Surrogacy-help me explain to my daughter why this is exploiting women

[happydappy2]

Teen daughter thinks surrogacy is fine, as an opportunity for the woman to earn money.
I've explained that only impoverished women do it, not wealthy ones.
It's not fair on the child to be removed from it's natural Mother/protector.
It will be a high risk pregnancy for the surrogate.
Ultimately benefits mens, not women or children.
There have been cases of paedophiles commissioning surrogates
She just doesn't get it though-what else can I ask her to think about to get her to understand how exploitative this is?
I asked her, would it be ok for me to buy a 10 yr old child? No of course not, so why is it ok for wealthy people to buy babies?

She's nearly 18, I really need to help her critical thinking on this....thanks

@Justme56 Well I gave my two penn'orth but a lot of the comments are of the 'aww it's a nice thing to do' variety. So I guess the groundswell of opinion is it's all fine. I daresay most people haven't given it much thought until asked.

Human beings aren't for sale. Maybe ask your daughter if she would consider surrogacy if it meant she would make some money. She would have to carry a baby to term, give birth then hand it over to someone else. She might gain 4 stone, have dangerously high blood pressure, vaginal prolapse, incontinence. Post natal depression and PTSD. Not able to drink or socialise for 9 months. Is that reasonable?

@happydappy2this is an article from a now adult who was born by surrogacy.

I was born via surrogate... but this cruel practice should be banned https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-12948247/surrogate-mother-childhood-unhappy-banned.html?ito=native_share_article-nativemenubutton

I do think adoption from birth is barbaric. It is illegal in the UK. I agree it is little different than surrogacy in many respects. As I understand it in the USA pressure is put on mothers, mothers are told they aren’t going to be good enough for their babies because they are too young, too poor, not married instead of being supported to mother their own babies and then of course all the medical charges will be paid by the people who want to take their babies so there is an element of financial incentive.

You think adopting a newborn baby is more barbaric than adopting an older baby/toddler who has already started to bond?

Yes because everything should be done in the first instance to support mother and baby to stay together. Older babies and children are only adopted because a court has decided that the birth mother is incapable of keeping her child safe. It is undoubtedly traumatic when parents and children must be separated but usually by point it is about child protection and safeguarding.

Bonding begins in utero, so even at birth mother and baby have already begun to bond. The mother is already the baby’s whole world and where his or her sense of safety comes from. Separation at birth is already traumatic for babies. Check out the linked article above for more information.

I post this repeatedly on surrogacy threads and never get an answer from those who support it:

When a baby is to be removed from its mother for child protection reasons - she could be the absolute worst, abusive, drug addicted, violent, whatever - it still needs to go before a family court judge who is the only person deemed worthy enough of deciding to remove the baby in its best interests because of how significant an event that is.

But in surrogacy, the baby is just taken, literally wheeled from one room into another and that’s it.

Why the difference?

I think this opens up an interesting conversation.

I believe that people tend to be good but naive - hence why they think surrogacy is a good thing because 'it helps someone'. But its desparately shallow and not thought through in terms of unintended consequences.

As these children become adults we are going to start hearing a lot more of these type of stories. I think this particularly one is interesting because the child was palmed off to nannies - which will be the case with a whole bunch of super rich celebs. Which begs the question of emotional neglect generally in a cohort who can just buy a baby - perversely it might not necessarily be the act of surrogacy alone thats the issue, but also the type of parent who looks to surrogacy to satisfy their own desires (over and above the needs of the surrogate and the baby). Basically is there a higher representation of narcissist in baby buyers than there is in the general population?

And in turn as we start to hear these stories of adults who felt emotionally neglected and disconnected from their buyers, how will this affect the surrogate mothers who thought they were doing something nice and hoped they had given this wonderful gift to someone? Imagine you'd given up a baby to a couple who were desparate for a child only to find that it was typical for that child to be raised by flipping nannies rather than the parents anyway?

