Another potential celebrity baby purchase 🙄.

[AnAlpacaForChristmasPleaseSanta]

Today I've been hanging around waiting for an appointment with a dwindling phone battery and the only reading materials on offer being last weekends newspapers. I was having a flick through the Mail on Sunday 😳 and saw this story by someone called Louise Thompson, who casually mentions that she and her partner would like to have another child "but would have to use a surrogate'.

I have to admit I'd never heard of her but a bit of nosy googling revealed that she's from Made in Chelsea and during the birth of her first child she suffered a major hemorrhage and months of PTSD afterwards. Something she seemingly has no qualms about potentially putting another woman through. I just despair.

The link to the article is behind a paywall but hopefully this will work.

The sooner we ban surrogacy the better. A baby is not a commodity.

How much does a woman get paid for surrogacy?

I think surrogacy can be a valid way to bring your child into the world if you can’t do it yourself. I must admit I’m not overly familiar with the laws regarding this in the UK but if they are strict enough to protect both parties and the baby I don’t see how it’s any of my business.

It's your business in the sense that we all have a duty to protect society's most vulnerable.

Commissioning surrogacy is commissioning the intentional separation trauma of removing a newborn baby from it's mother. A woman can "choose" to inflict this trauma upon herself but a baby cannot advocate for itself (although it is of course debatable how much choice the woman really has as the vast majority of surrogates are poor and you certainly never see middle/ upper class women volunteering to do it for strangers).

This is a world of difference to adoption where the best is made of a tragic situation where trauma has already happened and has not been commissioned on the whim of wealthy people. Regardless, and speaking from experience, even people adopted as very young babies suffer from the traumatic loss of that separation.

Our society knows not to treat animals this badly. We ought to understand this about humans too.

Indeed. The casual way this woman spoke about it, like she needs to pop out and buy another pair of shoes or something is chilling.

The question we should be asking is, is this process in the best interests of any child created from it?

The focus and thoughts are nearly always on the poor parents that can't have a child.

@TomatoSandwiches You've missed out any focus on the woman who will carry and give birth to the said child.

The one who faces very real risks Louise Thompson is only too aware of but seemingly does care because she just wants a child.

She also has ulcerative colitis and a stoma bag.
I do think grown women should decide what they do with their body, and if they want to carry a baby for someone else then no one else should be able to tell them they can’t. I’d do it for my sisters.

Absolutely this.

It's commercial surrogacy that is completely unacceptable. Carrying a baby for your sister is something else - money doesn't change hands, for one thing, and the 'commissioning' mother is likely to be very solicitous about her sister's well-being.
I haven't through through if it's an OK situation for the child, though - at least the child will know both their mothers, and will know they weren't just bought like a pair of shoes.

In Ireland the most common justification for surrogacy is that a heterosexual couple can't have a baby, and the urge to become a mother is so fierce and urgent - in a way that allegedly you can't possibly understand if you haven't experienced it - that to deprive a woman of a surrogate child would be damaging to her mental health.

It's very apple-pie and motherhood, and very emotive, so it's hard to present principled arguments against commercial surrogacy here.

There are some cases of celebrity gay male couples buying babies, but the discourse around it is mostly heterosexual couples campaigning to have the right to be recognised as the legal parents of the child, and a controversial bill, the Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Act 2024, did just that.

Human beings should not be bred to order then removed from their mothers at birth.

Absolutely immoral and cruel to the baby.

As someone who nearly died during a haemorrhage post miscarriage, I couldn’t put another woman through this risk and trauma for my benefit.

And what happens when the baby isn’t born perfect? Do they reject the ‘goods’ in this transactional deal and leave the surrogate to deal with it?

Just an all round awful thing to do.

@Rumpapapum She also has ulcerative colitis and a stoma bag.

And that's a shame for her. But it doesn't entitle her to buy a person.

@ReesesCupcake As someone who nearly died during a haemorrhage post miscarriage, I couldn’t put another woman through this risk and trauma for my benefit.

I'm very sorry that you had to endure that happening to you. It's what I cannot get my head around about Louise Thompson. If anyone knows the risks, she obviously does and should know better. But obviously doesn't care as long as she gets what she wants.

All surrogacy should be banned.

I'm sorry if someone can't have biological children but their desire to do so does not trump the right of a baby to have its mother.
A newborn baby already knows its mother. It needs it's mother above all else..it doesn't even know it is separate from its mother. Surrogacy is intentionally creating an orphan.

This.

I read an article recently that claimed police in I think an east European country had found an “egg farm” women locked up to harvest their eggs for sale. That’s my business as a woman. It’s horrifying when you start to read some of the stories of abuse and exploitation. TG for mumsnet warriors.

No one carries a baby for someone pre-birth. They grow them. "Carrying" makes it sound like the baby is created and the surrogate is just holding onto it, when in reality, the genetic code may have come from the commissioning parents but that baby was grown from its mother. It's very deliberate language to downplay the actual role of the surrogate

@Endthisshit I read an article recently that claimed police in I think an east European country had found an “egg farm” women locked up to harvest their eggs for sale.

Fucking hell!

@BoeotianNightmare I'm sorry if someone can't have biological children but their desire to do so does not trump the right of a baby to have its mother.

I agree. And as LT does have her own biological child, you'd think she would too.

It was this 👇

https://www.reuters.com/world/georgia-thailand-probing-human-egg-trafficking-ring-2025-02-07/

Really, does anyone know how much they are paid?! Surely that is why the surrogates do it? Whether it’s wrong or right.

What's your point? In some countries they get paid a signficant amount, in others they don't.

You'll never find a wealthy woman being a surrogate for someone poor. It's always the other way round. Maybe not always 'poor'. But never wealthy.

Agreed, what if something were to go wrong during the birth, such as the baby was deprived of oxygen, which resulted in them suffering brain damage (heaven forbid). Do the customers get to say no thanks, we wanted one that works. Buying human beings is supposed to be illegal.

These people are a bunch of narcissists. It doesn't surprise me in the slightest that they don't consider the basic humanity of the women exploited by surrogacy, let alone their poor children's!