To not understand the issue with surrogacy?

[Blackbird1234]

I've seen a few posts on some threads in this topic, from people condemning surrogacy. I don't understand why it is seen as bad, if all parties consent. Can anyone explain, please?

Just asking questions. Point me to your post where you answered. I can’t find it. Or copy and paste it. Or repeat it. If surrogacy is important to you, that women should be allowed to do it if they freely choose, then it’s worth it isn’t it? To make sure your point isn’t lost?

Just to add before I head to bed…. As I say, I wouldn’t chose to come on this board, despite being very active on MN (several posts every day)

Even AIBU folk disagree and argue, but it generally doesn’t go past 2/3 days.

Here it’s completely to the extreme, goes on for days an days until silly o’clock and I’ve literally never known that in about 21 months of very active posts etc…

Part of me thinks I like the dedication to the cause that you bring but part of me thinks the average person is put off by the extremities and the constantly going on and on and on and on

I don’t know whether it’s to admired or embarrassed about. But I do think aside for the hardcore 15 posters or so most people can’t be bothered with it.

Sadly that bulldozer mentality (I’m 100% right all of the time) detracts from
Issues that affect every woman, ie the concept that a man can change sex and the problems that brings( sharing a changing room etc)

So whilst I don’t agree with everyone so far, I do agree with the maim issues affecting woman in general but I wouldn’t hurry back to this board in a hurry as it can be off putting.’

Just post a counter argument Starcup. It’s not silly hour. Explain your position. Your posts in response to questions have been…limited. “I’ll respond to that later”. “Sometimes it goes wrong”. “That’s extreme”.

Do you actually disagree or do you just feel the need to be contrary for the sake of it because you don’t like the “bulldozer mentality”?

@NotBadConsidering

Just post a counter argument Starcup. It’s not silly hour. Explain your position. Your posts in response to questions have been…limited. “I’ll respond to that later”. “Sometimes it goes wrong”. “That’s extreme”.

Do you actually disagree or do you just feel the need to be contrary for the sake of it because you don’t like the “bulldozer mentality”?

This is my last post on this this thread as I’m annoyed with myself for wasting so much of my time on this thread. Literally hours and hours where I could be doing more proactive things.

It’s not silly o’clock to be random on the Internet? It’s 3.30am I’d say most people would agree with me.

I’m not even sure what your question was/is… Do I disagree with what? Surrogacy? I’m some situations yes not in all.

Right you’ve beat me, worn me down and I can’t do it anymore, wasting hours upon hours on ransoms on the Internet!

Take care all

It’s not 3.30am everywhere 😉.

I’m not even sure what your question was/is… Do I disagree with what? Surrogacy? I’m some situations yes not in all.

All those posts, all that time wasted, and we still don’t get any in depth explanation 🙄.

It’s a shame, because like I said earlier, this issue is about real lives, real women, real children, real trauma, real exploitation, real legal issues, all affecting real people that deserves depth of analysis.

I’m lucky my DH provides for me (aghast I hear you all 😂) so I can stay up all night and sleep all day… not everyone had that luxury. Though at least I admit it, can’t imagine most people can stay up until 2.30 am if they start work at 8.30 but I bet you’d rather jump off a cliff thsn admit your SAHM…..
I can stay up till 2:30 and start work at 8:30, used to do that every night actually. With dc3 due in under 2 months I’ve never been a sahm in my life, work full time in a fairly high pressure area. Hope that helps you stop generalising - it’s so incredibly trite to read a thread about women’s opinions and say haha bet you’re all sahms.
Now off to catch up on the rest of the thread.

Sorry I can’t say the same as I think you’re full of sht

I would say the same and report your post but I'm so enjoying watching the hole you're digging getting bigger and bigger.

Should you peruse this board you would find many a thread discuss freedom of speech, in general and specifically for women and proposed laws that haven't even come into force but have hindered this.

You could read around the board and maybe try to understand why many women posting here are active in writing to their MPs and have even formed grassroots campaigns and charities, protested and joined forces.

You could see how globally, through those grassroots groups, there is a serious and effective movement, a rebirth in feminism (not the fun kind), but in all seriousness, we both know that would take a lot of work, time and effort.

As you have lots of time in your hands due to being unemployed and "living off your husbands salary" (your words, I assume not sarcasm, though your posts are full of it) I recommend reading about what has sprung from Mumsnet and how it provides a place for real change as well as hosts honest, open discussion (within talk guidelines). The trans widows group is just one example, let toys be toys is another, we can't consent to this is another.

This may be a joke to you, you certainly don't appear to be talk no it seriously, but I would say that most regular posters here do.

You obviously know about LangCleg's exit and have been lurking and looking for an opportunity to tell us off/to shut up ("shisssshhhh") and I imagine you are enjoying this immensely, and that's fine. Your comments tell us who you are.

"When someone tells you who they are, believe them."
🪨

Ooh, a 3am flounce!

