The first step towards an international instrument to abolish surrogacy.

[TheywontletmehavethenameIwant]

"A group of states at the United Nations has launched a political declaration calling for an international moratorium on surrogacy, marking a significant first step in what its supporters hope will become a global abolitionist framework."

UN States Launch Political Declaration for Global Surrogacy Moratorium ━ The European Conservative

"That is a long road. But for those who oppose the buying and selling of babies and the exploitation of women, the fact that states have now placed the issue formally on the UN track is already the point: the market is global, and the response is beginning to become global, too."

I not sure I have any faith in the UN anymore, but hopefully this will gain some traction, I can see it clashing with the Global Left's Utopian ideals though.

If someone is paid to have a baby for someone who can't, and it its mutually agreeable why should this practice be banned. I dont agree with 3rd world women being exploited of course not. But if its all legally set out. The child grows up knowing I don't see the issue. Im sure someone will be along to enlighten me very soon 🙂

I'm on the fence with non exploitative surrogacy but people will say pre natal bonding means the baby is harmed by severing that attachment at birth

It might be mutually agreeable to the adults but what about the wellbeing of the baby who is conceived in the knowledge he or she will be immediately removed from their mother with all the well evidenced trauma that brings? We don’t take puppies away from their mums at birth, why humans?

I think there needs to be a distinction though. What about cases where family members carry babies for other family members? There is no financial benefit

You’re sure someone will correct you because you do see what’s wrong with it. So why post?

Why comment if you can’t have a reasoned debate?

I think there are differences - familial surrogacy, for one, and others where women who are comfortable financially do it because they do love being pregnant, but don’t want more children themselves. You do then have cases like Louise Thompson or Kim K, who use surrogates because their own body can’t handle a pregnancy, which is wrong.

Familial surrogacy is likely because their fam member can't have a baby , which is the same reason why the 2 people you mentioned used one.

Louise and Kim can have children. They have opted not to, because of the significant health risks they face. I think that is different to genuine infertility where a family helps.

It's just a different type of infertility isn't it?

It should be legally in line with live organ donation - as you are essentially using someone else's body to improve your own life. All the arguments against selling organs can be applied to surrogacy. We can't buy kidneys as it is viewed as exploitation of poorer people and commodification of the human body, but people can give a kidney to a family member or relative they love. The reason it is treated differently is because society doesn't care so much if a law is only to protect women's bodies.

I’d say no. The definition of infertility is the “inability to achieve a successful pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular, unprotected sexual intercourse.”.

In the case of Kim K and Louise Thompson they are able to do this. They have opted not to, because they have been warned of the risks of doing so.

Agree with this.

Next a baby supermarket!
Babies can be bought for many reasons some innocent others evil but all selfish.

There are some surrogate children that oppose the practice. I’m against it as there are many children waiting to be adopted but the rules for surrogacy are less tight than for adoption.

Family members are more open than most to coercion. I read a case a while back that was particularly concerning, a surrogacy carried daughter carrying for her gay father.
We all imagine a loving sibling bond with everyone equally powerful. That’s not a particularly common scenario. There’s often a golden child, or other complex dynamic. It’s rarely equal.

Thanks for posting OP… not celebrating by any means for the reasons you say, but even this recognition does feel hopeful.

I think it does need banning – the industrial scale of it is appalling and incredibly damaging to the health of women and children. I get that there may be very worthy pleas for exceptions but I don’t think they’re worthy enough to make up for the level of exploitation.

The world is overpopulated and we need to get a handle on the massive amount of resources that first world countries are overusing and the huge environmental impact on less developed countries whose emissions are a direct result of what we buy from them and outsource to them. If that means that some people need to accept that they can’t have kids, like everyone infertile did 100 years ago, then that’s how it needs to be.

I don’t think there should be any exceptions because the trauma to the child should be weighed higher than the want of the woman or man to obtain a child. People who think of children as tradeable objects will never make good parents. The baby farms are sickening and we should do whatever it takes to stop that. If any surrogacy is allowed, we cannot ask hard questions at borders etc when someone tries to take a baby out of the country that isn’t theirs. This is why so many countries have cracked down on international adoptions.

I think reducing total fertility and protecting the babies and pregnant women should be front and centre not letting Kim Kardashian have a fifth kid.

Yeah, the worthy pleas for exception are always the Hallmark version of surrogacy, there's never any recognition of the appalling side of surrogacy seems to make up quite a large percentage of the cases.

Like when the couple who have placed the order refuse to take the child because it's 'defective' in some way, leaving the mother, who only did it because she was desperate for money, with a child she can not afford to bring up. Or the couples who only want 1 child and refuse to take a second if it turned out to be twins, and on and on the harrowing list goes.

If you treat babies as commodities, you've accepted that people can be bought and sold like commissioned goods and you can't complain when governments, begin treating you as nothing more than an asset to be manage. Much like ours does now.

But that’s where the distinction lies imo. There ARE cases where it’s like that

It's damaging for the baby who will suffer the trauma of removal and potentially damaging for the teen and then adult they will become. Deliberately creating a child to remove them is wrong.

It's too much to ask of the mother and too great a risk. Where there has been ivf the risks to her body are even higher, this isn't just a regular pregnancy, (and even regular pregnancies are a risk.)

I have issues with family members doing it too because mother become relabelled sister / aunt or a different role is ethically complex.

Surrogacy should be illegal.

How is it ethically complex for them to be relabelled? If the baby is of no biological relation to the person who carried it, is it simply the act of birthing that makes one a mother? Or is it the love and affection you give to a child that makes you their mother?

I agree that doing it for a family member is far more ok on the surface. But of course relationships within families can also contain coercion and control that can limit a woman's choices, even if not as much as poverty does.

But if people understood more about the baby they wouldn't even need to get to this kind of wrangling over when surrogacy is and isn't palatable. It is KNOWN that separation from ones mother at birth causes trauma.

These days babies are only adopted when the risk of harm TO THE BABY otherwise is really significant.

To commission a baby into existence, with the known intention of causing trauma to it, is a form of child abuse in my opinion. How can the needs and wants of the adults involved - however demonstrably lovely or worthy they seem - make this ok?

Is the act of birthing a baby "simple"? Or is it 9 months long ending in a labour that can have serious consequences for mother and baby? Why try to diminish the scale of the work involved?

I’m not. But raising a child is no mean feat either - and I’m asking what is it that makes someone a mother?

Altruistic surrogacy sounds lovely. But it doesn't really work like that, sadly. What happens is that people order babies as if they are commodities (the market commodifies everything and we now live in a world where the market is sovereign) and if you allow 'altruistic' surrogacy you will end up allowing the exploitation of women who mainly are poorer than the baby-buyers. Having children is not a right, it is a blessing. Some cannot have children and they adopt. Same sex couples can adopt, although Lesbian couples can have their babies if they are prepared to pay for AI, or persuade a friend to be a sperm donor (but he will have parental rights and may not want them, so this solution is a minefield).

Celebrities in the US especially are renting the wombs of other women so that the female half of the couple doesn't need to go through the dangers and pains of pregnancy and birth - and they seem oblivious that though they may have given the genetic material it is the mother's body which makes the baby, so 'their' child is also the child of its mother and wants that mother, too, which is cruel to the baby, who is a person, not a commodity.

Pre natal bonding is real and separation from their birth mother causes severe trauma if just for the baby (most likely also the mother).

No one has the right to a child.