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.

Surrogacy is illegal in most of Europe, so it can't be that difficult to word a law. Any baby whose mother intends to relinquish PR would come under the care of the local authority, just as happens with non surrogacy children already in the rare cases that a mother wants to do that. It's not rocket science.

Any child moving from their original family to a different one should do so under the auspices of children's social care. And it'd be pretty obvious what was going on if mothers were trying to relinquish PR of newborns at birth in favour of the bio father and his long term partner of either sex, wouldn't it? Then that bio father would get DNA tested and he and his partner would be assessed, as kinship carers are already when mothers can't or won't care for their children. Any babies trafficked here from overseas would mean the purchasers being assessed by social care before the babies could be brought here, as happens in international adoption.

Would that 100% stop surrogacy? Nope.There are a lot of crimes which can't be eradicated, that doesn't mean we shouldn't have laws against them or that we should try to regulate them on the grounds that we can't prevent every one from happening. We should make them as hard as possible to commission and prosecute those who do it anyway.

The circumstances around the conception and financial arrangements could be scrutinised as part of the social services investigation when the mother seeks to surrender parental responsibility.

Obviously some people will lie to evade any laws, and sometimes they'll get away with it. But it would be more difficult, and fewer people would do it.

PlanetJanette has indeed come up with a description but it’s not one that’s accurate in all cases or even sets a clear distinction in relevant ways.

Some babies are made with donated sperm and eggs so are not genetically related to their purchasers at all. For reasons discussed earlier in the thread, this is suboptimal for the child.

So when a Ukrainian woman feels that in order to feed her existing children and secure them a home, she has no other option than to take a payment of 8x her annual wage in return for having a baby to give away to someone abroad?

We have already discussed the inequalities of power in a surrogate/purchaser relationship and the widespread exploitation of women that has become part of the surrogacy industry.

Just look at the involvement of organised crime groups and human trafficking related to surrogacy that has already been identified. This is likely to be the tip of the iceberg.

www.eurojust.europa.eu/publication/surrogacy-and-human-trafficking

It’s not ‘exercising their fertility’ - it’s making a baby to sell.

Babies have human rights you know. One human right is not to be sold.

And even if one or both of the intended parents are related to the child, that's not what matters to a baby.
The primary bond is between the baby and it's mother, the woman whose body it grew in. The importance of that bond is recognised in forced adoption, which is only done as a last resort, but not in the current laws on surrogacy.

What if they don't know who the father is, biologically? Are they both an equally high risk? Or both an equally low risk?

1. For a child conceived by any sort of artificial insemination and surrogacy arrangement, what makes you think the lab or men involved don’t know who the biological father is?
2. Re your second point, I have simply reported what the stats say about which men present the greatest risk to a child in the home.

The answer to not wanting a child is not to have one. Not to give it away.

Where a parent refuses to or cannot care for a child that has been born, the obligation of society to the child is to step in and take care of the child, according to the child's best interests.

What we say about the parents - whether we approve of this all - depends on the situation. Parents are dead? Mentally ill? Maybe extremely young? Child was conceived by rape? Possibly these are reasons where we don't judge much or at all.

Parents are drug addicts? We might see this is the best course of action but we might also be disapproving of the kids of decision making that created a situation where such an unfortunate outcome is the result.

Parent (maybe the father) pisses off because he or she would rather not put time and energy into a child? Well they are selfish fuckers and we condemn them. Parents who can have an obligation to love and care for their kids whether they want to or not.

PlanetJanette has done a great job of describing the difference between forced adoption and surrogacy in terms of the immediate after birth experience of a child.

Only from the perspective of whether the mother is choosing it or not. I haven’t seen an explanation from the baby’s perspective.

It’s patently ridiculous to say surrogacy can’t be banned so we should just regulate it better, given there are multiple countries around the world, including a lot of mainland Europe, that have banned it.

And the majority of this thread has been focused on the impacts and legalitied of the separation of the baby from its mother. The fact remains that the entire process before that moment is fraught with legal issues.

Personally I would do something like:

Make it illegal to contract away your parental rights except in an adoption scenario where the state stands as an intermediary guardian for the child, even if the other person involved is also a biological parent.

Make it illegal to withhold contact where child and mother requested, or withhold full information from the child, unless a court deems this is in the best interest of the child for safeguarding reasons.

Make it possible that a child could always potentially have a legal/financial claim against a biological parent, except in the kind of adoption scenario I already mentioned.

This would have a significant effect on the fertility industry.

