Surrogacy ends in abortion and ends a friendship

[OhHolyJesus]

This is an 'altruistic' surrogacy story between two friends in New Zealand.

A woman offers herself for the pregnancy for her friend called Jane for the purposes of the article (who had a very traumatic pregnancy and labour with her daughter and she was told a second pregnancy would keep her in hospital for months at best).

"Jane's friend piped up with the offer of a lifetime. "Out of the blue, she said, 'I'd make a good surrogate because when I had my pregnancy, I didn't really feel it,'" recalls Jane. "She said she'd talk to her husband and get back to me." Not long after, they began the process of surrogacy."

All seemed to go well with separate legal and medical advice but he surrogate mother struggled and her and her husband were clearly traumatised:

"When the Weekly approached the surrogate couple to share their side of the story, they asked to remain anonymous. The surrogate's husband said, "We entered into the agreement with a genuine desire to help. Unfortunately, things did not go to plan and she became very sick with prenatal depression. This is probably a more complicated story than it appears on the surface. Jane and John do not really know the whole situation."

(So not every pregnancy is the same, even if you have had easy pregnancies in the past, perhaps the depression was connected to a sense of inevitable grief?)

"Today, the couples are no longer in contact and Jane still doesn't know why their baby was terminated. "On reflection, it started to go downhill while prepping for the embryo transfer, but John and I didn't see it," she says. "The surrogate didn't like the process at the fertility clinic or the one choice of counsellor we had. I think she felt like she was let down."

Their baby.

To me, Jane appears to believe she has rights to force her friend to continue with the pregnancy.

""It was our biological baby and Jenny's biological sibling. I could've explained how it was going to affect the rest of our lives. Even though everyone has walked away from this and even though it's painful, I'll talk about it. I never expected I'd have to worry about someone terminating our baby. It never crossed my mind."

The article mentions that law reform is being discussed, or rather looking to be enforced:

"Labour MP Tāmati Coffey, who, with his partner Tim Smith, welcomed their son Tūtānekai by surrogate in 2019, currently has a members' bill in ballot calling for modern laws for modern families. It includes reform of birth certificates, providing a way
to enforce surrogacy arrangements and creating a register of potential surrogates."

www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/kiwi-mums-heartbreak-after-surrogate-terminates-her-pregnancy-i-went-into-shock/52Y6PO5M4LV73RGZF67TX5E4LU/

I am infertile, have no children, and am opposed to surrogacy. It was never an option I considered, though I’m in a financial position where I could have gone anywhere I pleased to make it happen, had I chosen to. Nobody has the right to a child.

There’s also the unspoken undercurrent in the pro surrogacy position that lives like mine, without children, are so unspeakably awful and meaningless, that anything a person can do to avoid a similar fate is fair game. I resent the implication- my life is pretty nice, really. Thanks for shitting on it, though.

@areyouthereyet

Quite horrified by the amount of posts against surrogacy recently on mn. Really don't know how to put across what I feel but in short I think it's shocking the amount of people ready to deny hope to couples whose lives it could change. I'm willing to bet 95% of these people haven't experienced long term infertility.

Nobody is owed a child. Nobody.

@areyouthereyet

Quite horrified by the amount of posts against surrogacy recently on mn. Really don't know how to put across what I feel but in short I think it's shocking the amount of people ready to deny hope to couples whose lives it could change. I'm willing to bet 95% of these people haven't experienced long term infertility.

Do you ever give any thought to the woman whose body is used as an incubator?

Let me guess, you're pro-prostitution too.

@areyouthereyet

Quite horrified by the amount of posts against surrogacy recently on mn. Really don't know how to put across what I feel but in short I think it's shocking the amount of people ready to deny hope to couples whose lives it could change. I'm willing to bet 95% of these people haven't experienced long term infertility.

Women are not incubators. There's really nothing more to say.

I had long term infertility, I’m opposed. Like someone said. You aren’t owed a baby.

I actually know someone whose wife was a surrogate. Once for friends and twice for 2 male couples she met on the internet (once it failed). The last time she didn’t even tell her husband she was going to do it until she was pregnant (he left her).
What is actually wrong with you that you would go get pregnant with strangers and not tell your husband.
It also means she’s had to 2 maternity leaves and 1 long sickness from work in a short space of time. Why is okay to do that to a small company because you want to be altruistic.

