Another story of surrogacy regret

[OhHolyJesus]

This is heartbreaking to read. I'm horrified and just really sad that women are being treated like walking wombs and this is supposedly 'altruistic' surrogacy within a family. The poor woman ended up in therapy for a post traumatic stress disorder.

twitter.com/wombsnotforrent/status/1681004715675353089?s=46&t=3vhG_KDq77qvuwlnTiE6jg

She had to gather her courage to tell her story and I'm sure there are countless others, we just don't hear about them as the media are so focused on the lovely fluffy stuff, a new family, a brand new baby, and the glossy pictures covers the ugly horrors underneath.

💙heart breaking

I can’t see the story? No explanation of what actually happened?

I’m anti surrogacy but I can’t see this is adding much to that position. It’s a somewhat confusing read - I couldn’t make out the bit about parental responsibility and then putting another child above your own - with no information on what actually happened.

Oh sorry Secret try this

nordicmodelnow.org/2023/07/17/my-surrogacy-story-i-was-lied-to-manipulated-and-exposed-to-cruel-behaviours-by-public-institutions-and-people-i-thought-i-could-trust/

Thank you, it’s probably me. I’m hopeless with Twitter.

Its something I feel conflicted about, someone I know (used to do my hair, not a friend/family member) used a surrogate. I did view them differently, but I’m not sure why? I don’t know if it’s any different to what they do in the US, where pregnant women who don’t want/can’t bring up a baby can interview prospective parents (like Monica & Chandler in Friends).

Something I need to read more about.

Monica and Chandler adopted, they didn't rent a womb

Shes not told a story though, all she has said how she felt (very valid) but nothing about what actually happened.

• Lied to
• Manipulated
• Exposed to behaviours

But no actual detail

JULY 17, 2023BY NMN
My surrogacy story: I was lied to, manipulated and exposed to cruel behaviours by public institutions and people I thought I could trust

Marie-Anne Isabelle sent in this account of her experience of being a surrogate mother through our Share your surrogacy or eggsploitation story page. This provides a space for women to share their experiences anonymously and in their own words.

It has taken me so long to pluck up the courage to tell my story. Trauma and courage. I am currently undergoing a therapy called EMDR to treat my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder caused by my decision to be a surrogate for a family member. This treatment has meant that I am reliving some of the most traumatic memories that have ever happened to me.

I am writing this because I do not want anyone else to go through what I went through for someone else’s benefit.

I have been exploited, lied to, manipulated and exposed to some of the harshest and cruellest behaviours not just by the people I thought I could trust but also by institutions that everyday people should feel they can have confidence in.

What started out as a genuinely kind and wonderful thing to do became an ‘event’ where I was forced to sign documents I couldn’t face doing. I was then dragged to the High Court and forced to undergo psychiatric evaluations to prove I was of sound mind simply because I was distressed at being lied to. Thank goodness for a wonderful psychiatrist who saw through the manipulation of the UK surrogacy laws and found I was able to provide consent to a parental order. I just wasn’t sure I was able to provide my full and unconditional consent as the promises made to me about contact with the child I had given birth to were not being kept.

Just imagine after nine very difficult months of pregnancy you hand over the child that you think is going to be in your life forever. You are made promises of being the godparent and being involved it its life and within one month you hear nothing despite phone calls saying a visit would be soon but nobody turns up. Frustrated, traumatised and anxious is to put it mildly.

Then suddenly you start receiving threatening phone calls and letters demanding you hand over your rights and if you don’t you will be taken to court.

Well that is exactly what happened to me. But I won the moral fight in court and ended up doing the thing I agreed to do in the end because I keep my promises.

I didn’t go to any newspaper during the court hearing to sell my story or pictures of my womb online in a desperate attempt to advertise a fertility business…

No what I was busy doing was fighting for my life, my dignity and my own children.

Another thing I have also learnt from this is that no mother should ever be forced to put another child’s interest above her own children.

Surrogacy in the UK should be illegal until more protections and safeguarding procedures are in place for surrogates with a right to ongoing contact with the child they give birth to.

Until then in the UK women are easily able to be exploited. We look in anger at countries where women’s rights are ignored but many people don’t understand it is happening right here under their noses.

I read with interest the Law Commission’s recommendations for changing the law and I emailed them about what procedures and processes are in place to protect surrogates. I never had a response but I am still waiting for one. Let me hope it happens it my lifetime.

