Another surrogacy nightmare

[GrabbyGabby]

What the fuck will happen to these babies?
www.newstalk.com/news/im-terrified-for-my-girls-safety-irish-father-of-triplets-born-in-kenya-1394106?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1666210282

This is what happens when humans are allowed to be bought and sold.

Even apart from forced adoptions, which to some may seem an extreme comparison, international adoptions are more and more strictly controlled now. UNICEF is not very supportive of them, and in many countries it's not allowed at all or only under very strict conditions.

In the west there are more and more regulations that recognize the importance of, really the reality of, the biological connection between parent and child. Adoption rules are based on the best practice for the child and adoptive parents have to put up with all kinds of stuff because of that.

I don't understand how that all stays so separate from what happens with surrogacy. Some laws in western countries do recognize it to a greater or lesser extent, but I am thinking more in terms of the public discourse.

I'd say it is classed so differently in public discourse, because the idea that babies conceived via surrogacy have no "genetic connection" to their mothers has captured the public imagination.

I can see how, but I find it unconvincing, because the first time I learnt about egg donation, it was in the context of women using donor eggs to get pregnant through IVF themselves, not paying another woman to have embryos transferred into her. Those women were extremely adamant that gestation outweighed genetic connection, because that baby would know his/her mother's voice, and smell; in fact, they even dived into epigenetics/the unique effects on gene expression from the interaction between the donor egg DNA and their own uterine environment. Oh, and fingerprint development.

Their reasoning was far better than anything I have ever seen from people proposing that a genetic connection to commissioning parents should automatically outweigh the relationship between a baby and its gestational mother.

This is either human trafficking or child neglect. Pick your choice.

Whole situation is utterly ugly. Surrogacy needs banned.

Just leaving this here:

www.statnews.com/2017/01/28/egg-donors-risks/

It is an article about the fact that the long term health impacts for egg donors are still not well known. It mentions that

The one study on egg donors is a 2005 survey of 80 women who had donated eggs as long as two decades earlier. Thirteen of them said they were still experiencing physical effects that they attributed to the donation — things like ovarian cysts, fibroids, and infertility issues that arose later in life. But it was a small and unscientific sample, with no medical records to back up the women’s claims.

That is 16% of these women experienced issues.

How comfortable do those supporting people using donor eggs and surrogacy feel with that statistic?

That for every male couple getting a baby on demand, 1 out of 6 of those donating an egg may have significant impacts in the long term.

BUT this doesn't not cover those women who have had strokes and ovary torsion in the immediate or short term etc. These are also quite well documented by now in the USA due to the lack of care that some of these women receive after the 'harvest'.

Obviously, there are cases where a woman undergoing their own fertility treatment will donate remaining eggs. That seems to be a different scenario altogether - although there still could be coerciveness at play if she is pressured in ANY way to do so.

Finally, for those saying 'its their body, their choice', these are HIGH RISK pregnancies. I am not quite sure that people understand this and in the glow of loveliness actually understand the potential of complications are much higher for the woman whose body is being exploited as a resource.

evidence.nihr.ac.uk/alert/donor-eggs-may-be-linked-to-higher-risk-of-pregnancy-complications-following-ivf/

Women who had IVF using donor eggs were at higher risk of developing high blood pressure in pregnancy (odds ratio[OR] 3.92, 95% confidence interval 3.21 to 4.78). Thirty five per cent of those using donor eggs developed high blood pressure in pregnancy, compared with 17% of those using their own eggs.

35% developed high blood pressure in pregnancy using donor eggs.

Perhaps those who are celebrating surrogacy are uninformed about the exploitative nature and the huge risks these women are taking while someone else exploits their fertility for their desire for a baby.

Maybe it is time to read the full stories rather than just glowing stories about friends and celebrities.

Or maybe not, if you still want to claim the ignorance that I feel is always behind 'its their body, their choice' when it comes to surrogacy.

IVF with donated eggs in cases where neither the genetic mother nor the gestational mother are the intended social mother of the child is ethically appalling.

Egg donation has health risks for the genetic mother.
Pregnancy with a donated egg increases the risks to the health and life of the gestational mother.
The sole purpose is to break the biological bond between mother and child. To allow two women to disassociate from their child, to allow both to deny their motherhood. To create a child without a mother, so there is no challenge to the rights of the father to the child.

It’s awful.
It disgusts me that there are doctors who enable it.

Here is a new low for discussing women.

