R4 Fri 7th Feb 12 noon AntiSocial

[TeenToTwenties]

Caught a bit of this.
Was discussing surrogacy.

The lady speaking against surrogacy is fantastic

Indeed. Facts and statistics vs feelz and 'fair/unfair'.
Every single time.

Currently listening and was wondering if anyone was going to post…apparently Law commission in 2023 proposed a law change in the uk that dilutes the rights of the surrogate mum to change her mind by giving automatic legal rights to intended parents as soon as baby born.

Helen Gibson was the spokeswoman from Surrogacy Concern. She was excellent. Susanna Rustin spoke about how this has played out in feminist circles over the last few decades, which was interesting. It can't be said often enough that in Europe the UK is an outlier here and we should in my view be moving to ban this practice outright rather than going for a model more like the US, i.e. anything goes, what's wrong with renting a woman to be a human incubator? (Helen gave a particularly good response to that point, btw, explaining that pregnancy is a lot more complicated than just keeping someone else's embryo warm while it grows in her womb).

Yes the lady speaking against surrogacy kept her language very precise ‘commissioning parent’ and the legal use of the word mother . She also kept the child’s needs front and centre.

It was an interesting discussion and each side spoke in a respectful way which I appreciated. I learnt a lot including how it is banned in other European countries, I had no idea about that.

My worry is that despite being brought up in loving homes and having great relationships with their adoptive parents, we hear more voices from those who are adopted who are desperate to make that biological connection. There are now this group of children born through surrogacy who may also feel the same way when older, but their situation has been brought about by deliberate design rather than difficult circumstances.

However, I am also torn because I have friends who have struggled with infertility.

Is Adam Fleming even pretending to be impartial here? SO condescending and shutting-down to Helen Gibson! Even in the last 60 seconds, trying to downplay her stats about pre-eclampsia and other risk to maternal health. If I hadn't read a lot about this whole area and was coming to it fairly neutrally, I think I'd have been swayed by the way he was constantly niggling at her concerns and her data.

I'm still really conflicted about this whole issue. Do I believe, on paper, that everyone has a 'right' to have a baby, however that's achieved? Well no. It's not actually a human right in law, and making it a 'right' would necessarily mean that somehow, these babies would have to be sourced and so far we can't do that without a real live woman. It's analogous to the incel argument about a 'right to sex' - who then is compelled to deliver the product?

But as others are saying, I have friends who've struggled with infertility, lesbian friends who went down donor sperm and IVF routes in order to have a baby that one of them was genetically related to. I don't actually know any gay male couples who have a baby through this or any other method. (And I'd argue, for biological but probably also sexist reasons, that lesbian parents are fundamentally different from gay male parents in this respect!) But I do understand that this is a horrible and very emotive area for a great many people, and because I know some of them, I can't bring myself to shrug and say 'tough'.

We really do need to have a grown up discussion about surrogacy before things drift even further from the rights and wellbeing of vulnerable women and babies. I didn't feel that this week's Antisocial did much to bring that about - Helen Gibson from Surrogacy Concern was being sensible, reasoned and had the data to back it up (sorry Adam, you clearly didn't like the fact that she came armed with verifiable data!), and the other woman who was talking about her 'surrogacy journey' was all about the feels. There didn't feel like there was any even ground to meet on.

yes, so that was news to me - how much of an outlier we are, compared to much of Europe! I feel a bit ashamed that I didn't already know that. How and why have we become so laissez faire here in the UK, I wonder?

That's a coincidence - there was a piece about surrogacy on a breakfast-time news programme today in Ireland [on Newstalk] and the [woman] presenter asked the 'pro-surrogacy' speaker
'But aren't there basic ethical issues with this? You never hear of women from rich countries having babies for women in poor countries, do you? Can commercial surrogacy ever be ethical?' [paraphrasing].

I almost fell out of my chair to hear those points being raised here in Ireland, where surrogacy is considered AOK because everybody is entitled to have a baby regardless, and it's heartless and cruel to raise the slightest objection.
Perhaps the tide is turning on surrogacy too...?

