Normalising buying babies

[HarrietSpying]

I’ve been randomly following a bloke on Instagram with a wife who’s into tablescaping 🙄 No idea how or why I started following him, possibly due to his foodie posts. Anyway recent posts revealed a new baby, with mention of the ‘person’ who gave birth. His wife’s page reveals her ‘greed’ at wanting another baby - with other photos showing three other children - so they resorted to, what is in my mind, buying a baby. Obviously the birth of a baby is lovely news but is it so normal now to procure one from a ‘surrogate’ (awful term) that nobody really bats an eyelid. Just find it so depressing. Also very aware that there may be some jealousy on my part. Cancer meant I could only ever have one baby and I’d have loved a big family. But surrogacy never ever an option for me for ethical reasons.

You've got up on your soapbox to misrepresent another poster. FlakyPoet already specified mammals for anyone who didn't already understand from context that she was talking about mammals.

Calling the female gamete provider the ‘biological mother’ is a degradation of the importance of women and mothers in reproduction in mammals.

It is intrinsic to mammals that mammalian species bear live young and nourish them during infancy on milk. It isn't the fathers doing this. Whataboutery concerning avian or piscine reproduction is irrelevant as she wisely headed it off at the pass.

Exactly. Humans don’t lay eggs like birds or fish so mum and dad can have an equal role in incubation.

Who needs men when we have women to tear into other women with such veracity. Tell them what to think, feel and do.

We can argue all we want about technical definitions. But the point is that your opinion is not more valuable or more correct than that of the people actually involved.

Two adults made a choice. Both contributed to creating this baby. Surrogate mother’s contribution is a miracle and very generous. She is happy with her choice and does not consider herself the mother of the baby.

Being a mother is a life long job. Pregnancy and birth is just the start.
My friend is the mother of her child.
Nobody has a right to question it and tell her she isn't or that the child shouldn't exist

I know someone who adopted her husband's child, born of another woman. My main concern about surrogacy is ripping apart the mother infant bond. But potentially grim for the 'barren' wife too. Did she actually want to take on this unrelated baby or was she backed into a corner because baby buying become normalised? The husband gets his own genetic kid and the wife gets to be the nanny.

She is happy with her choice and does not consider herself the mother of the baby.

I’m sure at the baby being born would be to differ.

Beg to

I know someone in this situation where the woman has had a number of still born births, her husband is pressuring her to agree to surrogacy so he can have his own genetic children - her eggs seem to be part of the problem. I can’t believe his insensitivity after all she’s been through. She would prefer to adopt.

Bless your heart, "veracity" means accuracy, or the quality of truthfulness. Did you mean venom?

Do you realise that the number of women who have IVF with donor eggs in this country massively outnumbers the number of women who employ a surrogate to undergo pregnancy with the buyer's egg?

Exactly what do you think would happen to you if you went up to a woman with fertility issues who'd had a difficult nine-month pregnancy using a donor egg, followed by labour, and told her that you thought genetic connection outweighed the physical experience of growing a baby and giving birth?

That's heartbreaking. Ovarian stimulation and egg harvesting is incredibly gruelling on the woman's health. It's not symmetrical to semen donation at all. Does he have any idea of what it involves?

Yes bless my heart and autocorrect.

But yes - keep telling women how they need to think. And that they need to check with your definition of what a mother is.

I don’t think it’s up to me to judge. Mothers come in many shapes and forms.
Some have given birth, some have not. Some share DNA with their children, some don’t.

Not sure what stats in the UK on surrogacy have to do with a philosophical arguments about merits of surrogacy.

The are in the USA where it’s all Surrogacy! Ra! Ra! Ra! over there. I think people would be met with blank looks if they expressed anything other than unwavering support for this ‘couple’ on ‘their’ ‘pregnancy journey’. I mean this guy has been with his wife through this repeated ordeal of stillborn births and all he’s coming out of it with is a determination to become a biological father some other way. It reminds me of the entitlement of Henry VII in his determination to sire a male heir.

Damn autocorrect VIII

I'm explaining that your post dismissing the physical demands of pregnancy is massively offensive, and that your posts are potentially offensive to a great deal more women than mine.

I want to hear more stories from the babies after they're grown up. I know adopted kids often struggle, is it the same for surrogate kids?

@1plus1equalswindow There is an org called "We are donor born" that is devoted to the stories of children born of donors and surrogate mothers and donor fathers.

While I'm against surrogacy, I'm also against egg selling/buying in part because it does mean that a child has two bio mothers: the mother who gestates and births baby and the mother who is half that child's DNA. Sharing DNA w/ a parent IS a big deal whether or not you know your parent. This is more common with fathers who either abscond or are sperm donors, but to dismiss the very real biological connection we have with our parents - for good or bad - is very naive. It's why adopted children who were raised by loving, secure adoptive parents still wish to seek out or at least have knowledge of their biological backgrounds. Knowing our origins, seeing yourself in someone else's face are very natural human drives. Egg mothers are still mothers IMO. In surrogacy, a child has often 2 mothers, more often three: legal/adoptive, birth, biological. This complication is partly why it's unethical.