There is a big scandal brewing which will surface in the next few decades - but will be covered up by influential people who have a vested interest. And it will be another couple of decades before the shit starts to really hit the fan on this.

By which point we'll have artifical wombs and a whole pile of new issues to deal with which we won't learn these same lessons from...

There are many cases where this is not possible, as horrendously sad as it is. I understand waiting if there’s a chance the mother will be able to keep the child, but waiting for the sake of waiting is not any better.
I have friends who used to adopt from China (they live in Australia where there are very few babies to adopt). It used to be possible to adopt a baby from birth when their mother gave them up, but then China changed the laws so children can only be adopted internationally once the child turns 2 if no Chinese families adopt them first. The issue is that they were still given up at birth and Chinese families were less likely (culturally) to adopt, so there were hundreds of Chinese toddlers with no loving adult to bond with. Just waiting. We all know about the limited amount of time a child needs to create an attachment. That’s not better. The earlier a child can bond with their new parent - and the 4th trimester is perfect for this! - the better.

The difference is that in the adoption case it is biologically the birth woman’s baby and it is not her choice (necessarily!) There is a general issue of the baby being in danger.

So if I understand you correctly (apologies if I don't)

You are saying that it is fine for the intended parents to remove the baby from the surrogate mothers without a judge present to formalise the separation (at that point) because the baby is biologically the intended parents and not the surrogates?

I don’t know if it’s necessarily ‘right’ (personally I think there should be a judge involved to formalise a lot of these processes to make them more regulated) but yes, I can understand why that makes it work like it does.

So if thats your reasoning for surrogacy being "morally okay" I presume you are opposed to surrogacy which also uses donor genetic material?

I actually have mixed feelings on surrogacy and how to make it ‘moral’. I believe that if a woman does share genetic material then it is more akin to adoption, yes. Regulations should be involved.

But adoption is child centred and surrogacy is adult centred, they aren't and can't be the same

This is a hinge point. The entire 'moral' issue really does rest on adoption being about finding the best for the child in an adverse situation. Surrogacy has nothing like this to support it. Surrogacy is only ever about the adults making those decisions and the very deliberate transactional basis of the creation of that child.

Surrogacy is absolutely about the adult's needs. It is never about the child's needs.

On International Adoption as child trafficking

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/savage-minds-podcast/id1535634480?i=1000543711237

Are you telling me all international adoption is wrong? If so I really think you need to educate yourself on how it works because it’s actually life saving. Tends to depend on the country though.

UK based organisation

https://stopsurrogacynowuk.org/

They have done podcasts but the link from their media page seems to be broken so here is the most recent one

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/calmversations/id1447774150?i=1000611034133

Adoption by foreigners banned in Ethiopia

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-42635641

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/jan/04/guatemalas-baby-brokers-how-tens-of-thousands-of-children-were-stolen-for-adoption

https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=284&v=XjhFk6AUly0&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fstopsurrogacynowuk.org%2F&source_ve_path=MjgyMzksMjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo

@PomegranateOfPersephone I think you’re mixing up very different types of international adoption. The people I know of spent two and a half years going through incredibly vigorous processes to ensure they were the right candidate to legally adopt a baby. The didn’t do what Jolie did.

The chance of maternal death in childbirth is 10 per 100,000 pregnacies in the UK, which disproportionately affects overweight, obese, smoking, poor older and ethnic minority people.

It's hard to find morbidity data on England, but 8% of pregancies results in long term complications, again more likely to be associated with similar co-factors.

For comparison, donating a liver lobe is 1 in 200 - about 50 times higher chance of death (I mean that's really, really high - much worse than I expected). The chance of long term complications is 5%,

Kidney donation is four times more likely than pregnancy to cause death, with a lower risk of long term effects.

So, if it's the danger to the mother which is the main reason for stopping surrogacy, we should start by banning living organ donation.

I mean, with organ donation you are saving a life, so the stakes are very different.