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.

IVF opened a Pandora’s box and I think no one knows yet what might be the implications of tinkering with human biology. I myself conceived through IVF with ICSI (mainly because both my husband and I were somewhat old, with low fertility and with the proverbial clock ticking). Does anyone know of studies about health (mental and physical) or children conceived via IVF — ie the implications of hormone stimulants and, in the case of ICSI, mechanically facilitating fertilisation? Has IVF been a thirty year experiment with no “control group”?

Did you ask the babies how it felt to have their environment completely changed the moment they left the womb. How they could no longer be soothed by the voice and heartbeat of their mother? How they searched for their mothers' scent only to find a stranger's?

Would you not find it traumatic to have everything you know taken away from you?

In the situation where two adults entered into a legal contract specifying all terms and conditions - and both sides did it of free will - of course both had agency.

”Specifying all terms and conditions” is just another way of saying “giving away important rights” of both themselves and the future baby and giving away agency. How can a woman have agency if a contract has determined what she eats, who she has sex with, when she delivers, how she delivers?

And the baby’s agency for life has been given away too.

@GCITC I really don't know how much stress is experienced by the baby. So far as I know there's no data to show they experience stress that leads to attachment issues etc.

So you don't know whether it's worked out well for all involved.

@GCITC I meant in general. The children I know are perfectly fine. They keep touch with their respective surrogates and everyone seems happy with the arrangements years later.

please give this book a read, it’s about adopted children, but surrogate children will go through a similar experience to those babies fostered/adopted shortly after birth. Review here: https://corambaaf.org.uk/books/primal-wound

There are also lots of studies available online which have compared the brain scans of adopted babies compared to ‘family secure’ babies.

Sorry, I said family secure - I meant stayed with birth mum.

I hate it when adoption is compared to surrogacy. In the UK, kids up for adoption are already here and it’s either adoption or a life in the care system - they are not commissioned. Adoption in the uk is described as ‘the LEAST WORSE option’.

Surrogate babies are not commissioned.
Just like people with no fertility issues who decided to have - go ahead and make an embryo and carry a baby - that baby is planned (nor commissioned)

Same with surrogacy. Woman (or a family) decides to have a baby. She very sadly runs into a medical issue that prevents pregnancy in the usual way. Science helps solve that medical issue. But in principle - a woman (or family) decide to have a baby - and take steps to make it happen.

So - comparing surrogacy with puppy breeding is disingenuous. Surrogates do not get pregnant and put their babies for sale online en masse…
Surrogate selection is a long process - not unlike the process of selecting an adoptive parent.

Also - comparing egg donation to organ donation is completely wrong. We do not regrow organs. We have a large supply of eggs. Egg Donation is a lot closer to blood donation - although, of course, a much harder proceas to go theou to.

I'm an adoptive parent and I'm a bit pissed off with 1plus1equalswindow clumsy wording. Adoption is a solution to a need, the child's need, not mine as an adoptive parent. Outcomes for adopted children are so much better than for those children who remain in care. If you died and there was no one in your family who could look after your child would you prefer they were adopted permanently to one family or at the mercy of multiple foster placements/residential homes for their childhood? Then spat out at 18?
Yes of course there are shit adoptive parents, no system for assessing people can be foolproof, but I would never allow any child I knew to go into the care system now I know a bit more about it and how often children end up getting moved from FC to FC. They say this doesn't happen anymore, but I now know differently.
Some children will always unfortunately need to be removed from some birth parents for neglect or abuse and adoption is one of the outcomes for this group of children. Nowadays adopted children are very much entitled to know their history from day dot and to be able to maintain indirect/direct contact with birth family members inc parents throughout their childhoods into adulthood where they then can make their own decisions regarding the relationship they want with their birth family.

Adoption & Surrogacy (at least in the UK in 2024) should not be lumped together.

I will need to support my adoptive child's identity and connection with their birth parents as they reach the appropriate age. We will do letterbox contact throughout their childhood with the birth parents.
This is drummed into any adoptive parent, the need to know our roots and identity is such an important one.
Maybe rich kids who were born via surrogacy will get loads of therapy and an easy ride through life so maybe this won't raise its ugly head, it feels society is getting so damaged anyway, what one more thing?

But yes I agree that surrogacy is human trafficking. If you have a sister or best friend that would do that for you, then that's much more acceptable to me, especially as that mother will be in the child's life forever, and will share DNA if they are a family member, but anything else is abhorrent to me. Gay couple? Same moral code applies, you don't get a free pass.

I'm pleased the Pope is taking a stand on this, no other leaders seem to be.

Totally agree with @lovelysoap

My adopted child is too little to even say the word 'Mummy' but when they do it's going to break my heart because I'm not the one who should be called that by them.
It's disgusting to sever that bond unless it absolutely has to be for the safety of the child.

I know primary school aged children in wonderful adoptive families who are absolutely obsessed with knowing and meeting their birth parents, I can't imagine what they are going to be feeling as they navigate their teenage/young adults/becoming parents years.

I don't understand how this issue (in the context of surrogacy) can be swept under the rug so conveniently.

It's human trafficking. No-one has the right to be a parent. I honestly don't think I could be friends with someone who commissioned a child.

Absolutely. Surrogacy should be banned. In all circumstances.

IVF opened a Pandora's Box. The Pope then was opposed to it, as I was. The current Pope wants to ban surrogacy. I do too.

So we are going to use the Pope as moral compass? Same Pope whose church turned blind eye to child abuse by the priests for years?

Curiouser and curiouser

Are you seriously trying to argue we can't make ethical judgements about things women or gay men do?

What is the basis for that?How does it even make sense?

If something is unethical, the fact that some women or some gay men might want to do it doesn't mean everyone should be ok about it.

Rules and best practice for adoption has changed so mych over the last decades, because it's done with the best interests of the child at the center, and more and more is understood about the issues adoption creates. It's why international adoption is now considered extremely problematic and to be avoided if possible.

If surrogacy was subjected to the same child centered thinking, it would be illegal. Which is why it always focuses on the parents and surrogate and ignores the child as much as it can get away with.

No, it's really sad that he seems to be the only world leader (which he is in terms of leading the Catholic Church) who is telling about this issue.

I'm not remotely interested in religion/organised religion myself, let alone Catholicism (which as you remind us isn't without massive multiple horrific abuses).

And as a feminist I can't believe I agree with a Pope on very many things, but on this particular stance I do.

Just because someone wants one doesn't mean they should get one.
Trading in human life is not right.

Completely agree!

Adoption finds a family for a child who has none (or none who can raise them).

Surrogacy buys a baby for an adult. Vastly different.

What would happen if the surrogate mother wants to keep the baby? Even with every intention of handing the baby over when he/she is born, I can absolutely see how the woman after giving birth can change her mind.

Assuming the baby in the OP doesn't use the birth mother's eggs, how would this work? I'm sure US laws are different, but my brain is struggling to understand how the baby could be taken from a woman who has given birth when she wants to keep it. Surely she's legally the baby's mother? (Not suggesting that happened here, but I'm sure it does happen!)

Surrogate babies are not commissioned.
Just like people with no fertility issues who decided to have - go ahead and make an embryo and carry a baby - that baby is planned (nor commissioned)

Babies bought from a surrogate are "commissioned".

Babies bought from a surrogate are "commissioned".

They are indeed. It seems some people wish to deny the transactive nature of the arrangement. The language is all about downplaying that and hiding it all in emotion.

when the arrangement is stripped of the obscuring language, it makes some people very uncomfortable.

It always comes down to that transaction though. That exploitation of human beings to get what someone wants.

No, why would it be?