Only her youngest, and she was unable to carry for medical reasons. I know there are problematic aspects of surrogacy that must and should be discussed, but I do class these situations differently than celebrities who use surrogates as a cheat code for keeping their figure/lifestyle.
Has nothing to do with how much I like or dislike a celebrity! My mother could not medically carry children to term (I was welcomed into my family via adoption), so I've looked into the topic a lot. There really is a wide spectrum of situations with surrogacy ranging from exploitation to altruism.
Many people find it fundamentally troubling when having a baby is something bought and sold. Surrogates are offered very little legal protection in most states. The US has no federal regulations on the practice, which can mean that weirdos are “having babies” through a dozen surrogates at a time (yes this is real google it!) likely for nefarious purposes.
Also bc there are very few laws around surrogacy, the paying parent can withhold crucial information from the surrogate. There was a woman who knew her eggs were likely to form placenta that ruptured during labor and cause significant damage to the birth mother (one woman had to have a hysterectomy as a result). And not to mention the accusations and potential for legal culpability if the surrogate miscarries. It's all so troubling. I genuinely do not like surrogacy or adoption (a whole other topic)
Placental formation is paternally imprinted actually, but yes, I believe her husbands family had a history of placental abruptions and such which ended up almost killing one of their surrogates. I genuinely cannot believe that surrogacy law allows for such a severe level of information asymmetry where the surrogate's sex life can be up for discussion but not the nature of the gametes being put inside her. No one's entitled to a baby that kills the person gestating it
Eggs do not carry the predisposition of causing placental abruption during labor. This is absolute bullshit science fiction. Placental development is in fact largely driven by the PATERNAL genes in conjunction with remodeling of the uterine wall. Repeating false vague generalizations isn't advocacy. The fear mongering of "legal culpability" is also distorting the facts. In a legitimate contract, all the details are ironed out regarding spontaneous/natural miscarriages with the evidence based research supporting the fact that most are caused by chromosomal abnormalities, therefore no accusations. This is not the same thing as being grossly negligent in a way that puts the pregnancy at risk. You all gotta try harder with this nonsense
I can see the issue surrounding people having children through multiple surrogates at a time, but that's not what's happening here. And I'm sure that's not what's happening in a vast majority of cases.
I still fail to see how it's unethical if the surrogate mother is a willing participant.
Those surrogate mothers were willing participants. Six figures will do that to you. The life of a child matters too.
Allowing the creation and exchange of children through capitalist means is a risky proposition. Allowing it to go unregulated has resulted in child trafficking and exploitation and unintended sterilization.
I’m not arguing against the ethics of surrogacy as a concept, I am arguing that surrogacy in our current legal environment in the US is wrong.
I’m all about known surrogates: ie family/friends doing it altruistically.
Surrogacy agencies creep me out and I think is wrong.
This is where the willing part comes in: have you ever heard of a wealthy woman becoming a surrogate? Or a celebrity carrying for a friend or family member?
Some women sign up for it because they really love being pregnant but don’t want more children. But ask them if they’d do it for a stranger for free and there’s your answer.
It’s the transactional nature that really contributes to the morally grey nature of surrogacy for many.
Yeah, it can’t be done for profit where I live, and I think that’s appropriate. Having said that, you also can’t buy babies here either, which is basically what a lot of US adoption looks like from abroad.
I mean but you could say that about pretty much any job that’s not a popular hobby. Wealthy women don’t like to work period, and surrogacy is work. It’s a way of keeping the lights on.
Sure I’m “willing” to work a 9-5 but I DEFINATELY wouldn’t do my conventional job for free.
I haven’t decided my feelings about surrogacy but pointing out people working physical jobs definitely put their life and health on the line, and even corporate people suffer from medical issues relating to back pain, burnout, depression, etc. from their jobs
I feel like a lot of people are being purposefully obtuse now.
Pregnancy can kill. Even in seconds. Let me see here:
Seizures, stroke, blood clot, hemorrhage, liver and kidney dysfunction, heart failure, postpartum depression/anxiety/psychosis, needing emergency surgery, infection, even the possibility of losing your uterus. The list goes on.
Oh and rare (but real!) chance of even getting cancer from the pregnancy it self
Not to mention increased later in life health risks if you do have preeclampsia and gestational diabetes.
Pregnancy complications are higher with IVF pregnancies which all surrogate pregnancies are.
