregnant. It feels very surreal to me, like I'm lying if I say I'm pregnant. I forget to look up what my baby is doing/growing now. I forget sometimes how many weeks I am. Very much wanted ivf pregnancy, so it's not that. My friend who offered to be a surrogate also felt distanced during her own pregnancies while she is a very loving mother. I doubt that we are the only women who feel that way.

The baby wants its mummy. The one it was growing inside. The one who it could hear talk and sing. The one it could smell and breath. Babies want their mummy. And her mummy smell and her mummy hormones and her milk if she is able.
It’s basic need and love.

What if everything is arranged beforehand and one of the intended parents dies unexpectedly? Or both do? Or they divorce? Or get cold feet? Or lose their job? Or decide that actually, although they decided before they’d pay for costs they now feel like the surrogate is taking the piss and want to renege on the deal?

Like spending £1,200 on maternity clothes, for instance?

And then another, what, £14k on a pregnancy pillow, toiletries and vitamins?

@MinecraftMother can I ask Were you a host surrogate or traditional surrogate on each occasion ?

I don’t know if it still exists but there used to be. £500 maternity grant available to those who needed it. What do those who think that being pregnant costs £15, 000 imagine that those on benefits at the time do? I have never had a spare £15, 000 to spend on being pregnant!

The biggest expenses that surrogates incur are often loss of earnings. That was certainly the case for us. My partner took 2 weeks of unpaid leave (not entitled to paternity leave for obvious reasons) to look after me and our existing children immediately after birth. That was £3k straight off.

Does the agreement allow for further expense should partners be required to take a longer period off work in the event of a traumatic delivery requiring prolonged recovery? I remember a woman whose symphysis pubis split during a difficult forceps delivery. Six weeks later she still couldn't walk upstairs and went up and down on her bottom like a small child. She was so grateful her husband was a teacher and it was the summer holidays. How could a woman possibly get back to the business of caring for her small children a couple of weeks after this sort of event? But commissioning parents who have agreed a price may be somewhat put out by requests for more money to cover additional expenses.

I

Anon992, think you took significant risks (for yourself, and also your partner and your DC) for your friends, and perhaps also payment. It’s good that it worked out OK, in your case.

Firstly - I assume (correct me if I am wrong) that you did not add up the costs of your pregnancy (or separately itemise them on a spreadsheet and keep all your receipts). I did. I can tell you to the penny what mine cost. And it definitely adds up. I have a senior job and primark clothes are just not appropriate for my role. I spent about £1.2k on clothes shoes and underwear for during pregnancy and for after birth, until I fit back into my own clothes. Bras, tights, leggings, shoes (my feet swelled). Pregnancy pillow, birthing ball, parking at the hospital, travel costs. It adds up.

Meanwhile, back in the real world...

I really wish I had had over a grand to spunk on pregnancy clothes though!