What would your plans be for the future of surrogacy in the UK areyouthereyet? Whose interests are most important? Would you commercialise it as some are calling for - to make it easier? If so how do you prevent it becoming a womb rental service with wealthy parents buying space in poorer women's bodies and companies profiting from treating women as incubators?

My eldest is gay

He and his boyfriend would like children eventually and will look into adoption etc but during conversations having a surrogate has come up

Not through them, just in general conversation

Dd has said she would have a baby for them

My ds1 is going to make the most fantastic father, as is his boyfriend. But dd could be permanently damaged through child birth, possibly die

And if I don’t want my daughters life and health threatened then I don’t see why I should be happy to let any womans life and health threatened

@areyouthereyet

Quite horrified by the amount of posts against surrogacy recently on mn. Really don't know how to put across what I feel but in short I think it's shocking the amount of people ready to deny hope to couples whose lives it could change. I'm willing to bet 95% of these people haven't experienced long term infertility.

Now that several posters who are infertile have said they are opposed to it, are you going to retract your comment?

Welcome to MN, by the way.

@areyouthereyet
I have a history of late pregnancy loss but not infertility. I cannot explain the agony of being on a maternity ward being surrounded by coos of new born babies whilst sitting with a box, waiting to be discharged. Your world starts to crumble.

Some rather dark years passed and you lose hope, whilst everyone around is having baby numbers 2 and 3. It was rather a hideous for a while.

Not once, did I consider surrogacy.
It doesn't give me the right to ask another woman to risk her life to give me a baby.

💐 for weroar

And for anyone with fertility issues

It took me 2 years to get ds1, it felt like forever at the time but I appreciate that it was only a very short space of time compared to many many others

@WeRoarSometimes I am so, so sorry to hear what you have been through.

Dd has said she would have a baby for them

Maybe your DD has said this in a lighthearted way and not considered the reality, but aside from the who's egg, who's sperm question (so the DNA is not too closely related, and the effects of the drugs that are needed to 'host' a donor egg pregnancy) would it be her first pregnancy?

I used to think I could do it for my sister but I was in my 20s, I saw it as a big favour she would owe me for and through that we would become closer and I get to remind her for life! Not very mature, but I was early 20s. Turns out the reason she wasn't having children was because she didn't want to have any children and my assistance wasn't required! (Which is just as well as there is no way I would have put my social life and career on hold to be pregnant.)

It is something you can say without actually really thinking about it. I can only imagine the difficulties it would cause in a family, though we hear all the time in the media how great it is, I'm not blindly buying it - I bet there aren't lots of issue behind the fluff.

And if I don’t want my daughters life and health threatened then I don’t see why I should be happy to let any womans life and health threatened

Exactly, we should treat all women like our daughters. Other people's daughters aren't a canon fodder, there aren't a useful group of women to be 'breeders' for us, men (same sex attracted or not) or our infertile children. I'm glad your son and his partner would consider adoption over surrogacy.

@areyouthereyet

Quite horrified by the amount of posts against surrogacy recently on mn. Really don't know how to put across what I feel but in short I think it's shocking the amount of people ready to deny hope to couples whose lives it could change. I'm willing to bet 95% of these people haven't experienced long term infertility.

So, a woman has a chance of dying, of suffering life limiting or shortening health issues, of maybe losing her own choices around fertility, to provide someone else a child that they have effectively 'designed'.

And that is ok?. Because you feel it provides someone whose body prevents them from being able to carry their own child, with hope. That another woman's future is expendable for money so that a woman who cannot deliver a child can have own that they have 'ordered' to be created as they wish vs adopting a child ?

Thank you @RufustheBadgeringReindeer @ChairmansReserve

@OhHolyJesus
You hit the nail on the head there.
Women are socially conditioned for emotional care, to be helpful, to 'be kind' and now this has extended into risking physical health at the behest of fulfilling someone else' dream.

