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.

In my view the sexuality or gender of an infertile couple is irrelevant. A gay male couple's needs aren't any different or more or less important. But the only other methods open to them are foster or adopt.

'Excess' eggs from the IVF process are sometimes donated. In some Western countries where IVF is run privately for profit, there might be financial incentives to do so e.g. a discount, or disincentives not to e.g. high storage costs. The provider can then sell the eggs.

Or, eggs can be bought cheaply from white women in disadvantaged countries e.g. Ukraine.

Exactly, and gay men CAN still have a bio kid if they make the effort to forge a coparenting relationship, which is obvs hard work but worth it for the child to know their bio parents.

No man, whatever sexuality, is owed a woman's body for sex or children, and those intimate things should not be commodified. That's why sex work and surrogacy are fundamentally wrong. And the sooner men stop behaving like they're OK, the happier the world will be

Or coparent.

I agree with your first statement. The rest - no! So what if the woman wants to do it for 'altruistic' or financial reasons?! The baby doesn't matter? No baby would choose to be born just to be given away! Surrogacy is wrong on every level.

Being gay does not give someone the right to purchase another human being - that is human trafficking and it’s abhorrent. No one should be doing it and the OP is correct that gay couples seem to praised for doing so.

It’s vile to deliberately separate a newborn from its mother (we don’t do these with animals). I’d be interested to know why you think it’s ok to remove a child at birth but not say, a week, a couple of months, a year old…

A gay couple are biologically unable to become pregnant so their option is adoption - not buying someone.

Yep, or coparenting. They have 2, good ethical options.

Yeah what about the men and what they want!

Agreed. The rights of the child should always take priority. Nobody should bring a child into the world with the deliberate intention of immediately separating it from its mother. Sometimes, of course, that simply can't be avoided, but it shouldn't be deliberately inflicted, and certainly not in return for payment.

I know, it’s just their human right to be given a child on demand apparently.

"Why should any couple, gay or straight, be forced into co-parenting just to have a child?"

Why shouldn't they? It seems like they are willing to pay the financial costs, but not the other, less tangible costs.

A child is not a commodity to be bought and sold, to be hoarded or shared. If fate or fortune has made someone infertile, then that is their problem to deal with, not the child's. The child's interests should be the priority here. Every child has a right to its mother, where that is humanly possible. I can see it's not necessarily in the commissioning parent or parents' interests to co-parent with the mother, but it's nearly always in the interests of the child.

Really not really the same thing, dogs are an entirety different species who need to learn basic skills and socialisation from their mothers so they essentially "know how to be a dog".

Meanwhile, nothing fundamentally detrimental is happening to a newborn human child if someone other than the birth mother is feeding, changing and caring for them. If that were the case, the millions of preterm babies who spend time in NICU, or babies cared for by father's or grandparents where mothers are absent in their early lives as a result of illness or death, would all be in serious trouble.

Many countries have banned surrogacy outright. There are many people who agree with the op. Has she identified a particular reaction to surrogacy based on the fact it is two gay men? I don't know. However I have noticed there are increasing numbers of puff pieces about surrogacy in the press - probably driven by commercial surrogacy companies looking to relax the surrogacy laws in the UK. The whole industry - because that's what it is - is horrific.

Adoption.

Well maybe they adopt or else accept it’s not going to happen for them?

I am 💯 with you OP. Surrogacy is abhorrent.

Oh come on? So the traditional nuclear family is not as good as two men or two women? That is nonsensical and actually pretty offensive.

Meanwhile, nothing fundamentally detrimental is happening to a newborn human child if someone other than the birth mother is feeding, changing and caring for them. If that were the case, the millions of preterm babies who spend time in NICU, or babies cared for by father's or grandparents where mothers are absent in their early lives as a result of illness or death, would all be in serious trouble.

Every effort is made in every single maternity/NICU unit around the world to keep the baby with its mother. Where it’s not possible, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that kangaroo care improves outcomes. Where kangaroo care isn’t possible, it’s recognised that there is unavoidable separation trauma occurring, and new mother are (should be) supported with that difficulty.

