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.

Agreed, human life shouldn't be a commodity.

Nope.

I am against all forms of exploitain of the human body, surrogacy, organ trade, prostitution.

With surrogacy there is the additional issue of selling a human baby.

Feminism isn't just choices for women.

Mother dies at birth. Tragedy. Awful for the baby to be deprived of its mother; acknowledging that mother-child relationship is a thing.

Baby deliberately deprived of its mother because cash has exchanged hands? All fine.

As @AFishDoesntKnow has said, my post is not an anti gay men - it’s about the specific issue of gay men using surrogacy as a means to have a family being seen as something to be celebrated

Why shouldn't the arrival of a child into a family be celebrated?

I don’t buy that there are any significant numbers of women out there selflessly having a baby for infertile couples/gay men etc)

If there was no surrogate's offering themselves to help couples have children then there would be no demand for it. There is surrogate's around who are happy to do it and get paid. That's the reality.

Although I disagree with surrogacy, largely because of reading more about it on these boards, I feel the same about it whoever the parents are- gay or straight.

I don't have a problem with gay men or lesbian women adopting children. Stats I've seen in the past (and I wouldn't claim to be an expert), suggest that children with two loving parents (or more in cases where there may be another non-resident parent) do well regardless of the sex of those parents. They certainly seem to do a lot better than children who spend their lives trapped in the care system.

Buying and selling babies. Renting a woman's body. How progressive.

They are not happy to do it!!

Anymore than women who sell sex for money are “happy to do it”.

These are poor women with very few economic choices who see surrogacy as the only way to earn money. If they had choice and options do you really think they would grow a baby for 9 months and then hand it over to never seee it again? Women who “voluntarily” gave up their babies for adoption back in the day suffered life long trauma as a result….

And it is not just about the women, it is about what it means for the child to be taken away from their mother at birth. Even puppies get more care.

Absolutely.

There are many happy and thriving children of gay parents. I’m guessing you don’t have any gay friends?

It's illegal in France, Spain, Germany, Norway, Sweden and other countries, so I don't know why we can't ban it in the UK too.

They don't. Having a baby isn't a human right. If your biology doesn't let you have a baby, you don't have one.

The UDHR right to marry and start a family exists to prevent the State from forcibly sterilising people or denying them a civil marriage. It doesn't confer a right to have someone else make you a child if your body won't let you make one yourself.

I mean, lesbians can't have children together either.

Some people have a problem with surrogacy, but not donation of gametes. Others object to both.

I really don't see what differernce it makes though, if something is in itself immoral, the fact that it means gay or lesbians could not have kids would be kind of irrelevant, wouldn't it?

If we found that infertile women could have children by removing the uterus of live women, resulting in their deaths, we wouldn't say that was ok because it fixed her infertility. What differernce would it make if we took that same scenario with a same sex couple?

Do immoral acts become moral because it promotes some kind of equality? (And where somehow biological reality is seen as a kind of inequality that is immoral? Surly that is a dystopian road to go down.)

So no, I think surrogacy is immoral, and I don't care if it means gay couples can't have kids. That is a fact of life, like many other facts.

People are not 'owed' a child.

Absolutely. The right to a family life is the right to not being prevented from having children. It is not the right to be supplied with children.

Why is it illegal to purchase a newborn baby?

Why can it be legal to purchase a newborn baby if the contract was signed before the mother became pregnant?

Or single mother friends.

Would you say that about the days when babies were taken from poor unmarried mothers to be adopted to better off married couples?

Why would anyone celebrate taking a new born infant from its mother? Such a big deal is made these days about preserving the mother-baby bond, skin to skin contact, the reciprocity and bonding inherent in breastfeeding. It's seen as not only unfortunate, but also serious, when a health problem necessitates separating the mother and baby for a time and efforts are made to make sure they remain in contact, physically, as much as possible.

Your "be kind" around this isn't kind at all, it is choosing to over-look a horrendous cruelty.

I suspect you meant this as a rhetorical question, but I think it is useful to answer it carefully.

Part of it is because often the baby is in fact related to the commisioning parent, so it's not quite like selling the baby to a stranger. It's more like paying the mother, or mothers if a donor egg is used, to give up their parental rights.

For those who support the use of donor gametes when there is no surrogate, it is more difficult to be critical of the idea that biological parents can sell or give away their biological children.

You should not be allowed to buy humans.

If the arrival of children had been celebrated back then, poor unmarried mothers would have been able to keep and support their children. Children could grow up with their mothers.

Children should grow up wanted, within a loving family, without shame.

And you think this supports taking babies away from their mothers today, how?

I agree mostly, OP. But can I just ask : Nepali & Indian surrogates. Are white Europeans using them as surrogates then? Purely as surrogates? W an egg from elsewhere?

Generally people want a baby look similar to them, so I'm assuming they're being used purely as surrogates?

Or are they being used as surrogates & egg donors by wealthy people from their countries?

Sorry, either is wrong, I just wanted to ascertain details.

I think shaming parents and children is a despicable thing. I think it's shameful @TempestTost.

Exactly. Gay men can still be parents by adoption, or coparenting w lesbians (obvs straight women could too, but more often lesbians for obvious reasons). Nobody should use a woman as a surrogate, whoever they are.

Germany is notable for being v lax in a lot of stuff, but they have sensibly banned surrogacy, instead having websites where gay men can find lesbians to coparent with.

But they can have kids, they just need to coparent with each other to do that. That way the baby isn't missing a parent. More people than one might think have done this arrangement, it takes work but worthwhile for the baby not to be separated from their bio mum or dad.

I feel for the babies - Brian Dowling's sister, acted as a surrogate for his two daughters. They were conceived using an egg donor from a woman in Portugal , and they are biologically his husband’s but not Brian's. The entire arrangement is quite complex and I wonder how this will impact the children mentally as adults.