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.

That’s a fair point but it does create the scenario where paedophiles can buy a baby (or babies) and there is no mother in existence to even attempt to protect the child.

Obviously we know that some women are in relationships with abusers and have a baby. Then it is up to the mother and authorised to try and protect the baby from the abuser. A mothers instinct to protect their baby can be strong. However, that is a bad situation and quite hard to prevent.

With surrogacy we are deliberately creating a situation where a man can buy a baby and know that there is no mother involved to hamper his intentions.

This scenario will has already happened more than once where a baby (or babies) has been bought either by a single man or a male couple and horrifically sexually abused. In a normal world we would look at those horrific situations and take whatever steps possible to prevent it happening again but what price is the safety of a ‘few’ children when there’s $millions to be made?

Of course some will suffer. Some babies who stay with their birth mothers suffer too. It might be hard for some to understand why a birth mother would give you away, even if to a loving family. It's also hard to understand why a mother, perhaps because she's against abortion, kept you if you were unwanted.

But to be clear, surrogacy isn't buying and selling people, that's an oversimplification, and it is illegal in the UK to pay someone to be a surrogate. A lot of surrogates are willing family members who want to help. In my view that is legal and is their choice and their right, regardless of how any of us might feel about it.

It is different though. Birth parents have a biological imperative to care for the child (yes I know that's far from foolproof but it exists, we are mammals) and the child is with the sound of the mothers heartbeat that it knows from before birth, the smell of her, all the animal stuff.

Parenting a child who has been removed from everything it knows is extreme parenting. Adopters are given training for that, and post adoption anxiety and depression is still common. It's incredibly hard to even admit you're struggling when this is what you've wanted and worked for, but at least adopters are warned about it and have social workers still there in the early weeks and months. There's no safety net of any kind in surrogacy.

I have adopted. I wanted my children, and I prepared hard. But when they came home, I didn't love them, I didn't know them, we were strangers to each other and they'd been taken from everything they knew and were confused and unsettled on a very basic animal level.

I do not believe that someone who chooses to use a surrogate has any idea of what they are potentially getting into, they have no preparation or support, and lots of people genuinely think they a newborn baby is basically a blank slate who won't remember or be affected by being removed from the birth mother and it'll be just like if they'd birthed the child themselves. It's not true, and finding that out once you're in it is too late. And that's leaving aside totally the lack of background checks into purchasers in terms of criminal records, stability etc, purely assuming that they're ordinary well meaning stable people, it's still a massive gamble with extremely high stakes and for what? It's not worth the risk to the person that should come first, which is the child.

I have seen this in action. A baby being taken from one room with its mother to another room with its intended parents. The baby crying. The mother having to take Dostinex to suppress her milk all while trying to hold it together because she’s not supposed to care about giving up her baby and she’s supposed to be happy for the intended parents. The midwives also struggling to hold it together as they try and comfort both baby crying for its mother, and the mother while the intended parents show absolutely zero concern for the mother because they got what they wanted.

One midwife said she will never do it again and will ask to be allocated to other patients when there’s another case because she found the callousness and insensitivity of the situation too awful.

My point is, people do not spend their lives damaged and struggling because someone other than the woman who birthed them fed and changed their nappies.

You said ‘people’ which implies all but ok - you didn’t mean that.

How many babies suffering lifelong trauma and separation issues is acceptable in your view? How many new instances of this is it ok to create where without surrogacy there would be none of those instances?

It's also woeful ignorance to compare a human baby to a dog.

Why? We are mammals, as are they.

There are things we have in common and ways in which we differ, but comparative psychology exists and is still relevant. That’s why people say things like ‘dolphins have sex for pleasure’ and ‘gibbons mate for life’- because it’s interesting to compare our behaviour and psychology to that of non-human animals. It can teach us things about ourselves.

True, but when done legally in the UK, true surrogacy isn't about money making. You legally can only pay for reasonable expenses. It's done willingly out of a desire to help someone who desperately wants a baby. Maybe there should be more checks on the would be parents, but that could apply to birth parents too - lots of people have kids because they can, certainly doesn't always mean they should.