I thought it was interesting that the woman who spoke in support of surrogacy as she and her husband have four children (from two different women, one child and then triplets...I've no idea how many embryos were implanted into the second woman) said that it was something to be proud of, so the children don't experience stigma later on in life. That sounded to me like some slight form recognition of surrogacy being something to be ashamed of.

It's obvious as to why someone who benefited from surrogacy would celebrate it and want to see it normalised and liberalised in law, so people who buy babies and cross borders with newborns don't have to be made to feel shame at their actions.

I think we normalise this at our peril.

(It's not the children's fault obviously, they never asked to be taken from their mothers at birth, but if you announce this on Instagram you should expect a 'backlash' frankly.)

I'd be interested to know if Adam Fleming is straight or gay. Usually that's not an issue but here I think there's the risk of a conflict of interest.

@OhHolyJesus i do understand that woman’s need to “ normalise” surrogacy ( she got upset at the idea of the surrogate being classed as a mother) but what was definitely missing was the acknowledgment that a child born of surrogacy ( or indeed any sort of gamete donation) might themselves have issues to do with their way of arrival onto the earth …even if they are very much wanted and have a great childhood. It always seems to be “ my need to be a parent” trump any other concerns.

Yes @Diplodocy and she seemed annoyed that the child would be considered to be the child of the surrogate mother, when she is in every way, even legally until the parental order is granted.

Her name was unusual enough to find her podcast and lots of articles on her life and 'surrogacy journey'.

When asked about the exploitation in surrogacy, especially abroad, I thought she said on R4 that they didn't want to go abroad but this couple considered America and India before implanting one UK woman with their embryos (so an egg donor conceived pregnancy for a 39 year old woman to bear), in Cyprus.

They returned to Cyprus to fertilise the eggs from another woman, so that's two women as their frozen embryos were either "unstable" or 'destroyed in error', the articles are inconsistent.

Then a third woman was also flown from the UK to Cyprus again, to be implanted with two embryos and she gave birth to triplet boys delivered very early at 30 weeks by emergency c section. Thr babies were in NICU for 8 weeks.

The second surrogate mother is described as an experienced 'surrogate' and she was 37 and when she also had an egg donor conceived pregnancy.

And article in the Mirror in 2023 says that the first woman couldn't have the second baby for them as her "circumstances changed" but then an article in the Telegraph from last year said that this was due to "health issues".

It's all quite confusing, here is a long self-authored piece.

definingmum.com/kreenas-incredible-story-breast-cancer-ivf-heart-failure-donor-eggs-and-surrogacy/

When children are adopted in the UK it is is usually a last resort option to try to make the best of a terrible situation. It is done in the child's best interests and with a lot of scrutiny. Even where a baby has been through a great pregnancy, no drugs / drink, then straight to a wonderful carer - so in short, no exposure to abusive care - it is still acknowledged that the very fact they were separated from birth family is a trauma and that the child is likely to experience issues around their identity and life story. Life story books are provided to help explain why they aren't with their birth family and there are support services in place.

Surrogacy is entirely for the benefit of the adults and at the deliberate detriment to the child and the adult they will become. It also puts at least one woman at risk, because there are always risks with pregnancy and egg collection.

@OhHolyJesus thank you, it is I think really relevant that whilst on the programme she was promoting uk altruistic donation whereas she actually went to another country…and that was Cyprus where surrogacy is not regulated .

That point about adoption being child-centred in the UK can't be made often enough. I gather it's very different in the US where, probably at least partially because of difficulty getting abortion and stigma around it, it's much more common for women to give babies up for adoption at birth - as things were here in the 50s and 60s. A lot of the debate on Twitter around surrogacy focusses on the US, understandably, but it's very different there. No Children Act to force the authorities to put the child first, not the parents or would be parents.

These final paragraphs are disturbing. Is this a call to action for healthy, young women of certain ethnicities to go through egg harvesting via ovary stimulation and hyperdermic needles so to help others build "families of colour".

