Why are they in a hospital bed? (Adoption related)

[FightingtheFoo]

I just want to be clear this has nothing to do with the parents in question being a same-sex couple. I feel equally about surrogacy whether it's Kim Kardashian buying a baby or Pete Buttigieg.

With that disclaimer:

Why on earth is he posing in a hospital bed?

I just find the absolute airbrushing out of the woman who actually carried, nurtured and gave birth to those babies for 9 months horrifying.

https://twitter.com/PeteButtigieg/status/1434167993769111552

And of course for many women and girls an abortion esp v early will be preferable.

Where they are very young.
Where the pregnancy is the result of abuse or rape.
Where they have had pregnancies before that have caused injury / MH probs including PTSD post partum psychosis.
Where they do not want a baby for whatever reason but know they could never give a baby up.

In the UK I'd say for the vast majority of women/ girls the decision is keep or abort.

That's my feeling on it and I'm fairly sure it's how it is.

While I would choose abortion and would encourage my daughter to do the same, there are a large number of women in the US who don’t consider it an option for themselves, even if they believe it should be legal. For them, adoption is a real alternative to parenting a baby they are not ready to raise.

As an American, I’ve long found the UK bias towards encouraging unprepared mothers to become active parents quite odd. While I understand the social safety net is better, the limitations on educational and occupational choices are still going to be severe and have lifelong ramifications on both generations.

There are definitely cultural issues at play. I doubt that one system is really superior. I’m sure that women and children are being failed in both systems and would benefit from adjustments.

There isn't a bias here towards pushing unprepared (not sure what that quite means) women towards being active mothers.

If women/ girls don't want a baby then they tend to have an abortion.
The map and contraception are freely available as well.

Well at least in my area.

NI it's still difficult in practice to get an abortion even though legal now.

When it comes to religious beliefs. Much of the UK is not really that fundamental. It's more pragmatic maybe.

Certainly I know stacks of RC people and was raised rc myself but don't know anyone who is against homosexuality contraception abortion. That stuff is seen as private, as are religious views generally. Up the the person and their own beliefs etc.

We do have some closed communities and their approaches are very different. They are small in number though and very strict on loads of things.

I agree with you NiceGerbil, I also think that the choice in the UK would be keep or abort. The third option of go through pregnancy give birth and give the baby away is not a choice a mentally healthy, properly informed/advised, properly supported woman would make.

Have a medical termination by taking 2 pills in early pregnancy, grieve and get on with your life or

Go through 9 months of pregnancy followed by birth and all the physical risks of pregnancy and birth, your body changed forever and bring another human being into the world to be traumatised by being separated from you and whom you will never forget, likely always worry and wonder about, always be waiting and wondering will he or she find me one day, mother and baby separated but always yearning for each other, baby always wondering why didn’t my mother want me, who was she, what were the circumstances of my conception, who was my father. Why would any woman do that to herself and her child if she was able to choose early, safe, free and accessible abortion or supported by the state to love and nurture her own child herself?

If the goal of religion is to reduce suffering in the world and to promote love, forgiveness and healing as some believers claim, then to me abortion and supporting single mothers would logically seem the best way to do that.

If you are a mother then imagine it, imagine being separated from your children at birth by poverty or politics or religion. Imagine being actually persuaded by political or religious influences that you should give up your baby. Being told and believing that someone else would make a better mother to your baby than you would. That your baby would be better off without you. It is all rather too much like the handmaid’s tale.

By the way I am critical of systems and structures not of the women who must navigate them and the choices they make about their own bodies and their own lives in the circumstances they find themselves with the information and support they have available at the time. I don’t think that women in the US have the same choices and freedoms that we are fortunate to have here in the UK. I feel for US women, the injustice and cruelty of the US system angers me greatly. I don’t think the beginning of human life is valued in the US system, I don’t think the needs of babies are valued and I don’t think motherhood is valued. Obviously we could do better on all those points here in the UK too. I don’t think that culture can fully overcome natural mammalian instincts around the mother and baby’s need for each other.

Yes.
I wonder if a cultural difference is that there's a very different view to having a baby and just letting it go.

The idea of handing over a newborn personally I just couldn't. Most women/ girls couldn't either.

In nature progs when a mammal baby is separated from the mother when v young it's upsetting. Most people feel that surely. I noticed it the other day. There's always sad music and a serious voiceover.

Yet with humans carrying a baby to term and giving birth and then it's gone and that's that. It's viscerally all wrong.

Anyone who thinks it's horrifying when it's a lemur or a chimp but aok and even really good when it's a human. I just don't get it.