If we're talking about those actually buying babies, that's wildly illegal, morally wrong, and poses a whole host of issues.

Also I don't want to dwell on child abuse, which it goes without saying, is the absolute worst of crimes, but a child staying with birth parents obviously doesn't prevent that either. Mothers can be morally corrupt too.

Also, surely we should be showing more care to baby humans that baby dogs? No?

It is buying and selling people though, it is a transaction. I think some transactions should be illegal, whether money is involved or not. If I'm not allowed to give my cousin, or a stranger in exchange for 'expenses', my three year old, why am I allowed to give them my newborn?

Are we saying that it's ok to do stuff to humans as long as they won't remember it?

Of course some will suffer. Some babies who stay with their birth mothers suffer too

This argument only holds water if the likely outcomes are equal. This just isn’t true.

If some form of experiment took place and half of babies born were kept with their mothers and half were removed from their mothers, the idea that the amount of harm suffered by both groups would be the same in the long run is preposterous and opposed by all we know about bonding and relationships.

This is important, because even if you think it’s possible for a woman to be genuinely altruistic and be certain they all are, and that it’s possible to protect all parties legally from any negative outcomes of a pregnancy and birth (it isn’t), the impact on the baby still has to be considered.

I would be concerned about the power dynamics at play, even with so called 'altruistic' surrogacies. Some individuals are people pleasers, families have their own hierarchies, people enter into arrangements without fully understanding the consequences.

I read a very eye opening article about a woman who was a surrogate for a friend and ended up extremely regretful of that decision - due to how she was treated by her friend, the impact on her body, her long term psychological pain in giving up her baby. All of these things are very difficult to talk about openly.

At the very least, prior to any surrogacy arrangement there should be a discussion about what happens if the surrogate is permanent disabled or even dies as a result of the pregnancy. How should that be compensated?

The nuclear family is not traditional. It was invented during the Industrial Revolution to conceal the harms done when people were forced to leave their villages and move to towns to look for work. Children are traditionally raised by their parents as part of an extended family within a wider community.

Very true, I don't disagree at all. It should be done in a well thought out and sensitive way, that looks out for the safety of the women involved, and obviously wherever that isn't the case it isn't ethical. It should never be something that anyone is forced to do against their will, and it shouldn't be taken lightly by either party.

But the reality is that it isn't done like that, so it shouldn't be done at all.

And even if it was that still disregards the rights and needs of the baby.

Tbf, I was far more inclined to agree with your views a few years ago before I found out more information about the surrogacy industry. But now I know more of the facts I feel very differently.

A lot of surrogates are willing family members who want to help.

This proportion is somewhere between 18% and 30%. The higher figure of 30% family surrogates was from 2014, the lower figure of 18% is from 2024 and presumably reflects the vast move of the industry from an rare but altruistic family favour to a multi million dollar industry exploiting poor women in countries with laws that allow human trafficking.

It is hard to describe it as anything other than buying and selling people when you have babies produced to order and there’s money involved. Even in this county, ‘expenses’ are payable to the surrogate mother.

There’s even been cases when the purchasing parents have wanted to return a baby because it was disabled. There’s a famous case in Australia where a twin with Downs was rejected and the surrogate mother has had to bring him up.

Some women may be doing it for altruistic reasons but that doesn’t negate the cold hard cash exchange.

Also consider the cruelty to the child of allowing them to be born to very old parents - there have been a couple of surrogacy cases recently where the age of the commissioning parents was ridiculous, one where the mother was in a care home by the time the baby was born.

If you commodify babies, it becomes very difficult to stop this kind of situation - you can say "oh we just have to have rules about age" but we all know that where there's money to be made, there will always be people willing to do the unthinkable to make it.

Plenty of children waiting to be adopted into a loving home without ordering a baby in an exploitative transaction.

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.

