Celebrity surrogacy - find this a bit heartbreaking

[Nowyouwillfeel]

Irish ‘celebrity’ couple with a new baby via surrogacy. The surrogate was one of the couples sister. They have put up pictures and stories all delighted and excited but I just see raw emotion on the mothers face in the second picture and in their stories the baby is clearly rooting for her mothers breast. I have a two month old who always does this and honestly it’s breaking my heart seeing the baby search like that while the dad doesn’t even notice and that she isn’t with her mother. They took the baby home before the mother was discharged and she is nowhere to be seen.

seems so unfair on both baby and the mother who doesn’t have any children of her own.

instagram.com/bprdowling?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

The only difference I would say is that not having experienced giving birth before would mean that she wasn’t prepared in what it would be like,
Well quite. I considered myself to be as well prepared as you can be for childbirth and I had no fucking clue what it would be like, or that I'd still have resulting health issues 20+ years later. All totally worth it because, at the end of it, I had a baby.....

I'm not 'ban happy' by nature. I would like this to work, I really would. But I need someone to explain how we can ensure all parties are giving informed consent, how to avoid breaking the baby-mother bond (not as a last resort, as in adoption, but deliberately and voluntarily) and how to protect all parties when things go wrong - see NotBadConsidering's posts. Yet we're 24 pages in and all I have seen by way of positive answers is a suggestion for counselling.

Apparently Ukraine is the top destination for Irish Surrogacy? Also feted as very affordable there. But it is only allowed for heterosexual married couples so I guess more pressure on a family member to step up.
Also the article I read said in Ukraine they got paid 14000 euro which seems very little for giving up your body for something which might kill you or stop you having your own children in the future. But that money goes far in Ukraine so the women find it attractive financially. Exploitation.

Banning it and people who want children but can’t have them will just go abroad.

Naw, you can’t just randomly import babies! That would be nuts!

Nobody did anything to this woman that she didn’t agree to

But how can you genuinely consent to something like this, especially if you've never done it before?

If it were legal, I'm sure we'd see women 'agreeing' to sell kidneys and other organs, that wouldn't make it ok.

What's that? Just chill out where the welfare of women and children are at stake. As for the Magdalen Laundries, that is the gift of trauma that is still giving to the brutalised and abused women and children.

Yes, the gov't, would possibly be 'sensitive' about revelations and their handling thereof. Therefore, the gov't have decided to seal the testimonies of the victims for 75 years. They have also abandoned the promised independent review of Mother and Baby Home testimony (shelved by Minister Roderic O'Gorman). I imagine the outcome of that would be damning and therefore 'sensitive' too; for the gov't. Solution is to not lift that rock.

Of course it is a sore subject, and some obviously don't want it mentioned as it does draw parallels to how women's rights are cast aside today. Having to balance women's rights could be rather inconvenient. What the lads want, the lads get! Simples; chill! No thought given to impact on women, or women locked up with sex abusers. And, the rest. Recommendations on foot of inquiries such as the Ferns Report cast aside for those who are the latest sacred caste. I imagine there will be a tribunal or two in 80 years time; of abuses of women and children due to current gov't policies (which will probably be sealed and no liability accepted).

Maybe time to lance the 'sensitive' boil.

My going rate for surrogacy would be around the £10,000,000 mark. As for the 14 000 € mentioned above as the payment to a surrogate in Ukraine - that would be my weekly expenses.

Obviously I am fortunate not to have to be in a position where I would have to subject myself to pre-implantation hormone treatment, followed by months of nausea and tiredness, and then 6 more months of pregnancy and then a painful and potentially life-threatening delivery of the baby, which I wouldn’t even be able to keep.

No woman should have to go through this without the reward of her own baby at the end. No money would be enough, in my view.

I’m especially horrified by the fact in this particular situation that the sister had never given birth before. She couldn’t possibly have known what she was signing herself up for.

Just a thought. Will a sister and brother be registered as mother and father on the birth cert?

@DaughterofDawn I was responding to a PP who said it looked like a difficult birth because of a C-section in theatre. I was pointing out that just because she had a c section does not mean she had a difficult birth. Nothing else.