The keeping her promises bit would be the signing of the parental order in order to transfer parental rights, as she says they demanded.

A PO needs to be applied for within 6 months of the birth under current law. There are cases where commissioning parents didn't do this and the judge still approves the transfer of parents rights to make a ruling recognising them as the legal parents of the child, but it's definitely broadly encouraged to do it quickly.

For family members who you would think would be in fairly constant contact you wouldn't think that making demands of this would be necessary and it would be a matter of doing some final paperwork. From her words it sounds far more aggressive. Maybe there is more to this story but I can quite believe she has post traumatic stress disorder from giving up her baby because she made a promise to a family member despite everything in her crying out for the opposite.

Even when you have previous rash pregnancies and your children with you, you can't predict how you will feel when you are pregnant and give birth to a baby you're meant to give away and knowing this from before conception.

I was struck by this:

"Until then in the UK women are easily able to be exploited. We look in anger at countries where women’s rights are ignored but many people don’t understand it is happening right here under their noses."

We think the U.K. is different to surrogacy in other countries and on the commercial aspect it is to a degree, but large sums of money, far higher than the cost of an actual pregnancy, exchange hands. I've heard of gardeners being added into 'expenses' and there are gifts, holidays and even rent and mobile phone bills. It's clearly a way to bump up the money to make it a decent sum without it being commercial and 'buying a baby'. It's an illusion if you ask me.

Even if the cash is put aside in the argument, a woman's goodwill can be exploited and I hate this idea that women should help. I'd put money on some very clever application of gentle pressure being put on this woman, even if she offered herself up for the pregnancy and birth. And once pregnant or once they had the baby things changed.

She must have signed the parental order as a matter of principle, to keep true to her promise. It doesn't sound like the commissioning parents honoured her promise in the same way.

I do not understand why it is so hard for people not to get why surrogate women need protecting.

Tempted to say it's a variation on Madonna Magdalane Complex with a touch of Hagar as surrogate for Sarah & Abraham (Genesis).

The UK seems to depersonalise the status of the women who carry the pregnancies, they're either saintly and altruistic paracletes or ripe for exploitation.

Have a look through Youtube and other platforms for Dr Suzanne Vierling. Her research into how many ways a man can make money from a woman’s body is spinechilling. Surrogacy is on her list.

I'm failing to understand the issue.

If I am a woman who agrees to XY conditions in exchange for me giving birth, and the parent follows through, that's fine.

This article implies that the person has certain demands that are not being met, and therefore regrets her decision. That's fair.

What I am failing to understand is the widespread "hate" and "banning" of surrogacy. If I agree to carry a baby, give that baby to these parents, collect my payment, and walk away, that's MY CHOICE. It's not your choice and your voice doesn't matter! Only mine does!

Again, totally different when conditions aren't met but insisting to be part of the child's life (if not already a family member), is really not okay. It's a job. You're getting paid. You do your job, collect payment, and move on.

Not a single thought for what's best for the baby, then? You think it's ok to buy and sell a human being as long as the adults get what they want out of it?

If I am a woman who agrees to XY conditions in exchange for me giving birth, and the parent follows through, that's fine.

And if they don’t follow through? What legal framework exists to protect you? How enforceable is it? How do you design a framework that protects all three parties? Is anyone prioritised? Please explain how you would structure a framework to suit everyone.

It's not your choice and your voice doesn't matter! Only mine does!

What about the baby? Does the baby have any rights? Or are they just chattel to be passed around?

What choice does the baby have in this?

Second, we limit choices all the time to protect individuals and society. In my opinion selling babies as well as separating babies from their mothers (unless necessary for the health/safety of one or the other) are things which we should all be protected against.

Really? So no safeguards are necessary to protect infants from being born into a nightmare for you? Or the mothers from exploitation?

No right for people to campaign for a total ban because you can’t see a problem?

The kindest version is that you just can’t comceptualize other people’s experiences.

@whateveryouwantmetosay
the rights and needs of the baby should trump everything else. Being created with the knowledge they will be ripped away from the only mother they know is cruel and traumatising from birth. Unacceptable. Kittens and puppies are more protected in law and can’t be separated at birth.