We are now ‘partners with eggs’.

twitter.com/millihill/status/1586256079566307328?s=46&t=cAmEHNkH9au3MlnrBlBOQw

And ‘bleeding bodies’ is ridiculous too!

twitter.com/millihill/status/1586269053965914113?s=46&t=cAmEHNkH9au3MlnrBlBOQw

This truly is an extension of the commoditising of women’s bodies for other’s reproductive purposes. I find it quite hard to believe that once this has been pointed out, that people don’t see the connection.

Honestly. Laugh or cry....
"Partner with eggs"
!

So yes. Now a bleeding body is potentially also a partner with eggs. Eggs that others want access to.

Or if they are partners with eggs, it means they can be of service as a gestational incubator for others who want access to that gestator capability.

The dehumanisation is vile. Just vile. But hey, how much further do we have to go for human breeding programs? The language is already there and being used and the commoditization is already in place. It is just a matter degrees.

But ‘Bleeding bodies’ doesn’t even make sense. It is just fucked up.

That “bleeding bodies” Twitter pic 😮😮

What the bleedin’ fuck??

can you imagine seeing a fertility doctor who describes you as a bleeding body?

get to fuck with that.

'Moon time' was a new one for me, lower down that thread we are 'imprenatable' or 'formerly impregnatable', apparently word 'woman' is a right wing dog whistle.

Do you remember the mockery when feminists tried to de-sex unnecessarily gendered language?

I wonder if actually this is huge denial in action, trying to convince oneself

This is going to sound a bit mean but why on earth did they think that getting a surrogate in kenya, the world capital of scams, was ever even remotely a good idea? Now it’s an international hostage situation.

Mexico - the new surrogacy gold rush boom.

www.vice.com/en/article/k7bxmz/mexico-surrogacy-facebook

The capacity of some humans to take and advantage of and exploit impoverished humans elsewhere on the planet never fails to amaze me. Soon we will have a generation of children growing up to discover their parents are heartless bastards who bought them from an unnamed poor woman somewhere and who probably bought an egg from another impoverished woman somewhere else. They will never be able to trace their genetic roots or discover what happened to the woman who gave birth to them.

“If I was a surrogate, and I had known there was going to be an audience, I probably would have waxed,” Lewis said on the broadcast. “And that was the shocking part for Gage. I don’t think Gage had ever seen a vagina, let alone one that big.”

variety.com/2018/biz/news/flipping-out-bravo-trent-1202844060/

One day your child will grow up and find out exactly how you treated their mother

There are no words to describe how disgusting this is.

That is revolting, utterly revolting.

Tell me again how marvellous surrogacy is and that it is not just another patriarchal demand to use and abuse the bodies of women?

Surrogacy is not about exploiting women and infants for a purchaser's own desire to have a child to order.

At all....

Good god. That's shocking. Incredibly shocking. I didn't think that could happen.

Gosh I hope that she takes them for every penny they have. What disgusting behaviour.

Misogyny, ignorance and money. Well, not the first father to have all three and to use them to oppress women. That poor baby girl.

I have been following the story of Alexandra Trent, the surrogate mother of Monro (daughter of Jeff Lewis and Gage Edwards from Flippin' Out). She dropped the law suit against the tv production company in 2019. She had agreed to pre-birth filming but not to the birth being filmed but she dropped her claim for invasion of privacy and fraud. She had not signed a consent form for this specific scene and this seems to be the basis of why the case didn't go to court. Alexandra also cannot re-submit one in the future, though she has said she was damaged and humiliated by Lewis' comments and you can only imagine what followed as she reads about their divorce and the little girl without her mother to provide stability as they each continue to use Monro like a pawn in their bitter split.

I'm guessing that legal advice made her drop the case as she would be taking on two wealthy and reasonably powerful men as well as the tv company. This is from before the case was dropped.

www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/bravo-cant-force-arbitration-surrogate-childbirth-was-shown-flipping-1154481/

I believe Alexandra Trent was single and may have had little emotional or financial support. It's possible that when she answered the classified ad she needed the money (and a second contract was cancelled when the tv series was aired so she had plans to enter another commercial contract) but she didn't know about the tv series until the first meeting when she was asked to sign a consent form immediately so they could film. She was not seeking fame and hasn't been heard of since.

Some more on when the case was being formed.

pagesix.com/2018/06/14/jeff-lewis-surrogate-sues-over-flipping-out-birth/

This is shocking beyond belief. I especially struggled with the sentence, “She gave birth to the couple’s baby girl.” As for filming the mother giving birth without asking for her consent - the male couple really didn’t see her as a human being worthy of dignity and respect, did they? But they were very happy to use her womb for nine months.

There's another very good piece about Lewis/Gage here. Poor child. I wonder what she will think about it all when she grows up.

www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/06/her-name-is-monroe-christine

“I guess we won’t be using her again,”

This sums it up