Gay men and surrogacy - the new “be kind”?

[Tootingbec]

Just seen a LinkedIn post from a gay man who is writing a book about the surrogacy “journey” he and his husband went through. Cue gushing comments about how amazing this is…..

It has really upset me. The sheer fucking privilege of gay men to buy babies and then be lauded and praised for it like they were super heroes. And untouchable to criticism due to blinkered “be kind” beliefs about the poor gay men who just want a family like heterosexual men.

Where do people think these babies come from? Do you think people delude themselves that all these gay men just have kind, altruistic female friends who happily have a baby for them? As opposed to exploiting vulnerable and desperate women in India, Mexico and the like.

I feel so angry - women are just fucked over and abused time and time again by men and it is all dressed up as progressive when it is the exact opposite.

When I was a younger women I loved having gay men in my social circle. They seemed like “nicer” more lovely men than most straight men. Now I realise that underneath it all they just the same sexist, privileged tossers as many straight men are. They want a baby? No problem - buy one! They want to invade women’s spaces? No problem - just reinvent yourself as “the most vulnerable in society”!

It’s like the scales have fallen from my eyes.

But in the context of discussing whether a child is biologically related to their parents, “unrelated” means biologically unrelated. It carries a clear and specific meaning, and sometimes we need to be clear.

The stats about risk to children in the home being highest from “unrelated males” refers to males living in the house, in the “father figure” role, but who are biologically unrelated.

So it isn’t a bizarre use. The male partner of the sperm-donating male is biologically unrelated to the baby.

That doesn’t mean they won’t go on to have a great fathering relationship with the child.

What irritates me is that you seem to think that women have no agency and are simpletons, not able to make decisions about their own bodies

100% this.

The point surely is that women should not be getting pregnant with the intention to give away their baby.

Another poster on here spoke about how she used a donor eggs but absolutely considers herself to be the child's mother. She is in the same situation as a surrogate who is carrying a baby made from another woman's egg. The difference is the intent - and the payments of course.

Why should we encourage women to get pregnant to give their baby away? It is purely for the benefit of demanding adults.

You and I both adopted - we didn't go and pay a woman to give us a baby. For me, seeing the impact that losing their birth mother has had has convinced me that no one should lose her unless absolutely necessary.

These wannabee parents could do the right thing and adopt orvuse their lives in some other way for the good. I'm not some saint who was particularly well equipped to parent traumatised children but l learned how to do it. I simply don't think you should just be using your superior income to commission a baby. It becomes so much more than that as the users of donor eggs use eugenics to choose a great set of genes. Not for them the hardships of parenting a child with sen or development trauma.

There are decisions which society does not allow me to make about my own body. I'm not allowed to sell bits of it, for instance, even if I want to that's illegal and I can be prosecuted for doing that, so I already don't have agency to do whatever I want with my body and neither do you. Do you think I should be allowed to sell a kidney? Or let someone amputate my arm for money?

And in the case of surrogacy, it's not just the woman's body involved is it, because it also involves a child. I'm not allowed to sell or give away my 3 year old, or my 10 year old, even to someone who really really wants one and will look after them well. I don't have agency to do so, the state will prosecute me if I do that. Do you think I should be free to do that?

We don't let people sell their body parts, and many would like to do so. Why is it ok to sell a baby?

There are next to no checks on the purchasers. Surrogates mostly can't change their minds. They are often coerced into it by fathers or brothers who take all the money. Many surrogates have learning disabilities and don't properly understand what is going on. Or they are so desperate they think this is the only option.

They are rarely told of the risks involved in a surrogate pregnancy and left to deal with everything that happens on their own.

The idea that women happily become surrogates is a fiction.

This woman is a leading critic of surrogacy. She was born by surrogacy in 1991 and her views are worth considering https://ewtn.co.uk/article-woman-born-of-surrogacy-shares-why-she-supports-the-holy-fathers-call-for-a-global-ban/

OK, from an evaluation of policy perspective then.

I have read your posts with inters (although i don't agree with most of them, you make some interesting points)

I'm not talking about disapproval. I'm talking about whether something should be prevented, at a policy level, on the grounds that it has the potential to do more harm than good.

You seem to be arguing that we have to allow surrogacy at a policy level given that some mothers give up their babies for adoption (willingly or otherwise).

I was questioning that assumption given that, there is a big difference between allowing something and actively encouraging it - the scale of it for starters is likely to be massively different. Does that matter? I think that it does.

I was asking whether you also see that difference, or whether you think one is OK because the other happens anyway?

Your last para slightly contradicts all the challenges and trauma that we're being led (falsely I think) to believe on this thread that children conceived using surrogacy experience.

But the rest of your post is a bit of a red herring. I don't particularly have any interest in encouraging surrogacy. But the reality is that it happens, and should be allowed to happen. People are allowed to bring children into the world in all sorts of less than ideal circumstances, so even if you consider surrogacy to be one of those circumstances, that doesn't mean it should be banned.

If the argument instead is that it should be allowed but we should all tut tut under our breath, well - fine. As I said upthread, I think people can disapprove of whatever they like for whatever reason they like.

Sounds like a really good argument for proper regulation rather than pretend that we can ban our way out of the various ways in which people are exploited.

I think what matters is that the principle.

I do not think we can criminalise people for the manner in which they consensually conceive a child because we've formed a view that the child will be born into suboptimal conditions.