Surrogacy and egg selling both exploit women's bodies, which is the feminist argument against it, which is in addition to the argument I am making above about the needs and rights of the baby being created on the whims of adults who aren't thinking one bit about whether or not surrogacy is good for a child.

Who exactly am I offensive to?
I was describing a specific case - people I know and how they feel. The surrogate mother does NOT consider herself a mother of the child in question. My friend whose body created the egg - and who has been raising the child for years now is the mother.
No one had been exploited in the situation.
Adults reached an agreement with full agency.

Of course I am not discounting the physical demands of the pregnancy. I am saying - a woman who has been through pregnancies is able to decide for HERSELF what to do with her body. And how to feel about that choice.

If another surrogate feels different - and is attached to the baby - her feelings are just as valid.

I think people should be able to make their own choices. I don’t see it as a problem that babies now can have a more complex origin - biological/surrogate/legal parents.

Come to think of it - have another friends - a gay couple with surrogate kids you all would object to existing. They are now teenagers and doing just fine. They are loved and have fully dedicated fathers.

And just like with abortion - i don't agree with state dictating women what to do with their bodies. Same with my eggs and my choice to carry an embryo. Women should be able to choose.
With regulations and appropriate protection, obvoiously.

Well, I'm offended for a start.

Globally, a woman dies every two minutes from pregnancy or childbirth. I am fortunate enough to live in the UK, or I think I would have been one of those women by now. Thus far, in all my pregnancies/pregnancy losses, I have required a hospital admission to a ward, and this is excluding childbirth and labour. I have never needed hospital treatment for carrying a rucksack!

Pregnancy is not "carrying". To say a pregnant woman "carries" the baby is to use a verb that minimises the physical impact of pregnancy, and it's notable that surrogacy advocates always reach for that verb or its gerund. I suggest that this is no coincidence.

I've been very much involved in the process of pregnancy so far, so I think I have a right to object to people minimising the demands it makes on the female body.

Honestly. People really have run around and got a bit dizzy on the meaning of the word ‘choice’.

As though a mother can declare ‘I choose not to consider myself a mother’. We are into la la land territory.

Mothers who are the genetic, birth, or both genetic and birth mother have this notion they have the ‘agency’ to define reality and declare that ‘I am not the child’s mother’ - even thinking they can declare themselves to be the child’s father fgs.

As @Delphinium20 says they do this without a thought for whether this is good for the child.

Personally I cannot imagine why you would want a child by surrogacy. What on earth would this do to the child’s sense of identity when/if they found out? It could do your nut! Surrogacy is in the selfish interest of the parent/s rather than the child. This can never be morally acceptable in my view and open to so many levels of exploitation. Why can’t people accept a child is a gift but if you cannot have one you may have to accept that too - after trying usual methods like IVF if that is what you want. Having a child is not a right nor compulsory.

Come to think of it - have another friends - a gay couple with surrogate kids you all would object to existing. They are now teenagers and doing just fine. They are loved and have fully dedicated fathers.

Not ONCE on the FWR board have I seen anyone claim existing children shouldn't be alive. You've made an inflammatory and very wrong claim. Most of us care deeply for gay rights too.

We are judging all parents -straight or gay-who use surrogacy because we think it's unethical.

And frankly, you have no idea if these teens will feel very different about their origins once they hit a stage when they think about or become parents.

Yes delph, it seems that it is in their 20s that some of these children start really understanding that their parents exploited at least one woman’s body to have them produced on demand like a a commercial product, albeit tailored especially for those parents.

I think some people really can not see the significance of the blunt reality of what these children have to deal with. I wonder how much of it is the belief that those children should be grateful for being created in that way, to be given a life?

We have seen this on other threads. That the children should carry that burden of being created as a transaction that exploits some one and just be grateful for being made. And often with the hook at the tail of ‘they are loved so much’! Which is just emotionally manipulative really.

Also “doing just fine”. How would anyone know what that means? People who are terribly depressed can look to others like it’s all good - happy and smiling. Even extremely dysfunctional families with horrific abuse going on behind closed doors can seem like they are doing just fine to outsiders. Furthermore, there’s no knowing how taboo the subject of a child’s origin might be within the home and how unwelcome any expression of frustration, disappointment and resentment about it from the child is. They may be very well trained from reading their parents’ expression that ‘I am totally okay with it’ is the only answer.

It matters very much to the babies and children as they grow up. Both my children were adopted young and i can tell you the bond is very strong and fundamental. Adopted children often take a lifetime to come to terms with that separation. You speak of babies in very cold terms, they are people, human beings. It profoundly affects them to be separated from their mothers even if it is in their best interests. Surrogacy puts adult needs above the needs of babies and children and this is simply wrong. To separate a baby at birth unnecessarily is monstrous.

It's pro-life rhetoric, redeployed. So many times have I seen the following interaction:

Pro-choice person: women should have the choice of terminating an unplanned pregnancy because giving up a newborn baby for adoption has a psychological impact on the woman and upon adoptees.
Pro-lifer: "you're saying my friend's adopted child shouldn't exist, you monster!"

I checked out the website mentioned upthread and this post addresses that argument.