ETA: And I would apply this to both the woman who carried the child and any donors of gametes whoever carries the child.

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.

Cant see a comparable risk of exploitation or profit-making in those examples.

Think it’s always worth exploring situations where things feel taboo, as I mentioned upthread about being uncomfortable asking after the woman who has just given birth. Where women seem to be an inconvenient necessity.

With the first situation mentioned too, there’s a specific reason each child is taken from the mother. In many cases won’t be what she wants - like Constance Marten who would have brought up babies in a freezing tent with a man who throws her out of windows.

To that end, do many women of sound mind, contact an adoption agency while pregnant to say, “I’ve conceived and am having a baby altruistically only because I want to donate it to an infertile couple.” They could be sure they don’t want any (more) of their own children and seek donor sperm (free online or from a sexual partner ambivalent about any resulting pregnancy), to then purposefully bear a child to give away. Bypassing the bespoke big pharma interventions in commercial surrogacy. Do any? Would that be encouraged?

It’s interesting reading the regret stories of women who’d never been pregnant before entering into a bespoke arrangement to bear a child.

One of the reasons we don't typically criminalise mothers who give up babies, or have them taken - barring very extreme circumstances - is because it puts children at risk.

I don't understand what you mean. How does it put children at risk?

It doesn't matter why they don't know - my question is what if they don't know? Then the whole unrelated by DNA thing becomes nonsense.

Surely it's not DNA in and of itself - that can be mistaken or unknown - it's the intent to be a father, and the absence of an existing father (ie in the case of stepparents).

The 'unrelated male' stat is about stepfathers isn't it? And that's a different position than being an adoptive or surrogate father.

I can’t see a future where the regulation and laws around surrogacy and unrelated gametes is not changed. Look at the changes in adoption law and practice over the last 50 years. Not just in the uk, globally. In the last few years countries which allowed commercial surrogacy have banned it. None of these things have been changed to restrict women’s bodily autonomy, they have been changed because time and research has identified harm.

Also, for context, selling organs was not
criminalised in the US and UK until 1984 and 1989 respectively.

As far as I can see the research says that it is caregivers in the home who are not a biological parent*

Have you found any research that differentiates between the different titles used by unrelated men and whether that has an impact on their risk factor?

So unrelated women are a risk too? Like mothers through egg donation who aren't genetically related to their child?

Ridiculous.

It doesn't make any logical sense. Relation through DNA is not the key - it's the psychological perception of being the father.

Stepfathers know they're not the real father and so you do see higher risk - but adoptive and surrogate fathers perceive themselves to be the primary father and so it's different.

DNA isn't magic, you can't feel it. If a man believes he is a father but actually secretly isn't (secret ONS for example) your argument is that he is automatically a higher risk to the children in his home because he is, in fact, 'unrelated'. It doesn't work like that. It's psychological distance that matters.

Just because you don’t like a fact doesn’t make it ‘ridiculous’. Take it up with the researchers if you don’t like it.

Unrelated male caregivers are more likely to cause physical harm to children.

It doesn't make any logical sense. Relation through DNA is not the key - it's the psychological perception of being the father.

That’s your assumption. Have you seen any research that backs your theory? I’m not saying that it doesn’t make sense but you don’t know that it’s a fact.

DNA isn't magic, you can't feel it. If a man believes he is a father but actually secretly isn't (secret ONS for example) your argument is that he is automatically a higher risk to the children in his home

It’s not my argument, I (and other pps) are merely pointing out the stats established by the research. It seems to be quite a well established fact.

It's research that is being misrepresented in my opinion.

The research is about step parents. Not parents who believe they are their child's actual parents but don't share DNA.

What @Vubui is saying makes perfect sense. You know it does.

But you are assuming that step parents don't intend to be real parents, and that adoptive parents do. What makes you think adoptive fathers are likely to be better people than step fathers?

I suspect that it's the incest taboo that's key, myself.

Of course step parents aren't real parents, they aren't their step children's legal guardians, have no parental rights or responsibility and in the event of divorce often never see the children again. The step children also already have parents. They are children acquired through marriage, not through the desire to be a parent.

When someone adopts they are choosing to be a parent to that child, like people who have a baby are choosing to be a parent to that child.

Step fathers who harm their step children don't see them as their own. The whole point of adoption is that the child becomes your own.

You can't possibly conflate step parents and adoptive parents.

I know two people who have stepfathers who've been w the mother since birth almost and have adopted. They filled the same role a biological father would. I think you shouldn't dismiss all stepparents.