@NotBadConsidering

I, along with many others on the thread I am sure, would expect that professionals with excellent safeguarding experience would use the existing laws to make decisions about each and every case of abusive family situations. And would also look at the best resources to support the child and the family.

And it’s always best to have safeguarding policies in place beforehand for predictable outcomes, rather than implementing them reactively to revelations. Like how it was only discovered after the fact that Baby Gammy’s father was a convicted paedophile.

In what I have seen, David Farnell would not have been able to get to the US to collect surrogate born baby due to his previous conviction but Thailand had no such restrictions.

It is truly awful what happened with the Gammy and Pipah case but at least Thailand banned commercial surrogacy and cracks down heavily on baby trafficking as a result.

the argument, as far as I could make out, seemed to be that you can't always protect children and vulnerable people, so you shouldn't try:

Sadly we can’t can’t protect all the children all the time, especially when their own patents can’t be trusted to protect them

also that allowing people to do what they want is more important than protecting others. that's a fine line to tread

David Farnell is dead now. Can’t imagine many mourned him.

@timeisnotaline

I’m lucky my DH provides for me (aghast I hear you all 😂) so I can stay up all night and sleep all day… not everyone had that luxury. Though at least I admit it, can’t imagine most people can stay up until 2.30 am if they start work at 8.30 but I bet you’d rather jump off a cliff thsn admit your SAHM….. I can stay up till 2:30 and start work at 8:30, used to do that every night actually. With dc3 due in under 2 months I’ve never been a sahm in my life, work full time in a fairly high pressure area. Hope that helps you stop generalising - it’s so incredibly trite to read a thread about women’s opinions and say haha bet you’re all sahms. Now off to catch up on the rest of the thread.

Its the Christmas hols on a bank holiday weekend. What are they for if its not a late night?

Nice to see you just blabbering on about safeguarding being extremist and therefore surrogacy is ok after I went to bed.

Safeguarding used to be all the rage and the key point about protecting human rights. Now apparently it gets in the way of 'rights'.

The reality is that the wants of the privileged have been dressed up as rights, whilst the rights of the vulnerable have been dressed up as unimportant or an inconvenience with safeguarding of the vulnerable represented as extremism rather than simply a recognition of those making demands at the expense of other exploiting them in the process.

Until someone can properly explain why protecting women and children from the exploitation of the rich is a good thing, I will continue with the wisdom of safeguarding which has been pretty damn mainstream since WWII rather than regressing to victorian ideals of morality and the concept that the poor deserved it somehow.

Are you mad or delirious?

Ooo just spotted this gem.

Women saying no they don't like surrogacy are ccrrrraazzzzzyyyyyy.

Crazy extremists.

Ah the whiff of misogyny. The rules of misogyny are always right. The reason being they hold a torch to the truth.

I follow the power of the truth to highlight injustice.

Not the power of the lobby groups full of gobby people making demands.

To refresh my mind, I read back the poster’s first few posts.

The snide generalisations started around their second post.

The point being, if it’s all about the best interests of the child, then half of the people on here will have brought a baby in to the world under less than ideal circumstances.

And it descended into whataboutery with that post onwards. So many of the ‘Whatabout’ situations answered with care, knowledge and logic. Including the ‘what about the sperm donor’s health’… in other words, what about the men.

It actually was an interesting thread, because it brought out a range of opinions and discussed them. Hypocritically, the only person calling out people for their opinions, telling people how abhorrent or extreme their opinion was, was ‘star’.

Reading back many posters were calling out the attempts to derail away from the surrogacy discussion through the constant ‘what about this then’ when it devolved into areas that were about other issues and family situations and not surrogacy. Often posters did this while still answering the ‘Whatabout’ questions or situations.

Thank you OP, I learned a lot of extra information on this thread from seeing new links posted.

starcup

Your driving analogy is excellent and very applicable here.

No, we don't ban driving because some people die/are injured.

Neither do we leave it to everyone to drive how they like

You have to be (in the uk) 17, have a licence, drive on the left, obey the speed limit, be below the permitted blood alcohol limit, etc...

We don't just say drive how you like, it's a free choice, you do you, etc.

We accept some curtailment of our freedom to drive however we like in order to ensure that the roads are safe as they can be for all.

@Blackbird1234

I hope you are ok OP and haven't been too bothered by multiple and frequent notifications of new posts! I also hope you have enjoyed the discussion.

I have also found this thread useful, the OP has already said she has too and any lurkers will have the arguments laid before them and can read the counter argument, or try to gather pieces of that together in amongst the Whataboutery.

As for whataboutery, it can be useful as it can highlight other related topics. Though separate, there are links or similarities with IVF and adoption and as we near 1k (which I don't think a surrogacy thread has ever done) I look forward to new threads on the feminism board to discuss:

IVF
Adoption
Laws and how they are made
Safeguarding
The billion dollar global fertility industry
Donor gamete registers
Donor gametes research, risks and regulation
Prolific sperm donors
Genealogical bewilderment
Donor conceived children
Surrogate born children (and where the two collide)
Human trafficking and specifically the baby trade (via abductions, international 'adoption', surrogacy)
Genetic engineering and bioethics
Counselling for surrogate mothers

We could also have ones on organ donation, abortion and the sex trade as they also come up via Whataboutery.