The only that not being able to imagine a woman wanting to give her child life but not wanting to parent just shows a lack of imagination/ability to see from another perspective. Humans are not wild mammals, and young wild mammal mothers often abandon their birth born/first litter, anyway.

I am 100% pro-choice, and I am sad that American women in some states don't have good, reliable access to abortion.

But attitudes like this "I feel for US women, the injustice and cruelty of the US system angers me greatly." are silly. The UK is not some mecca for women. There are pros and cons. For example, in the US, child support is taken extremely seriously compared to the UK. For example, In Texas, a man's paycheck is deducted directly by the Attorney General and paid directly into the women's account. If they don't pay every month, a warrant will automatically be issued. There is also common law marriage, so that if a man and woman live together like man and wife for years, but he doesn't marry her, she isn't shit out of luck like in UK. In the US, I always had access to a gynacologist, was diagnosed with endometriosis at 18 vis surgery, had a revision surgery to remove more at 24. In the UK I can't even get in to see a gynecologist.

There are pros and cons to both countries, some things are easier, some things are harder. The key is that regardless of if you can imagine WHY a women is making the choice, it is completely her choice.

To separate humans from all other mammals esp great apes by saying we're not wild animals is bizarre.

Human females then are supposed to have advanced so that they don't feel an instructive urge to hold/care for a baby they've just given birth to.

Well you learn something every day! Makes total sense now.

The stats say that the number of babies available for adoption in Indiana has dropped hugely as having a baby outside marriage has become more acceptable.

Sounds like social pressure there.
There's the religious factor too.
Personal belief for some.

But the fact is that for most human females, wild or not (?!) growing a baby and giving birth to it and then having it gone is just viscerally upsetting.

I don't agree that either abortion or adoption is a better choice. I think that is a very personal decision, and that it is ridiculous for anyone to tell a woman what she should do with her body. Either of these choices could be difficult for a woman, or, not so difficult, depending on how she feels. There is nothing wrong with either choice, nor is there anything wrong with keeping the baby. Not every woman who gives away her baby regrets it, though it is surely a difficult decision, just as every woman who has an abortion does not regret it. Ditto with keeping a child. I think some of the judgment here is due to lack of imagination about how other people might think.

None of these decisions are made in a vacuum. There is a whole massive host of stuff sitting behind it.

The fact is that in the UK at least the past that I know well. The decision is mainly abort/ have baby. Adoption is not really choice considered.

In USA it seems like a different story. Totally different.. well everything really.

And it's not about judging individuals obv as you say it's a very personal decision.

What is interesting is the big difference in the result which is for me interesting.

I personally cannot imagine any situation where growing and birthing a baby and then it being gone shortly after. Would ever be a thing I could do. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

In Indiana, the area the thread is about. The numbers of babies 'available' for adoption has fallen away over time with the reason given being that having a baby outside marriage is more acceptable.

I mean that says quite a lot surely.

The piece I read seemed to think less babies for adoption was not a great thing which also worried me tbh.

They have not confirmed these babies were adopted. They were trying to adopt and the adoption fell through.

I suspect they paid a woman to be a surrogate. Twins born naturally are pretty rare and up for adoption even more rarely.

www.today.com/parents/pete-chasten-buttigieg-are-now-parents-two-babies-t230106

GB News did a programme about surrogacy yesterday, the UK's youngest surrogate mother, who has triplets for a couple through an agency, said she didn't have a connection to the babies (she had a c section so didn't hold them and she first saw them after the birth at two weeks old in the ICU), she had natal depression of some kind (she didn't go into detail but she thought she should have had private healthcare. She was on an NHS ward with other mothers who had their babies with them.) and after being in their lives until they were 3 she no longer has contact with them.

This was all expressed like it was a good thing, she said she had no problems, she was just proud and happy she gave the couple children. She was 19 with a newborn son when she decided to do it and just 21 when she had a very risky pregnancy - at least the triplets were naturally formed and the commissioning parents didn't have her take three of their embryos into her womb to grow and birth them for them.

As the triplets have known her til they were 3 they may hold long term memories of her as they grow up but as she's not on the birth certificate her existence could easily be wiped away (apart from the internet media coverage I suppose.)

twitter.com/gbnews/status/1436015497758355460?s=21

If Buttigieg did adopt then he and his husband have done what lord of same-sex coupes have done, but in a sense that's what Shaniece did too, it was a deliberate act of pregnancy for adoption, only the CPs share DNA with the triplets.