Many women in the developed nations may not be thinking of becoming mothers til their 30s thanks to higher education, workplace participation or meeting a partner with whom they wanted children.
This is likely when the reality of our reproductive health hits us along with the other risks pregnancy and childbirth bring to our lives.
It's very easy to imagine in our 20s that being a surrogate mum for someone important to us is an amazing gift to give.

It's a huge risk to take with your body and also for the future relationship with the commissioning parents.

areyouthereyet

How do you also feel about the young women who are donating eggs in the USA where they suffer strokes and loss of their own fertility in their attempt to make enough money to get through college?

You talk of 'comfort'. Are you comfortable that young women are doing this because the medical risks have been downplayed and they are subject to emotive advertising of 'you can provide a couple with hope for the future'? It amounts to financial coercion in my mind. Where does it sit in yours?

I am very shocked that when other women learn about the huge health risks women are taking to fulfil other people's desires that they are not saying 'no! stop! this is wrong!. And recognising the fact that not one person on this earth actually has a 'right' to a baby to be created for them. If they realise that other women are putting themselves at this much risk for them, they must surely acknowledge that it is not ok. Ever.

@areyouthereyet

Quite horrified by the amount of posts against surrogacy recently on mn. Really don't know how to put across what I feel but in short I think it's shocking the amount of people ready to deny hope to couples whose lives it could change. I'm willing to bet 95% of these people haven't experienced long term infertility.

Whereas I think it’s horrifying that throughout history the rights of women have been routinely ignored, as though babies really are delivered by storks.

How do you also feel about the young women who are donating eggs in the USA where they suffer strokes and loss of their own fertility in their attempt to make enough money to get through college?

Wow do egg donors really compromise their fertility 👀

I’ve been through IVF they warn you of the dangers of over stimulating egg production, it can cause your ovaries to rupture.

Wow do egg donors really compromise their fertility 👀

There's a documentary on Amazon called "Eggsploitation". It's already a decade old, so bear in mind when you watch it how many more young women are now infertile themselves after trying to give their own eggs to 'fix' someone else's infertility. And not just infertile. Dead. Being an egg donor is a serious health risk, just like undertaking a pregnancy to be used as a surrogate mother.

@areyouthereyet

Quite horrified by the amount of posts against surrogacy recently on mn. Really don't know how to put across what I feel but in short I think it's shocking the amount of people ready to deny hope to couples whose lives it could change. I'm willing to bet 95% of these people haven't experienced long term infertility.

Infertile woman here. I'd see surrogacy banned if I could.

Don't presume to speak for me or women like me. Infertility is no picnic, but I couldn't imagine exploiting another woman to have a child.

Since "enforcing the contract" means removing control of a woman's body from her, this should never be allowed to happen. How would the contract be enforced? Detention centre until birth? Jail for breech of contract?

Wow do egg donors really compromise their fertility

They most certainly do. The negative side effects on the ovaries future are considerable. They also die as others have pointed out. They have strokes which then leave them with shortened lives particularly because they are sometimes sent home with no after care at all and they then cannot afford to go to the hospital and the clinic will not treat them. So, a double whammy. And this is in the USA.

We have heard people tell us that it is no different from sperm donation. It is quite bizarre the disconnect people have with the realities of fertility treatments.

@areyouthereyet

Quite horrified by the amount of posts against surrogacy recently on mn. Really don't know how to put across what I feel but in short I think it's shocking the amount of people ready to deny hope to couples whose lives it could change. I'm willing to bet 95% of these people haven't experienced long term infertility.

Probably people who are against the sale of body organs haven't experienced kidney failure. And those against capital punishment haven't experienced a relative being murdered.

This isn't the way you judge ethical issues.

Some of the posters on this topic have directly experienced infertility pregnancy loss, so there is first hand experience of the failure of reproductive organs to give us the babies we wanted.

And yet, they recognise the problems with surrogacy arrangements, not least the exploitation of women.

The solution to any lifelong illness, cannot be exploitation those who are more vulnerable and have less agency.

Look at the countries who have banned surrogacy completely such as Sweden and the Netherlands. There is a reason surrogacy is considered dangerous to women.

So sorry for all you have been through @WeRoarSometimes