For me it’s more about the children. It’s immoral and exploitative to buy and sell human beings and particularly to produce babies for profit. I can’t understand how this can be a thing even if the mother does have agency she is not the only consideration once the child is born how is it possible they can be sold? It’s bizarre.

Perhaps you're right, maybe if it's ungovernable then it shouldn't be allowed. But I do think if someone is genuinely willing and know and accept the risks, they should have that option. Like I said, now I have children of my own I wouldn't be willing to take those risks, but had I not, I wouldn't be against doing it for a sister or cousin.

Either way, it was nice to have a civilised discussion with yourself and a couple of others on here who can consider alternative viewpoints from their own. It's no fun talking to an echo chamber all the time! Thank you.

I better go and actually do my ironing now 🤣🤣

Ahh, but why acknowledge that when you can demonise gay men?

I think pp meant nuclear family as in two parents raising their children - the point wasn’t about the involvement or not about extended family.

Children are traditionally raised by their parents as part of an extended family within a wider community.

You admit that traditionally children have always been raised by the two parents that made them.

PPs claim Adoption agencies actually did studies and found gay couples made better parents than average.. I find extremely questionable and, no shade on gay parents, but unlikely.

I’m not offering a converse opinion as I have no idea but I find the claim that a same sex couples are better parents than heterosexual couples extremely bold and unlikely to be backed by actual data.

Nice talking to you too - have fun with the ironing! I’m starving as going out for ‘breakfast’. 🤣

I posted this upthread. Due warning, it is a truly horrendous read.

www.wired.com/story/the-baby-died-whose-fault-is-it-surrogate-pregnancy/

archive.ph/Wh7Rv

This is a very extreme example, but it brought home to me what can happen if we treat human life like any other commodity to be bought and sold. There was no shortage of regulation in this case, it was regulated within an inch of its life. Now it's being pursued through the courts, layering pain on top of pain.

I don't think there is a way of doing surrogacy that mitigates against vulnerable women being taken advantage of. Or that puts the babies needs first. For that reason, I don't think it should be an option for anyone.

This is an exceptionally good article about gay men and how they view access to surrogacy

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/oct/01/how-gay-parenthood-through-surrogacy-became-a-battleground

Thing is, yes straight couples use surrogacy too. But this is different. Never before have men, gay or single, found it so easy to get hold of a child with no mother. Mothers are not an irrelevance. It used to be regarded as a profound loss to not have one. Children lost their mothers mainly due to death. Never before did we set out to create motherless children.

The arguments for gay and single men using surrogacy are all about them and their needs. They have nothing to do with the needs of the children.

In the UK a surrogate born child or child born from a donor egg or sperm can get info on this person at 18. In other countries this doesn't happen, and most British people using surrogacy are going overseas.

In some US states the purchasing parents can get their names put directly onto the birth certificate. In others the original birth certificate is sealed. So the child never knows who sold their egg or carried them.

And if these men cared so much about their child, why wouldn't they allow the child to know their mother?

Just imagine if you didn't know who your mother was. We stopped all that in adoption years ago because it was so damaging and unfair. But somehow with surrogacy it's ok? I don't think do.

I have two adopted children and the loss of birth mother is profound, something that never goes away. They were neglected and had to be removed for their safety. They weren't removed on a whim or because money changed hands. And we had ongoing contact with the birth family - because it is crucial that people know their biological roots.

Surrogacy is popular with very powerful people - they are already pushing for it to be made easier and for more rights to accrue to the purchasers. Women in poorer countries are not the ones benefiting from these moves. A lot of these women are coerced, often by their fathers or husbands, who take the money. Some don't understand that they will never see the child again.

And we leave children with people who would impose this loss on a child, this exploitation of women. It is awful never mind if the purchasers are gay, straight or single.

Sure.

And the fact is, some people never find someone to have kids with, it just doesn't work out. I have three friends I can think of off the top of my head who wanted to be parents but never married.

In the more long ago past, before the modern idea of being homosexual existed, people didn't really see procreating as being necessarily tightly attached to romantic love at all. People often married for very pragmatic reasons, including having children.