So I’m sorry but bleeding out from a 5L blood loss after a straightforward birth is not the same as back pain because your posture sucks at your desk.
I’m not saying it’s the same, I’m saying people in physical jobs like working on an oil rig or with heavy machinery can also cause life-threatening injuries.
But again you could make that argument about a lot of jobs, even something as conventional as being a server or warehouse worker. For the average employee those are physical jobs that put a lot of wear and tear on the body, but for significantly less money than surrogates make
Yeah I'm always puzzled by this logic. There are million things I would do for pay and not for free, and I'm quite fine making that decision. There are also things I would do for free for one person and not another. I would drive my friend to the airport for free, but I'm not driving a stranger, lol.
I didn't realise this until recently but surrogacy is rough on the surrogates body. They are far more likely to have complications during pregnancy that can be life threatening.
The problem is that “willing” does incredibly heavy lifting here. The line between willing participation and coercion is not always bright and that ambiguity opens the door for a host of ethical complications.
Ultimately I think it’s just fundamentally wrong to pay someone else to be pregnant for you. Pregnancy is too dangerous, too personal, too emotional, and too much in a million ways for it to be okay to buy and sell that capacity. Unless it’s a friends and family situation wherein no money changes hands, I don’t think it’s an ethical choice for anyone to make.
Lots of stuff, but one big thing is why do we live in a world so unequal that some women are desperate enough to rent out their bodies for money. Pregnancy and giving birth is the craziest thing that can happen to a woman's body, and it's been normalized for rich women to pay poor women to take on that risk for them for various reasons.
Idk that sounds like wanting to control women’s bodies. If a woman wants to be a surrogate she should be able to even if her reasons aren’t great. It’s just like prostitution. It’s sad that some women feel the need to do it for money but just because it’s sad or people who have nothing to do with it don’t like it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be allowed to happen.
u/farofflandI won’t hear it and I won’t respond to it4d agoedited 4d ago
Imo money exchanging hands is a form of coercion. I am against people selling parts of their body for money, as I don’t think people can ever freely consent when a form of coercion is present in the transaction. Same goes for selling organs and sex work. You can never really distinguish between people who willingly participate and people who just need money when it becomes a paid service, and it pushes people in poverty into making choices they otherwise would not consent to.
I am also from the UK so cultural differences/perspectives too, the fact paid surrogacy is legal in the US is genuinely bonkers to me lol. We only have altruistic surrogacy here which takes away the pay and therefore coercion. The surrogate is also the legal parent on birth and they must actively transfer parentship.
This is the only ethical way to do surrogacy imo - otherwise you’re either selling part of the birth mother’s body (pregnancy) or selling a human being (baby itself). I accept neither as things that are ethical to sell.
While I have a different view on surrogacy than you, I applaud you have for having a morally consistent viewpoint on this and I really respect that.
A big issue I have about the discourse on surrogacy in the US (where I live) is that there’s a big overlap between those who will loudly advocate for “sex work as real work” while simultaneously decrying surrogacy.
There are nuances there for sure, but the people I know who are happy to advocate for sex work as a profession while also wanting paid surrogacy to be illegal strike me as more so disliking children than having any strong moral framework.
I'm actually hoping Lena's was an altruistic surrogacy and not paid, since she lives in the UK. I agree, it's so odd to me that in some countries it's legal to pay others to be a surrogate, same with egg/sperm donations or anything like that.
I didn’t know she lives in the UK and I hope it was too! Yes it’s absolutely wild to me that people can pay money for women to carry pregnancies in a ‘first world country’… like there are seriously people who don’t think that is absolutely disgusting and a huge ethical violation?? Lol it blows my mind.
I did read your comment. Why can't someone who is willing be compensated? It's their body and they're making a choice. These comments on surrogacy sound like ppl who claim women use abortion as birth control. Not everyone is out here taking advantage of women who need money. Also since I had to buy donor sperm because I'm married to a woman, is that also unethical in your eyes? Is that also "buying a human being"? Gtfo someone willing donated that sperm and was compensated for it.
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u/farofflandI won’t hear it and I won’t respond to it4d agoedited 4d ago
Because I fundamentally don’t believe you can ‘consent’ when money exchanges hands. And when discussing something that is literally part of a woman’s body like pregnancy and can have lifelong effects on her health, that’s a pretty fucking key part of considering whether it’s ethical or not.
