Another surrogacy gone wrong - New Zealand

[OhHolyJesus]

So the newspaper said they kept names anonymous and didn't contact the surrogate mother which I think leads to an incredibly biased article with no right of reply from the other side.

It was a 'home job', no clinic, the surrogate mother is the legal mother and genetic and biological as it was her egg. No reason given as to why she changed her mind, only a mention of her feeling stupid to have agreed in the first place.

NZ media gearing up for the NZ consultation on reform, with the Labour rep submitting it as biased as she has a son through surrogacy. Nice and neutral then.

www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/surrogacy-horror-kiwi-parents-are-having-to-share-custody-with-surrogate/QC6U4F6MYIL3KUZR7RMUGQXGIE/

"Surrogacy horror": the process of getting pregnant and giving birth which puts huge strain on a woman's body, depletes her of resources and sends her on a rollercoaster of hormone induced emotions, results in woman changing her mind. What a shock! The assumption from the point of view of the article that renting out a woman's womb - while still attached to an actual human woman with thoughts and feelings - isn't really tricky and complicated and requires extreme care and caution is baffling. Oh no it isn't, they dgaf about the female surrogate. Lines like this are really telling:

"parents like Anna and Mark are at the mercy of their surrogates"

Some of the language used about the surrogate mother is appalling.

"People who are desperately wanting a baby... They'll meet someone who appears to be quite wonderful who offers to be a surrogate but maybe she's possibly not quite so wonderful."

"You can't fathom how awful and twisted some people can be."

Like you say OP, I would love to hear the surrogate mother's side of the story.

You can't fathom how awful and twisted some people can be.

Exactly. All these people wanting to be parents who appear to have no empathy for the mother of their child.

It's the language and media agenda that annoys me more than anything.

Does anyone ever report the truth anymore?

It’s fucking bonkers that this article/this ‘intended parent’ seems incapable of understanding that the baby is both genetically and legally the surrogates baby.
Sure, it’s also the intended parent’s husband’s baby, hence the 50/50 custody spilt, but if you circumvent the law and create a baby in this manner, why on earth would you be surprised that the surrogate mother, after carrying her own biological child for 9 months, decides she doesn’t want to give it away? Surely when the baby is made from he surrogate’s own egg, ‘surrogate’ is the wrong descriptor?

To me, a woman who decides not to give away her baby seems like the most natural outcome.

Exactly Plant without a contract (though unenforceable) and being genetically and biologically her's, the commissioning parents (can't they be called that if they didn't go the formal route and basically it's an acquaintance doing it as a favour? Bet the mother doesn't think of herself as an acquaintance...) have no legs to stand on. The father has rights but his partner/wife doesn't not.

And all the article aims to do is solicit sympathy for the adults who went outside the law and use this as a jumping off point to suggest the law should be change to accommodate people like this couple.

Insane. New Zealand please do something!

I saw NZ should do something as their consultation is likely to follow the UK's and if it forms a proposed Bill and is passed into law this mother would have no rights AT ALL! This needs to be stopped, it feels like another attack to me, this time on mothers.

If you swapped the word surrogate for mother that article would feel very different. Who knew language actually matters.

That woman isn't a surrogate. She's a woman for whatever reason agreed to hand over her baby to another woman to raise then changed her mind.
Surrogacy is disgusting and needs to stop.

In a survey [Dr Debra Wilson] undertook a few years ago, 75 per cent of respondents said they didn't support surrogates being allowed to back out partway through and take the child.

Take the child? You mean the child who is inside her body? The child who will be born with a strong instinct to be close to his or her birth mother?

“Take the child”. WTF?

I do tie myself up in knots looking for understandable language when describing all the people involved in a surrogacy story. Maybe we need to agree on some that work for the anti surrogacy side of the discussion, rather than trying to amend the prosurrogacy ones to be a bit more human?

Because I agree totally, this case involves a mother and a father and the father’s wife. It’s more like a pregnancy originating from an extramarital affair (the only thing missing is the sex) than whatever surrogacy is supposed to be.

In fact, it’s very ‘Handmaids Tale’ - the husband has impregnated another woman with his wife’s knowledge on the understanding that the resultant baby will be given to the wife.

I honestly think most people dont realise that rthat surrogacy can also involve getting pregnant with your own egg, I naively thought that wasnt the case.

So using surrogate is so misleading, also how difficult for this child growing up. Will the step mother (and this is what she is) gaslight the child into saying she's his/her real mother?