Donor conception is complex, donors of colour are hard to find. Social conditions and perceptions of ‘giving away’ babies are still prevalent and as a result people of colour rarely register to become donors. Agencies still struggle to understand the differences and importance around the ethnicities of the donors on their books; with Intended Parents having to explain the difference between Indian, Mexican, Black or Chinese ethnicities. These are issues that white Intended Parents don’t have to contend with.
We need more voices; we need more stories. We need to educate more and to understand the resistance that’s present. To find a way to open conversations, so that more people of colour come forward to help their peers. So that more surrogates of colour can be found, more donors of colour. So that more families of colour can be built, and that currently unconventional routes to parenthood become more conventional.

Thanks for posting. I'll give this a listen later as it's a subject I feel very strongly about - from the viewpoint of a Mother and child, but also in the interests of genealogy.
It's evil and it's the next big battle. Funny how these battles are having to defend against the commodification of women and children's bodies huh?

I agree, Ohholy. This is exactly what we don’t need: to understand the resistance that’s present. To find a way to open conversations, so that more people of colour come forward to help their peers. So that more surrogates of colour can be found, more donors of colour.

What we do need is more women giving clear factual information about the harm surrogacy does to the desperate women it uses, and to the resulting children.

Just to play devils advocate, and because j genuinely can't decide, if a woman has capacity and agrees to be a surrogate, offers even, then what is the harm to her? It could leave her with disabilities yes, but she is free to make that decision if she is in this country and not coerced or desperate.
If it is concern for the child and the situation they grow up in, taken from bio mother who in some situations may not even be the egg doner, then why are we not equally concerned about children born to single mums by an sperm doner, or to a lesbian couple. Surely the risk of any 'engineered family' is that we cannot know how the child will feel?

@somewhereinsuburbia In surrogacy the baby is taken from the only mother (& human) it has ever known, and given to a stranger. Even if that stranger is biologically related that is still likely to cause trauma.

In the cases you describe the child stays with the woman who nurtured and cared for them in those first 9 months.

One thing I don't understand is that there are laws preventing dog breeders from separating puppies from their mothers before they are 8 weeks old, because it is known that early separation from the mother harms the puppy. But human babies are being bred with the intention of separating them from their mother at birth, and any harm to the baby and mother that this causes is being ignored.

Why do dogs have more rights than humans?

Yes @OldCrone I have thought that myself many times.

@somewhereinsuburbia I do worry about children born via donor conception, because of the hole it leaves in information for them and the impact on identity of not knowing who dad / mum is.

Practices in adoption change with time because we learn from adopted adults - we know the damage done from secretive adoptions, lack of contact with birth family, first name changes, insensitive case recordings, we know that the trauma of separation or feelings of rejection are long lasting. There is only a push to make surrogacy easier because adults think they have the right to be parents and an industry profits.
When the war broke out in Ukraine there were babies born to surrogates stuck in hospitals unable to be "claimed."
The number of cases that go wrong for other reasons too - baby born with medical needs, two born not one etc and just never claimed. These cases don't make the news so often because they are hushed up as the country and agency doesn't want medias scrutiny. Media scrutiny has lead to some countries banning or tightening laws around surrogacy and they don't want that.

@Scout2016 i remember reading a times piece about the plight of surrogates and babies after the Ukraine invasion…pictures of a room full of babies in a bomb shelter . I had absolutely no idea of the scale of that “ industry” in a European country . There was also a good documentary on bbc2 a while back about the industry in India…heartbreaking to hear of the stories of babies rejected by their “parents” because they were born with a disability, or the outcomes for surrogate women suffering from health problems as a result of their pregnancy/ birth. . In the UK maternal healthcare is much better but I don’t see how anyone could morally want someone who already has kids to go through another pregnancy, it’s not a no risk situation and I doubt people are asking the surrogates kids what they think about this.

On the flip side, can you make an informed choice about being pregnant and handing over a baby if you haven't had experience of it? And if something goes wrong or there are fertility problems for the surrogate, such as from over stimulation of ovaries, then that's their one chance at being a parent gone.

You are right though @Diplodocy that would be children who mother is giving what they may see as their sibling away.