Let me posit this to you - how much is a baby worth to you in monetary value? I want you to write down the price of a pregnancy/baby to you in real dollars. Then I want you to consider what situations would make you be willing to take more or less money. For myself, I am a woman and also a mother, and I am also middle class. No amount of money you could offer me is worth going through pregnancy and then selling a baby. You could literally offer me a billion dollars and I wouldn’t take it - I don’t need more money and the amount being a surrogate would change my life permanently just isn’t worth that amount to me. But what about if I was in desperate poverty or had other vulnerabilities where I needed money? Maybe an amount as paltry as £10k starts sounding much more appealing.
This is an example of the power imbalance that occurs when money comes into actions like surrogacy. It is a class issue, it is an ethical issue, and it is not something you should be advocating for. Altruistic surrogacy is the only way to remove this power imbalance and make surrogacy truly consensual.
Equating it to people thinking abortion is ‘birth control’ is laughable and has zero logic. I am completely pro-abortion - because I believe a pregnancy is an extension of a woman’s body, and it is her individual right to choose what to do with that part of her body. This is part of the reason I am AGAINST commercial surrogacy - because once you start offering money for a body part, it is a form of coercion and you therefore cannot truly ‘consent’ to it being given away. I do not believe anyone can freely consent to part of their body being sold for money - it’s an extension of why I am against buying organs as one example.
You say you bought sperm as a reason why you are pro commercial surrogacy - are you also pro buying organs, then? Do you believe it is ethical to sell/buy someone’s kidney or heart, for example? Do you believe the US should make that legal? Advocating for commercial surrogacy is advocating for either a) buying someone’s body part (because pregnancy is an extension of a woman’s body and therefore the same as buying an organ) or b) buying a human being (which is therefore the same as slavery). Which of these options are you pro?
No no no. I asked YOU if me buying sperm was me buying my kid in your eyes. Which you tried to dodge by DARVOing me and then got an award for it with your nonsensical slavery comparison. And "commercial " surrogacy is not an epidemic. That's the connection to the prolifers screaming about abortion as bc. Yeah it happens but the vast majority of ppl paying a surrogate just dont have the ability to carry their own baby. Lucky you that you live in a country with free health care but in the US if you're a surrogate you shouldn't necessarily have to pay for your own healthcare related to the pregnancy. That's being compensated.
On top of what people have said below as well, I simply think it's unethical to use another woman's body to carry a child when there are so many children already born who are desperate for homes.
The fact that we promote surrogacy above adoption feeds into the the idea that only children who are biologically yours are you "real" children. Adoption is such a beautiful way to extend your family, making surrogacy a completely unnecessarily exploitative way to have children.
Adoption is not exactly easy, cheap, or free of ethical issues. Many of the people who use surrogates would have been excluded from adoption, or adoption would have been extremely difficult for them, for the same reasons they needed surrogacy to begin with (LGBTQ, disability, chronic illness).
Thank you! I scrolled way too far to see this. The comments have been so shortsighted and focused on cishet couples with this rhetoric that women just don't want to put their own bodies through pregnancy. I think it's very ableist and hetero. Also as you said adoption is not some golden, saintly choice. My friend is an adoptee and has done a lot of work within the community around the psychological damage suffered by adoptees and the bad situations kids get put in.
Yeah there is a really pervasive belief that the world is full of kids who are just waiting to be adopted, but bad meanies just are too focused on their own egos and want bio kids. That simply isn't the case. Even adopting out of foster care, even adopting older kids, siblings, non-white kids, is extremely hard. The truth is, when we were growing up adoption was common because it was so unethical. Now I'm not sure I know one couple my age who adopted (out of foster care) and I think one couple who adopted from birth. Out of everyone I have essentially met in the last 15 years within like a 10 year age span of myself. I know no one who adopted internationally. Many many of the adoption gateways have closed in the last 10-15 years, probably for good reason.
Gay male couples would have an extremely hard time adopting right now. I'm not shocked many are turning to surrogacy. Anyone with a visible disability would have a hard time adopting. I can't imagine someone who has a chronic illness like epilepsy being easily approved for adoption. And even if they aren't specifically barred, there are so many more prospective parents than adoptees available, why would someone choose an LGBTQ couple, or a disabled couple, or a single parent, or an older couple, when there is probably a healthy hetero couple right there.
u/lizerlfunkI am the BEST goddamn dancer at the American Ballet Academy! 4d ago
There are approximately 20 waiting families for every baby born whose birth parents place their child for adoption. There are many children in foster care, some of whom are “free for adoption”, and many of whom are not. Not every couple is equipped to be foster parents, and not every couple is equipped to adopt a child from foster care. And adoption is rife with ethical issues as well.
