Surrogacy case from California

[CheesecakeOnTheLanai]

I'm not sure if anyone else has been following this case, but a couple in their 70's have just been granted permission to parent a 16 month old child that they conceived through surrogacy.
I can't be the only one who thinks this is utterly bonkers, and cannot be in the best interests of the child?
There's an article in The Telegraph, I can gift the article link so hopefully this will work.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/76a80f6c70dec6d4

Abhorrent is the right word for it. How fucking selfish do you have to be to put that poor kid through that. Let's face it, the nanny is probably going to be more his mother really

You're so right. It's even worse to me that they lost their son in 2020, and this is obviously some sort of misguided attempt to deal with their grief. I don't think anyone could think it's a good idea for two people well over retirement age to become parents again, as the article says they will be in their mid 80's when the child starts secondary school (if they're still alive).
Nothing about surrogacy seems morally right to me, and I used to be very liberal about it all.

That poor child

This one from the Times is awful too. Apparently a fair few older men out there buying babies.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/8f3e17f6-aa54-42fc-8ac5-095842f5effd?shareToken=1fa45ab795bc066d20fe71c9c407ca56

FFS.

How in God's name has this been allowed to happen and how has nobody thought about the child at the middle of it.

The day when this abhorrent, transactional process is banned cannot come soon enough.

The agencies seem to have zero vetting criteria - if you want to buy an egg, create an embryo, employ a surrogate, they are happy to take your money and organise it. Who else is buying babies?

Judges are being put in an impossible position on this. They are effectively being presented with a fait accompli as the alternative is denying the parental order and putting the child into the care system, where it's hard to argue they will have better outcomes. The only way to put a stop to these kinds of scenarios is to legislate to ban it completely.

I haven't read the article so dont know the details, and have many doubts about surrogacy.

However as many men have children "naturally" in their seventies, this sounds like you think women in their 70s are the problem!

Or that you accept that a man in his 70s will be having a child with a younger woman so it will be okay as after all she will be the main carer.

Not forgetting that in unforseen cases grandparents take on the care of their grand children because the parents are no longer able to do it.

A bit like discussions you hear on talk tv when someone phones in and says how wrong it is for disabled people to have children because they cant look after children as well nor engage in physical activity with them.

But loads of people don’t think men in their seventies should have children. So I don’t know why you’d assume OP is fine with that

I didn't assume OP was fine with this.

I am just saying that to base the arguement on the fact that the parents are too old isn't rational unless you are going to say all men over 70 (60?) should have vasectomy.

What a shame they didn’t turn to mentoring older teens or young adults instead.
………..
The hearing was told the “wealthy” couple turned to surrogacy after their son, who was born via IVF, died of cancer shortly before his 27th birthday in 2020.
They had “taken heart” from the stories of other grieving parents who “found solace” in having other children following the death of a child.
………

In a similar vein ist like those people that have their dogs cloned because they loved the original dog so much.

If you try to adopt, you will find that it's incredibly difficult if you are older. The rule of thumb used to be a 45 year age gap max between the child and (younger) adopter, though that could be stretched in certain circumstances.

Maybe look at adoption practice as the nearest equivalent rather than people having children naturally.

An older man can have a child naturally with a younger wife, but in this case they are using donor eggs. The child is only biologically his, not hers.

The baby is already losing two mothers in this type of surrogacy - egg donor and birth mother - and has no legal right to know either. And the purchasing mother being in her 70s means a possible further loss in the near future.

Are we as a society prepared to allow these people to do this? Single men in their 50s and 60s are doing it too. It is concerning.

Then maybe you should read the article? Or even contemplate how purchasing a baby in your early 70s exposes that child to a future of becoming a carer for a very elderly and often unwell 80 something year old.

The lack of concern for the rights of babies in cases like this is horrifying

Every story just makes it worse and worse.

I see no option but to ban this abhorrent practice outright.

It's about both parents being too old though, isn't it. The child won't just lose one parent at a young age, but both of them. Having already lost their first mother at birth due to the abhorrent practice of surrogacy. So an orphan twice over before they reach their twenties, in all likelihood.

I don't actually accept that men naturally fathering babies in their 70s is a good thing. But at least those babies will have a mother. And besides, older men would have to be forcibly sterilised to prevent this, which would be a violation of their bodily autonomy.

There's really no equivalence to society enabling (through advanced medical technology) unsuitable elderly couples who would never meet adoption criteria, to bypass the child safeguarding process by commissioning a baby for money.

But 70 year olds getting a woman pregnant means that child is born to a mother, who will then bring up baby whether ancient father is around or not. 70 year old women don't give birth. They don't donate eggs. It's not their child. How do they feel when expected to look after a baby? Many grandpfind that overwhelming. It is crazy. They may have been pressurised into it. They may not have thought it through. Nature stopped women from continuing to give birth for good reasons.