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.

I’m hoping this is just her making stuff up for content rather than actually seriously considering it. I loathe surrogacy at the best of times, but there is a special kind of hatred for those that use a surrogate after nearly dying in childbirth.

How selfish do you have to be to realise how dangerous giving birth can be for some women, unexpectedly too, and then happily go and pay another woman to put their life at risk so you don’t have to?

My worry is that the woman who “volunteered” for Ollie and Gareth Locke, her MIC Chelsea pals, will volunteer for Louise too. Louise is already following her.

what if something were to go wrong during the birth

I know it's the DM but I'm posting it anyway:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-14363015/surrogate-babies-abandoned-parents-changed-mind.html

Wow that's sickening, the fact that they were allowed to separate twins, is beyond sickening. Morality has left the building.

Surrogacy is always wrong. You can't sell a kidney to someone who needs one to live so why should you be able to sell a baby to people who are infertile? It's just not an appropriate solution and brings a human being into the world purposefully to be removed from his or her mother at birth, something we would never advise for puppies. Anyone with half a qualification in child development knows how important attachment is and that this starts before birth. Adopted children are always somewhat impacted by disruption to their attachments but this was never planned for by rich people as is the case with surrogacy.

You haven't bothered to read the thread then?

Hi there Louise,
FYI I'm always going to be happy being a "sneery mare" to quote your delightful choice of words, instead of a spoilt, entitled human who thinks they have the right to click their fingers and have a baby sold to her. Regardless of if she can be arsed to carry it herself or not.
You have a lovely evening.

How selfish do you have to be to realise how dangerous giving birth can be for some women, unexpectedly too, and then happily go and pay another woman to put their life at risk so you don’t have to?

Yep, that's a huge part of the rub for me.

I'm a midwife. Exactly 0% of pregnancies are risk free.

In her book about her birth experience, she says that she didn't intend to use a surrogate because she had moral qualms about surrogacy, so it looks as if she's changed her mind.

Shush you! Don't be bringing facts into this!

Those morals are easy to change for the right £.

I agree that I wouldn't expect it from someone who knows how catastrophic pregnancy and birth can be, with no warning. She lost five litres of blood at home from a secondary haemorrhage and spent weeks in intensive care. And that was after a long time in hospital initially following the birth due to complications.

It’s really just don’t be selling babies. That’s it

@JoyousEagle and understandably suffered from PTSD afterwards. None of which I'd risk inflicting on my worst enemy, let alone a total stranger.

Which part of this is focused on what’s best for a baby/child?

They get expenses. The family court judge goes through the spending of the money that has changed hands and it all has to he accounted for with receipts. The receipts have to show a pregnancy related expense ie maternity clothing, pregnancy massage, cleaner if the woman is unable to do so during pregnancy. Any number of things which must be something that's been incurred due to the woman being pregnant. The court order can be refused if the judge deems that there has been a payment for the baby itself rather than an expense. This is in the UK, I have no idea what the case is in other countries

These ladies?

https://www.humanrightsresearch.org/post/trapped-in-the-surrogacy-boom-thai-women-rescued-from-human-egg-farms-in-georgia

Edit- sorry NRTFT didn't see it had already been posted

The court order can be refused if the judge deems that there has been a payment for the baby itself rather than an expense.

But in reality that has never happened in the UK - despite some cases involving extremely large amounts of money, no order has been refused on that basis. Because ultimately, that would involve taking a baby away from the people who have been caring for it and who want it, and presumably putting it in foster care. So people know they can break the rules but it doesn't matter.

At what price does it switch from morally wrong to morally right?

Literally no pregnancies are risk free. None.

Nobody on this thread has presented the argument that LT "can't be arsed" to gestate and birth her own baby.

If you want to engage in the debate and your position is that surrogacy is acceptable, then you will need to articulate why that is. If your opinions are founded in facts then you will find that you can argue your point without resorting to straw men and outright misinformation.

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.

The baby is still taken from its mother, though - the only person it's ever known, the comforting familiarity of her smell, her voice, her warmth - at the very moment of its birth, and handed to a stranger. In other situations this is only done after long consideration by experts as an absolute last resort because of abuse or extreme risk of danger to the child - but hey it's okay because the woman really wants a baby.

Handmaids Tale, anyone. God bloody awful.

I haven't through through if it's an OK situation for the child, though - at least the child will know both their mothers

A baby only knows the woman who carries it. This is its mother (and by the way the surrogate is legally the mother too at birth). This is the same woman who hands the baby over to strangers at days or weeks old.
No, the baby doesn't know it's mother. It's very first experience after birth is a profound and irreversible loss.

I feel it should be like kidney donation, altruistic and never commercial and with all the safeguards and measures in place.

This is part of a whole spectrum of attitudes surrounding pregnancy and motherhood. We don’t value the sacrifices and side effects that producing children puts mothers through. It’s simply viewed as something women do as a default. If we placed its importance in its proper place these conversations would be a lot shorter and easier.