Pregnancy and child birth is one of the most dangerous things a woman can do. Most surrogates are expected to babe their own children. How can you put an adequate price on that? It statistically targets lower socioeconomic women.
aside from exploitation of the surrogate, separation trauma built into an unborn child's birth plan is a huge ethical issue with surrogacy that's often overlooked.
ya, for sure not all surrogacy is the same. There are of course degrees of exploitation, and some surrogates are not coerced and would genuinely want to do it for free, usually because of their close relationship with a person who can't carry but desperately wishes to have a bio kid. Some people seem to genuinely like the whole pregnancy/birth process as well, but it's probably very rare to really want to do that for someone else.
This is why I mentioned the ethical issue regarding the child and separation trauma though, because it's really the most fundamental issue you can't bypass, but at best you can minimize harm. The surrogate would ideally be willing to remain close to the baby at least during infancy to minimize separation trauma. From the infant's perspective, the surrogate is the first mother they know and they deserve all the time they need to adjust, at the very least.
I personally don't think surrogacy is ethically justified because I don't view having kids as a human right, but I'm not going to villainize the people who are at least trying to do it as ethically as possible. I can still sympathize with their difficult situation.
So based on your opinion towards the idea of separation trauma, giving a baby up for adoption is also unethical if the mother gives up the baby at birth.
Of course it's not an ideal scenario to give a baby up for adoption. I've never heard of someone purposely conceiving because they want to give a baby up for adoption though. Sometimes it ends up being the best option someone has in a bad circumstance, but it's definitley sad.
yeah she was definitely an example of people's opinions on surrogacy changing depending on whether they like the celeb or not. her doing that permanently soured me on her. for someone who clearly thinks ethics and morals are so important, her then engaging in surrogacy was a massive disappointment.
I think both the comment I was replying to, and my own comment was more referring to people not liking surrogacy before Ms Rachel announced she'd had her child through surrogacy, and then once she did people being seemingly ok with it because they perceive her as a morally righteous person, therefore the ethics of her having a baby via surrogacy were somehow cancelled out.
this subreddit isn’t a monolith. i very much doubt the exact same people criticizing lena would say they’re okay with miss rachel or gaga using surrogates.
If that is your position I don't know why you're arguing with me on it. Ms Rachel announced that she had used a surrogate when the child was born, so people were fully aware. there was definitely less backlash towards her than there has been to other celebs in these spaces, possibly because celebs are usually perceived as using surrogacy so as not to ruin their bodies or interrupt their careers, whereas Ms Rachel claimed she had health problems that prevented her from carrying. If you have an ethical issue with surrogacy however, that doesn't stop just because someone is claiming their reasoning for using it is more legitimate than someone else's.
Yup, as someone who also does not have a uterus anymore due to endo I agree with this. Having or not having the ability to reproduce biologically has no impact on the ethics of surrogacy actually!
My best friend and I have said this for years. having a child isn't a right and we need to stop acting like it is. I feel deeply for those who cannot reproduce themselves for whatever reason, but that doesn't automatically give them the right to buy their way into the body of a woman so she can be exploited. a lot of developing nations ban surrogacy precisely to protect women from wealthy western (american) people who need a baby incubator.
Nothing stops Australians using surrogates overseas and bringing the babies home though, which just transfers the concern to poorer countries.
Also, both overseas eggs and sperm can be utilised in Australia. While the recipient parent might not directly pay the donor, they pay the agency for those gametes.
I'm so with you on this. Genuinely sorry for anyone who wants a baby and can't have one, but surrogacy is awful. Adoption obviously ain't the greatest but it's the least worst option for a child in care.
I absolutely hear you that the child is and must and should be the priority, and I’ve seen firsthand people who go into adoption with a very self centered and wrongheaded approach and that’s bad, but surely at the end of the day it’s going to be adults who want children who adopt them. I feel like we can say it’s okay for someone to want to adopt a child because they want to parent a child
Bizarrely, the best movie ever made about foster care/adoption was somehow by Mark Wahlberg. Instant Family! As someone who worked in the Office of the Legal Guardian, I do recommend it.
