Views on the surrogate who refused termination after foetal heart defect

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I did look for a thread but I couldn’t find one.

what are we thinking about the surrogate who refused to terminate because the baby had a heart defect, despite the “parents” insisting on a termination.

The baby has now been born, and she didn’t even get a chance to hold him, before he was taken away.

I don’t agree with surrogacy, and I feel very sorry for this baby

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Well I had major issues until a first successful pregnancy, and I can safely say (because the question was raised) that I would have adopted a child, but not used another woman's belly.

More precisely, my first pregnancy occurred through IVF so I can 100% guarantee that 1) the trouble of supplying eggs (though real) is not even remotely comparable to a pregnancy and 2) if somebody had told me that there had been a mistake and I had carried the "wrong" embryos, the babies would still have considered me their mother from the first second they were born and responded to my voice and my smell.

There is no such thing as the right to have a child with your genetic capital, and I seriously question whether you can claim to love a child in the first interaction you have with it is to deliberately deprive it from the only being it has ever known.

What does giving away your autonomy mean? She can now be forcibly raped if the pregnancy doesn’t take first time - no autonomy no consent necessary, she can be forcibly pushed into an abortion. That sounds like a totalitarian nightmare.

This. What else needs to be said?

Its a horrific case and shows so many reasons this needs to be illegal.

And you can’t see anything wrong in what you have written?

As an infertile woman I can confirm that life isn't fair. If a couple's only route to parenthood is leasing someone else's body, then maybe they need to accept that parenthood isn't possible for them.

Apart from that trying to force pregnant woman to abort a baby that she can feel moving inside her is absolutely monstrous and I wonder if the couple who bought this little boy are fit to be parents in the first place.

They weren't that desperate for a child if as soon as they found out about the cardiac issues, they demanded that she underwent yet another procedure to get rid of the defective goods, were they?

My personal feelings about surrogacy are not relevant to this situation. The long and short of it is the surrogate willingly entered into a contract and agreed to abort. It’s not as if this woman did it for some noble reason and refused because she wants to raise the baby, she’s now abandoned it herself. Some mother.

It would be massively unethical for any healthcare practitioner to carry out a medical procedure the woman was not consenting to, contract or not.

And it’s a good example why such a thing should never, ever be subject to a contract. You can’t contractually hire someone’s body, with no escape clause. That’s slavery.

Talk about extrapolation. She expressly agreed to abort in these circumstances.

Do you think the same of women who claim they wanted a baby, but then terminate for medical reasons? Were they also never really wanting a baby all that much?

She didn’t abandon it. It was removed from her.

She consented in advance.

Abandoned.

She had it and made out she would keep it, then gave it up to the parents when she realised what was actually involved and how unwell the child was.

I don’t think a clause like that would ever stand up in court

Fucking hell. I don't even know how people can think like that. I can't imagine what is going through your head that you think a woman should be forced to abort the baby she's carrying.

And this is why that contract is not legally sound, not even in the US. You cannot sign away bodily autonomy, it is against the 13th amendment. Or it should be anyway as that prohibits involuntary servitude. Let's see what the courts say

She isn't The ones paying for a "perfect baby" are in the wrong.

No, that’s not good enough.
If it were a first pregnancy she couldn’t give informed consent to something she had no experience of. Even if she’d been pregnant before, until faced with termination you don’t know how you’ll feel.

It’s outrageous that you think a woman can consent ahead of time and that must over ride her feelings in the moment. That effectively leads to marital rape, for example.

I think overall, it's silly to try and get people to sign up in advance for something like an abortion. For instance, I've always told my teenage son that there is next to no point even asking a woman what she would do in the event of conception because she doesn't actually know until she conceives and even then...

So I think just scrap the idea that someone will be able to agree to that in advance.

In the wider context every party is wrong. But in terms of the abortion, she is wrong. Why agree to it, only to renege and then not raise the baby? She didn’t want a baby with the issues either.

Okay then, so all surgery consents signed in advance are invalid?

No, because that's their body and their choice.

This is somebody rejecting defective goods and using laws relating to property and contract with which to attempt it.

This is not like an agreement to lease your flat or something.
You are leasing your body. Many women do it due to grinding poverty.
People pay a price for the use of her body.
So does the woman.
So I suspect does the child. If they get to know.

It isnt like signing up for surgery, it's like signing up someone for a particular surgical approach before they even have the condition that needs an operation.

My dad had a hernia last year. They said they can either stitch the hole or they can use a mesh and they gave pros and cons of each. It would be like someone now trying to get me to consent to one method of hernia surgery way in advance but I don't have a hernia. Maybe I will decide not to have surgery at all once if I do ever have one.