Perhaps Star could start one on one of these areas, lay out her thoughts in the OP and ask questions and engage in good faith whilst holding onto the sarcasm and misogyny. Or someone else could.

I'm fascinated by surrogacy, despite having not been a surrogate mother or having obtained a child via surrogacy and so I'm always up for a thread exploring surrogacy.

Thanks again to the OP for starting this thread. If you can come back and let us know what you've gathered from it that would be great, even if it's not much, I for one would be really interested in hearing what you think before the thread closes.

@timeisnotaline

I’m lucky my DH provides for me (aghast I hear you all 😂) so I can stay up all night and sleep all day… not everyone had that luxury. Though at least I admit it, can’t imagine most people can stay up until 2.30 am if they start work at 8.30 but I bet you’d rather jump off a cliff thsn admit your SAHM….. I can stay up till 2:30 and start work at 8:30, used to do that every night actually. With dc3 due in under 2 months I’ve never been a sahm in my life, work full time in a fairly high pressure area. Hope that helps you stop generalising - it’s so incredibly trite to read a thread about women’s opinions and say haha bet you’re all sahms. Now off to catch up on the rest of the thread.

No I think the point is that we all hate SAHMs because we are feminists? There was a dig earlier about 'living off my husband's money' that I think was supposed to wind us up and get us shouting about how women should go out to work?

I am a SAHM and an adopter (although obviously one whose issues with surrogacy mean I want to leave the 'poor little souls'.with 'smackheads') so I am not sure that Starcup has us all pegged exactly right

I think the issues happen when you can't imagine a world in which someone doesn't fall into the stereotype you have created for them in your head. In this case 'lefty feminist' I assume. Hence the really weird bit about the M25

*Here it’s completely to the extreme, goes on for days an days until silly o’clock and I’ve literally never known that in about 21 months of very active posts etc…

Part of me thinks I like the dedication to the cause that you bring but part of me thinks the average person is put off by the extremities and the constantly going on and on and on and on

I don’t know whether it’s to admired or embarrassed about. But I do think aside for the hardcore 15 posters or so most people can’t be bothered with it.

Sadly that bulldozer mentality (I’m 100% right all of the time) detracts from
Issues that affect every woman, ie the concept that a man can change sex and the problems that brings( sharing a changing room etc)*

Funny. Coming from someone with that terrier like ability to just keep coming back for another bite!

I got to about post 400 before skipping to post and can see the direction changed somewhat but what I was going to say...
I know a gay couple who have used surrogates and are very active campaigners for surrogacy reform etc. I also know they are both having multiple affairs via Grindr etc. I do wonder how long it will be before their perfect image they are building up comes crashing down and what will happen to the poor kids then and with the rise in surrogacy what will happen when these cases come to divorce etc.
Secondly the surrogates they have used do not have jobs. £20k expenses to someone without a job is a lot of money.

I'm reposting this as it is likely lost in the depths of the whataboutery.
Thank you for posting @zweisamkeit

Of course this where commercial surrogacy leads. Negotiating with surrogate mothers (sorry, carriers) to get the costs down.

"we gravitated toward a first-timer, with the rationale that the compensation was significantly less (about $20,000), she would be anxious to get started (read: open to negotiation)"

For "open to negotiation" I think we can safely read "less aware of her rights/easier to bully"

www.fertilityiq.com/topics/cost/how-i-saved-usd50-000-on-surrogacy

There is also some discussion about how she saved money on medical insurance with the second surrogacy. For various reasons she decided that medical costs were low in early pregnancy and so arranged to pay direct until 24 weeks and then instigate a policy.
She was lucky. That was a massive gamble. If her surrogate mother had had a septic miscarriage or pulmonary embolus for instance she could have found herself paying out huge amounts.

Also posting a link to this excellent article

verilymag.com/2021/01/surrogacy-altruistic-commercial-exploitation-women-children-2021

For "open to negotiation" I think we can safely read "less aware of her rights/easier to bully"

This makes me feel ill. We probably all know women who have had traumatic births and are still dealing with the physical and mental consequences today. The idea that anyone would be trying to negotiate down a price for that is beyond disturbing.

And this is from California. That entire article was a lesson in what comes about with the detachment of terms from ‘mother’.

Third party reproducers, gestators, the lot.

@Helleofabore

And this is from California. That entire article was a lesson in what comes about with the detachment of terms from ‘mother’.

Third party reproducers, gestators, the lot.

The use of language is on purpose.

1.make things sound clinical and more importantly like a legal contract and a lot of the people will either glaze over or think well it must be ok and fair because legalese.

1. it negates any of the bonds between mother and baby, the "work" put in and the associated risks.

3.by dehumanising these women it becomes all about choice and the end product so all the risks and issues can easily be glossed over.