We don't criminalise a woman who gets pregnant even after having all of her children placed in care - and rightly so. We don't criminalise someone with a serious and inheritable illness for getting pregnant.

Criminalising someone for exercising their fertility in a particular way is a really dangerous and wrong thing for a free society to do.

It's not "Criminalising someone for exercising their fertility in a particular way" it's criminalising human trafficking. Which is already illegal, except for new born babies made to order.

Do also think we should regulate rather than ban anything else which can't be 100% prevented then? Some things are considered wrong by society, and even though they can't be 100% prevented they're still illegal.

It's not human trafficking for a child's mother and biological father to decide which of them is going to be the primary/only carer and to mutually agree that the child should then live with the father and his partner.

Things where the principal harms that arise are the (real and legitimate) risks of exploitation and lack of protection, yes, generally it is better to regulate that than pretend that banning it protects anyone.

That's not what's happening though, look at this couple, two men creating a motherless child with no vacancy for a woman in their queer family:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5161891-surrogate-mother-wins-access-to-her-biological-son-in-landmark-case-after-gay-couple-said-it-was-homophobic-for-her-to-be-involved-in-their-motherless-family-with-no-vacancy-for-a-woman

It's disingenuous to say that surrogacy is 2 parents mutually agreeing which parent the child will live with. It's people with money paying a woman for the use of her womb and the ability to discard and disregard her after the birth.

So we should regulate all human trafficking instead of banning it? That'd be better? For gangmasters and pimps maybe, but not for the trafficked.

Plenty of surrogacy involves adopted embryos, where no one involved in the birth or parenting of the child is biologically related.

Tbf this makes it much harder to bring the child back to the UK. But it happens.

But yes the fact that one commissioning parent is usually related is how people get parental rights. But most women who have babies don't abandon them. And they usually aren't paid to be pregnant.

Exactly. When they talk about regulating it, they mean more power and rights for the purchasing parents. Nothing to help the surrogate that's for sure and nothing for the child. And still if they try to regulate it here, people will still circumvent the law by going abroad.

It is if the mother conceives the child with the intention to surrender her parental responsibility to the father, and is being paid to carry the child.

I don't think we should criminalise any woman for getting pregnant though, whatever the circumstances. I would not want to laws to punish a woman who becomes pregnant, and then makes a decision, for whatever reason, that the best thing for the child would be for its biological father to raise it. But surrogacy can be made difficult, and vanishingly rare, without doing that.

Banning IVF clinics implanting embryos into any woman they know is not intending to bring up the child herself would be a start.

And a mother seeking to voluntarily surrender parental responsibility should be a safeguarding issue, and anyone proposing to raise the child, even if it is the biological father, should be subject to the same scrutiny by social services as a potential adopter. And it should be a criminal offence to have made any payment to the mother in such a case.

Who is the 'they' you talk about.

If it's referring to me, that is the direct opposite of what I've said. So either you've missed this or are choosing to misrepresent me.

In terms of regulation - I would support an international convention governing protection of surrogates to address exploitation and coercion, promote a properly regulated framework of surrogacy providers who have obligations in terms of the welfare of the surrogate and ensuring she is aware of risks, implications etc, that sets out standard terms of a surrogacy contract which includes terms that support surrogates, including protections in the event that she changes her mind, ensures healthcare costs are properly covered etc.

Actual human trafficking always entails exploitation. By its very definition it involves force or coercion.

What would be interesting is if those who want to criminalise surrogacy could explain what specific acts would be criminalised without resort to loaded and unspecific terms.

Right, so just don't tell an IVF clinic that surrogacy is what is intended, and biological father instead contributes to the mothers costs during pregnancy rather than making a payment and the model falls apart.

So on the traumatic separation, there is obviously a difference between a child being forcibly removed from a mother who does not wish her to be taken away and is incredibly distressed as a result in terms of the trauma and stress involved for both the mother and the baby; and a baby being removed from a mother who is calm and voluntarily choosing to relinquish parental responsibility, done in a managed way.

So you accept that in the surrogate cases where the mother has actually changed her mind but is contractually forced to give up her baby while feeling distress, this is traumatic for the baby?

And we haven’t even started to touch on the issue of rejection of the baby by both surrogate and it’s purchasers. This has also happened and can also leave the child stateless. Baby Manji was one of the first. Baby Gammy was rejected by his purchasers for having Downs Syndrome, while his twin sister was accepted. The male purchasing parent turned out to be a convicted sex offender.

I’m sure the Ukrainian surrogate who gave up her baby and then was sent back to a war zone on a long distance bus because the people buying her baby were too cheap to get her a taxi despite her caesarean would have felt some distress.

Your post makes absolutely no mention of the rights of the child or any consideration of its welfare. Why would anyone want us as a society to enable more of the above scenarios happening?

"They" means all the people talking about regulating surrogacy. The Gov has a consultation on it atm. The Law Commission proposed changes which have been set aside for the moment. There are plenty of interested parties keen to change the law here so commissioning parents get parental rights from birth and the advetising for and payment of surrogates is made legal. I definitely wasnt referring to you.

This article is not about gay men but it discusses the costs involved - the commissioning parents paid £151k and the judge said only about £23k of that was justified - i assume that's what the surrogate got. The whole thing is a racket and no one, gay or otherwise, should go anywhere near it imo (and I'm not even going to start on the ethics of elderly parents using surrogates) .
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14756779/amp/Elderly-couple-70s-parents-surrogate-baby.html