If it was 'a job', it should be paid as such. So compensation 24x7, mandatory life insurance for any issues the birth mother might have or any long term medical consequences of the pregnancy or birth, death insurance for her family, framework whereby the birth mother keeps autonomy of her body and the baby that is part of her body up until birth (so if the baby needs to be born prematurely for the mothers sake, that will happen), commisioning parents get zero say, commissioning parents not allowed to reject the baby if there are complications or have to pay for the child until they are 18.
Framework to insure women aren't manipulated into it by family members or lover boys. Psychological support for birth mother during and after pregnancy paid for by commissioning parents.

Guess what, this is not in place and won't because it will be too expensive and that is infertility inequality. So surrogacy needs to be nice and cheap and all power to the people who are buying the baby. Preferably the government should ensure there are enough women willing to sell their eggs and risk their lives growing babies for others (see that Scottish campaign on egg donation).

Pregnancy is risky. Maternal deaths used to be sky high and only with modern (expensive) medical health care have rates fallen but still 13 per 100.000 births. Surrogacy has a higher risk of complications.

So no, it is not 'a job' and no, it sometimes something should not be your choice.

Something that many feminists understand is that every surrogacy exploits a women’s body as a resource to produce a child that has become a product. Both the woman and the child are exploited.

The transactional nature of having a child created specifically for purchase and delivered to the purchaser turns that child forever into a commodity. Just like any other commodity, just this one is alive and become fully self aware and sentient in time and then has to come to terms with the fact that they were transacted in this way, and by someone exploiting potentially one but maybe two or more women’s fertility to achieve their target aim.

There is no way to disguise this. No euphemisms, no platitudes can.

There is also a major issue in establishing consent. Even supposed altruist surrogacy contracts have plenty of potential to have coercive elements at play. How many surrogates receive blunt, accurate long term probing therapy to strip away layers of conditioning to expose coercive points that the surrogate might not even acknowledge is there? And that may require exposing any trauma, and abuse that may not be understood even by that woman at the time. Of course, how many also truly consider the risk to themselves?

Plus there is even the potential that the woman carrying the child can use that arrangement coercively, although I imagine this might be rarer.

We have had one or two women who carried children for others join threads and defend their choices. But when questioned, they admit they never thought that anything would go wrong and admit they gave only superficial thought to the risks. Because they were invested in the arrangement in some way.

If I remember, one admitted they did it because she craved the feeling of being pregnant. The purchasing couple (even though it was altruistic) made use of that woman’s need to be pregnant and that woman exploited a child to make herself feel good. There was also no thought deeply considered about the risk to her own children’s future. Because she dismissed the risk, it was never going to happen to her.

And what happens when that woman starts to understand that they have contributed to making that child a transaction, a commodity to be traded? Can she revoke consent? And the burden then is with her for life.

What job requires you to physically carry something inside your body, while that something uses your body to build itself? While that thing you are carrying inside your body that you cannot instantly remove, can kill you at any time.

How does one calculate a true compensation for this? Well, I guess it depends on how cheaply women’s lives are going for.

I am the person who that happened to. These are the facts. I explicitly told the family member that I would only agree to helping her on the condition and understanding that I would see the child I gave birth to. She promised me and I quote her words. 'Of course, we are family, trust me'. The minute the baby was born and handed over and they returned home with promises of coming down in the next couple of days. She never returned and to this day, ten years on, I have never seen the child since.

I was not paid, I did not need to be or want to be so, please, never ever tell me it was my job. That is deeply offensive and insulting.

Thank you to all those who continue with me to get the message out there that surrogacy is just plainly wrong. There are too many ways for it just to become so obviously exploitative, whichever way you look at it.

Thank your for contributing to the thread. By the way, just to clarify, I was not referring to you in my post this morning. Well, I don’t think I was. Obviously people name change on MN.

I am sorry that you have been treated this way by your family. Reading threads like this must be very difficult for you whatever poster say.

I’m sorry to hear that, @Marieanne

It sounds heartbreaking. What was your reference to prioritising other children above your own?

I hope you find peace.

CAFCASS (and I quote) told me 'you need to think about the child in this and do the right thing, you need to forget about your own children for a minute and focus on this'. For context this is when I was trying to explain how consenting to the parental order and the surrogacy itself was affecting my mental health and therefore my ability to parent my own children.

I will find peace when surrogacy is banned.

Imagine the impact of the child finding out that their parent is a baby buyer who refused to let the surrogate see them.

Monsters.