Why do you think this is?

Equally if a baby is to be removed from its mother for child protection concerns, a family court judge is required to make the decision because of the gravity of removing a baby from its mother.

Why do you think this is?

We don't actually know what the effects are on the child because it hasn't been evaluated properly.

In ICU the babies still have access to their mothers. Also it is necessary to keep the baby alive, which makes it a very poor comparison to this situation.

Surrogacy upsets me. I used to follow a surrogacy watch group on Twitter when I had it but it was so troubling. There were single men in their 60s getting children. Even in a best case scenario that he’s a kind loving father with good health. That child will not have any parents in their 20s and possibly before. It’s just sad. No one wants that start in life.

I guess some here would ask, what are older people supposed to do if they want children? I’d say they just need to get over it. Go volunteer or work with children.

I know there are terrible mothers but I don’t like the implication in some of these pro-surrogacy comments here that a mother is just irrelevant.

There’s also a disconnect. People recognise that children in care and adoption even if they are placed in good families at a young age can have issues in not being with their biological parents. But then the children who are purposefully created to be parted are somehow fine.

Instinctively I feel it is wrong to plan to remove a newborn from its mother. Nobody is entitled to having a child, sad as that may be in many cases.

If a child has to be removed from its mother for other reasons- say safety risk to the baby or mum sadly dies - the baby’s placement elsewhere becomes unavoidable and in that infant human’s best interest.

And that’s not even considering the ethics of commoditisation of trading babies.

It’s nothing to do with homophobia but I agree gay men are most affected, but again as no one is entitled to “own flesh and blood child” then biology is biology and you can’t change that.

It is not about bringing up a child in a single sex couple. No-one has said that, you are looking for a simple “homophobia” box to slot this into.

The problem lies in being removed from the gestating mother at birth.

That is utterly traumatic for a newborn. A baby knows it’s mother’s sounds and voice and the early weeks of life are (or should be) a continuation of this safe and secure relationship, just outside the body rather than inside.

Look up the concept of the “mother-baby dyad”.

In a previous job I had quite a lot to do with heterosexual parents who had used a surrogate from Ukraine. None of the families I met (particularly the women) had any regard for the woman who had given birth to their child whatsoever.

It wasn’t unusual to “fake a pregnancy” by wearing a bump, or for the woman in the couple to have to have “bed rest” for much of the pregnancy so that she wasn’t seen.

Every couple had staged photos in the hospital, with the woman on the bed in a hospital gown, and the father next to her - the woman who had actually given birth was nowhere to be seen.

One particularly tragic cats had resulted in the woman giving birth having to have a C section and a hysterectomy. The couple were - understandably - not allowed in for the birth due to the complications. The woman was screaming and banging on the door while this was going on, and demanding to see her baby “as I am the biological mother.”

In all cases, the woman was packed off to the war zone they came from without a second thought from the parents, once they had got the baby. I asked one couple if they were going to keep in touch with the mother - the person who had given them this amazing gift - and there was genuine bafflement and “No, why would we?”

All surrogacy should be made illegal.

Evidence shows removing a baby from the mother especially so soon after birth effects cortisol levels on baby and mother and has a detrimental effect on the baby. The baby bonding with the mother is so important, it's why the baby is put straight on the mother's chest. To say it has no impact on the baby is woeful ignorance.

I was separated from my mother for the first 3-4 weeks of life (I was in NICU and she was seriously unwell and unable to visit me). I am, and always have been perfectly healthy and reasonably well adjusted. There's no lasting trauma there.

It may be different circumstances being discussed here, doesn't make it a poor comparison. If we're making blanket statements that it's harmful for children to be separated from their mothers at birth, then the reason behind that separation doesn't make a difference to the outcome.

This is anecdata, a sample size of one.

Not a properly conducted research study.

You understand this difference, right?