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.

Was that the case of the child molestor where the State allowed him to keep the child?

That is exactly what the customers have said on many occasions

I feel it should be like kidney donation

Truly altruistic surrogusacy certainly has fewer ethical problems than the commercial sort. But it would be exceedingly difficult to ensure absolute alteuism without pressure. And while it helps safeguard the mother, it doesn't eliminate the ethical issues for the child. As far as we know, kidneys aren't conscious and don't suffer psychological trauma from a transplant.

And a UK financial transaction for a baby legalised in a UK court:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/dec/09/an-english-couple-a-ukrainian-surrogate-and-a-baby-the-extraordinary-story-of-how-war-united-two-unlikely-families

No my post was in response to a story of an Australian couple who paid someone to have a child but refused to take the boy who was born with down syndrome but took his twin sister who wasn't.

https://news.sky.com/story/court-rules-child-can-stay-with-paedophile-dad-10242442

This was the one

The judge made his decree with several conditions attached, including Farnell not being left alone with Pipah and the couple always keeping Western Australia's Department for Child Protection informed of their address.

No this one

oops that didn't work, the one I'm referring to is an article from the Daily Mail, the link was posted in a comment further back.

Also from that article:

Pipah was one of twins born to Thai mother Pattaramon Chanbua in 2014 under a surrogacy agreement with Farnell and his partner Wenyu Li.

The case came to light when it was widely reported that the other twin, Gammy, had been left behind by the couple when they discovered he had Down's syndrome.

Pipah's surrogate mother then tried to get Pipah back the following year after learning Farnell was a convicted child sex offender.

Heard this Louise woman interviewed getting terribly upset about her own health problems but happy to condemn another woman to physical risk to get what she wants. Nice.

Also those videos of newborns being put on mum and their whole body relaxes.

Surrogacy is always wrong and immoral and needs to be banned outright. It’s like the fucking Handmaids tale come to life.

@OldCrone I remember that story too. Did a quick Google to see if there was anything about how those poor children are faring and there wasn't but found this instead, "It was also ruled that Pipah is not allowed to be alone with David Farnell and with the agreement that she must be read a photobook with age-appropriate language every three months for the foreseeable future that explains her father's offences".

I mean there are just no words. Money really does talk and innocent women and children pay the price.

@TheaBrandt1 Heard this Louise woman interviewed getting terribly upset about her own health problems but happy to condemn another woman to physical risk to get what she wants. Nice.

I wasn't familiar with her but I fell over a thread on the other forum (whose name we do not speak 😉) which was rather illuminating. Basically it seems that she's a spoilt little rich girl who stamps her foot until daddy buys her what she wants, be that a handbag or a human.

Im pro surrogacy in some circumstances. As i think a couple should be able to have a baby. Though probabky less acceptable for second plus kids.
I actually think the 'baby taken from mother etc' is definiteky stretching it. Babies dont care they just need to be fed etc. I think the ethics of donor sperm and eggs etc whilst im also pro that too would be more an issue for a older child.

He died
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/david-farnell-father-of-baby-gammy-and-convicted-sex-offender-dies/news-story/5be57b260503c8445f18e168f6ab82e5

Shame!

I actually think the 'baby taken from mother etc' is definiteky stretching it. Babies dont care they just need to be fed etc

Of course they care. Of course it’s not stretching it.

If there are child protection/social services concerns on an unborn baby due to its mother having significant problems - for example, significant drug addiction, previous abuse of children etc - and it is recommended the baby is to be removed as soon as it’s born, what happens in that scenario? Who decides that? A Family Court judge. Why? Because it is considered to be such a monumental decision to remove a baby from its mother that it needs to be a highly considered judge decision to do so. This is because it is still in the best interests of the child to keep it with its mother, because of the trauma inflicted otherwise, unless the negatives vastly outweigh this trauma.

But in surrogacy, they just wheel the baby’s cot down the corridor. Why?

Its a bit like children are still seen as tradeable chattel.

Yet how in the UK a under 8 weeks old pup cant be lawfully removed from the bitch that birthed it.

And the concept that a baby in the mothers body is unable to be self aware until the second after it pops out from its mothers womb ...

I'm not aware of which cases involve extremely large sums of money. Which ones are those? And what did they list as the associated expenses for those sums of money?

What baffled me was the part about it being "unacceptable" to buy a child if you already have one but not if you don't, as if any of that is going to matter one jot to the poor baby involved.

Using another woman to have your child sounds life-affirming but it isn't, it's a globalized industry using women's bodies as a commodity. The baby is also a commodity - if it turns out not quite what the parents wanted then it is often rejected. Also, though UK laws are fairly strict - expenses only etc - there is a move to change this, especially to remove the birth mother's right for the child to be hers, not the commissioning parents - this is to allow a change of mind. The law proposed would make the commissioning parents the legal parents from birth, thus preventing a woman deciding she wants her child.
Surrogacy is the business of all women, for it commodifies us, makes of us mere vessels to carry (other people's) children - a view many men would like to be true. Read Aeschylus' Oresteia, which culminates in the trial of Orestes for the murder of his mother, to see that men are very happy to say women make no contribution to the child they bear. Orestes' defence was that a mother only carries a child, is a vessel, the child having nothing to do with her, she is NOT the parent - which is the line taken on people using surrogates: the surrogate gives nothing to the child, it is not 'hers', she 'just' carries it for them.

That's a really horrible and misogynistic thing to say. Absolutely vile way to talk about someone you've never met.

I picked up a 'Call the Midwife' which dealt with surrogacy - a woman giving her child to her sister who cannot have children. Worth a watch - esp the outcome.

Babies dont care they just need to be fed etc

WTF. The baby's mother (actual mother, not purchaser) has been the baby's home and security for the whole of its life. It is grown and nurtured in her body.

Do you seriously think that removing a baby from his or her mother at birth has no consequences at all @Pieundchip ?

Oh I DO have an example of this actually. DH's very well off SAHM cousin offered to be a surrogate for DH's brother who's an early career academic and therefore not exactly rolling in it.

If this is true than firstly its a very rare example and secondly that woman has some issues.

If its the one I am thinking of (apologies if wrong) it wasn't actually surrogacy but a woman with an unwanted pregnancy who effectively "sold" her baby to a cousin who couldn't get pregnant.
She ended up getting it back as she couldn't go through with it