When the woman uses her own egg it is called in surrogacy terms, traditional surrogacy (always makes me think if the Bible Sarah/Hagar story but Lisa Muggeridge is helping me to understand that note).

Traditional - the not modern, not scientific, boring old regular surrogacy.

Gestational surrogacy - where an embryo is implanted, whether it's the commission Mother's egg or an egg from another woman (still hate the word donor) results in two things. 1. the surrogate mother becomes an 'oven' 2. The SM is encouraged to detach herself from the natural bonds that form during pregnancy

So what new language could we replace with this?

You know I would really like to see some research into what the child in this situation thinks. IMO the baby in the middle of it is the most important person and the only one with no say. I have heard some research about sperm donation and how grown up children feel about that, very complex feeling about identity and not best pleased with their mothers choices apparently. I don't know if surrogate born children have been studied in this way though.

I’ve just submitted a research paper on this very subject, specifically transnational gestational surrogacy.

Do you know any other industry in the world where it’s unregulated to such an extend but Is so profitable and lucrative?.... Well - for the brokers... not for the impoverished women who are housed in dormitories.

Did you know that from a legal standpoint a white Woman is in a better position to engage a woman of colour to be her surrogate. A court would never allow a white baby to be kept by a woman of colour. Extra marks for an uneducated woman who can’t read the contract she’s signing and even better if she’s impoverished and living in a patriarchal culture because she’ll never be able to take you to court anyway.

I think the woman's role as the child's mother should always come first before words like surrogate or birth mother. It devalues motherhood otherwise.

And yes these stories always end up reminding me of The Handmaid's Tale.

I need to have a think about it (and workshop it with others!) but instinctively I want to put the ‘mother’ back into it!

‘Egg mother’ ‘Biological mother’? Instead of egg donor
‘Birth mother’ ‘Pregnancy mother’? ‘Maternity mother’? instead of surrogate or (worst still, ‘gestational carrier’ 🤮)

And then plain old ‘mother’ when the two are the same?

‘Biological father’ instead of sperm donor? (so ‘biological father via anonymous sperm’ and the same ‘biological mother via anonymous ovum’ when these are ‘blind’ through a clinic? And ‘biological father via known sperm’ for when you get a mate to do it?

‘biological mother via known ovum’ for female equivalent?

‘biological mother via selected ovum’ for when the egg donor is met and interviewed first (as seems to be the luxury option in the United States?)

I think ‘commissioning’ is better than ‘intended’ but I suppose it would be best if there was a differential between outright commercial and slightly-more-altruistic versions, as well as differentials between surrogacy due to female infertility/surrogacy due to convenience/surrogacy due to the lack of a female human in the relationship.

Seems like this has been a very easy situation for obfuscating language to take hold, now that
I’m actively trying to ground it back in reality!

Did you know that from a legal standpoint a white Woman is in a better position to engage a woman of colour to be her surrogate. A court would never allow a white baby to be kept by a woman of colour. Extra marks for an uneducated woman who can’t read the contract she’s signing and even better if she’s impoverished and living in a patriarchal culture because she’ll never be able to take you to court anyway.

Reading this made my stomach fall away, like going over an unexpected big bump in a car.

I’ve been paying a lot of attention to surrogacy issues lately thanks to Mumsnet posters like OhHoly and just when you think you’ve read enough to not be shocked, someone says something that feels like a gut punch.

I’d like to see surrogacy outlawed completely, but at the very least it should be banned trans nationally - there is just too much scope for exploitation.

The man is not a sperm donor though, is he? Donation means giving something away for altruistic or charitable reasons. He wasn't giving away his sperm, he was trying to have a child.

What about the rights of the child? Ethically, surrogacy is on a par with trafficking in human beings.

The rights of the child is also very concerning as the child is born into a ‘space’ if transnational where they don’t have citizenship.
Many surrogates have written into their contract that they don’t get paid unless the child is ‘live’ - that makes the child a commodity.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/23/interpol-japanese-baby-factory-man-fathered-16-children

The man is not a sperm donor though, is he? Donation means giving something away for altruistic or charitable reasons. He wasn't giving away his sperm, he was trying to have a child.

No, in this case he is just the plain old ‘father’ (as in, his sperm and his legal responsibility to raise the resultant child’)

And yes, I agree, surrogacy IS people trafficking.

This journal is really worth a read.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0308518X18769652

It's illegal in this country to have a baby and give it to someone else to raise. It's illegal to lie on birth certificates about parentage. The reason is that it's trafficking. How is it supposedly acceptable when it's called 'surrogacy'?