There’s a legal principle that you can’t consent to being harmed - if a stranger ran up to you and broke your nose, they would still be prosecuted, even if you said ‘oh I quite enjoyed that’. You can consent to assault (this is so you can have piercings etc, it’s quite specific though and used in context). And of course there’s ‘necessity’ eg operating on somebody. I suppose they would argue it fell into the latter (even though it definitely isn’t a necessity).

No but she did have major surgery that inevitably leaves a scar, takes a long time to recover from and carries various risks.

The things that get ignored and glossed over in the name of surrogacy are scary. It's very much as if women are just incubators who grow children, pop them out and bumble along as if nothing happened.

Bullshit. Stop patronising Aoife by saying things were done TO her. I'm sure she's more than capable of making her own decisions. I'm on the fence about surrogacy itself - I don't know enough about the topic to have an informed opinion either way. But honestly, the way you're all painting Aoife as a victim is ridiculous. Stop projecting your shit on her ffs.

Sometimes you didn’t have to say anything else. If you weren’t defending surrogacy then you should probably have tacked that on. We don’t just say things for nothing. Your comment had an intention. You know some peoples brain surgery goes really well. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a big deal.

@DaughterofDawn ok I’ve obviously somehow made a comment about how a C-section isn’t always difficult and it’s been construed as though I support surrogacy which I most certainly do not! I was pointing out that, as a woman who has had 3 c sections, I hate the assumption that my births were difficult. They weren’t. My intention was pointing out that not all c sections are difficult births. Which is exactly what my initial comment said.

I agree she’s not a victim but the situation is pretty dark to me. There are many problematic implications. If anyone is to blame there’s lots of blame to go around including Aoife. No one held her down and forced her to sign the agreement. She’s a grown woman who put on her big girl panties and decided to be a surrogate. That doesn’t necessarily make it right. People do fucked to things all the time that aren’t in their best interests. But she still chose to do it.

@DaughterofDawn I agree the situation seems a bit sinister but the amount of people trying to make out here that these men have done something TO Aoife is infuriating! We're all big girls well capable of making our own decisions.

Tell that to any woman who has ever been coerced or abused into doing anything.

@MightbeMaybe I'm not talking about a woman who has been coerced in to something. Aoife agreed to this. The ins and outs of it we'll never know so stop painting her as a victim. Tbh if I was her I'd be offended by how patronising you all are.

Again, it sounds like you're just projecting your own shit on her

I'm not talking about a woman who has been coerced in to something. Aoife agreed to this. The ins and outs of it we'll never know so stop painting her as a victim. Tbh if I was her I'd be offended by how patronising you all are
Amen to this

The debate is whether she can truly agree or consent to something she has never experienced before and only has a concept of what it entails, not experience.

The other consideration is that no one has any idea whether she has or hasn’t been coerced into this. It’s just as speculative to say either way. Maybe they’re a toxic family with a history of abuse? Who knows.

My point is that no one who is pro-surrogacy even considers such bad things could go on, they just see it through positive rose-tinted spectacles. Who checked Aoife independently for possible coercion before embryo implantation?

Of course it’s most likely that there isn’t, but this end point has been reached by luck rather than design. What framework do we put in place to make sure all cases are as willing as Aoife and there aren’t any cases of coercion? Someone explain how that can be done from now on given this case has luckily worked out ok.

I think it is a terrible thing to do to a young woman*
She is a grown ass woman with a mind of her own, stop being so bloody patronising.

@NotBadConsidering is that the argument though? I've lost track and it seems like a lot of the people on this thread with strong opinions have forgotten what they're supposed to be arguing about - although, personally, I don't see the value of any of us arguing In the first place about something that has nothing to do with us. We have no idea what went on here, coercion or not. Nor will we ever. If your argument is about being against surrogacy, that's fine. But make a valid case other than repeatedly being like "that poor girl". And that's not directed at you specifically, it's directed as everyone that's painting aoife out to be a handmaid.

Unless we know aoife and Brian and their family - which I'm guessing none of us do - blithely assuming there is no coercion or a difficult complicated relationship is behind her decision is just as bad as assuming there is.

We don't know.

All we know is that a young, single, childless woman went through fertility treatment to gestate a baby for her famous and wealthy brother and his husband. Those are facts

And also this "she can't possibly know what she's getting in to because she hasn't had a baby" reeks of "ooh you're not a parent so you wouldn't understand". Honestly, fuck off with your higher than thou attitude.

Completely agree with this. Let's stick to facts.