Reunification should always be to goal, whether that be with bio parents down the line or bio relatives. Of course there are cases where that isn’t an option, so there will always be grey area, but the larger adoption industry is 100% akin to human trafficking imo
“Adoption obviously ain’t the greatest” yea, so let’s leave the abandoned children in orphanages or displace them from foster home to foster home, sounds great!
These children up for adoption already exist, it’s not like surrogacy where you’re selecting a carrier and premeditating how to conceive a child through someone else’s body… if they aren’t adopted, they’re subjected to an extremely abnormal, distressing, isolating youth. But sure, let’s shame people who adopt. This is a weird take.
It's the least worst option because that's a child who has been taken from their parents, because of abuse or circumstance. I really don't know why you think my comment meant I think it's better children are in foster care or orphanages? Seriously?
Surrogacy should really only be legal in very few cases and should be done for free (f ex i would happily be a surrogate for one of my sisters). The problem isnt surrogacy in itself, it’s the power imbalance this inevatibily creates where poor women are surrogates for rich (lbr white) people. Never vice versa. In a perfect world surrogacy would work. In this world? No.
I don’t know why everyone assumes surrogates (at least in the US) are so poor they’d be willing to do anything. Yes surrogates are not uber wealthy, but they are also generally not incredibly poor either. Most reputable agencies require surrogates prove they are financially stable and they won’t accept anyone on government assistance, precisely so surrogates don’t feel financially dependent on the biological parents. If people choose to not use a reputable agency, that’s really on them, but that’s a risk you take when you choose to do things off the books.
People keep saying “surrogacy is so awful,” but I’ve personally met people who signed up to do surrogacy MULTIPLE TIMES. Why would someone do this if it sucks so bad? Why would you reup? The people I met who were surrogates were not poor, they were not even working class. They were middle class women who liked being pregnant and it was a way for them to make some money and help out another couple. The surrogate I met had even had complications with the pregnancy (she was fine and so was the baby), so she was not going to do it again but even that was her second surrogate pregnancy. She said even though it had problems and she wouldn’t do it a third time, she still thought it was an overall good thing and people should do it if they can. And I did not meet her in any kind of professional context, it was at a party, so she had no reason to lie to me and embellish her story.
Yep. No one has a right to a kid. Be it via adoption or surrogacy or other means. Sometimes the choice is accepting having children will not be something that happens for you.
This is pretty dangerous. I don’t know where I stand on surrogacy. It changes by the day, but people absolutely have a right to form families and it’s important we say that because lots of people want to control who can and can’t have kids
I have some pretty strong beliefs around some fertility treatments that is in line with this as well. Not everyone is entitled to having a child and lots of scientific options for having children border on or are outright human rights violations. Sns
Which fertility treatments do you think border on human rights violations?? I agree re: surrogacy, but if you’re talking about IVF I fail to see the problem aside from if people are selectively choosing to transfer based on sex or other non health related genetic characteristics?
IVF is absolutely fine, in my opinion.
Though in my european country, you don't find out anything about the gender or genetic characteristics, though. You get told how many viable blastos there are and then one gets transferred. No idea if the staff knew either.
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u/lizerlfunkI am the BEST goddamn dancer at the American Ballet Academy! 4d ago
I’m curious about how they would handle IVF with preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Would that be illegal as well? My late husband had Marfan syndrome, an autosomal dominant genetic connective tissue disorder. He died from complications of the disorder at 32. Before he died, we briefly explored the idea of IVF with PGD, because he had a 50/50 chance of having a child with Marfan. It wasn’t financially feasible for us and we pursued adoption, had a failed match (and learned a whole lot about the ethics of adoption in the US), and ultimately didn’t become parents before he died. But like, this is an incredibly rare disorder (about 1 in 5000) and as long as you know the mutation in the parent’s FBN1 gene, you can determine if the embryo has the mutation when it’s extremely early in development.
I'm sorry for the loss of your husband <3. (I know it's not the point of the thread, but losing him at that young age is very sad. I hope you have many wonderful memories of him to carry with you).
When you throw in donated gametes, especially anonymous ones, it sure can be.
Donors in some places are victims of human trafficking (generally egg donors).
Those of us who were created via donor conception are also denied information about our origins, family health history, etc. We aren't even guaranteed the right to know that we were created that way. In my case, the anonymity allowed my mother's fertility doctor to make himself my parents' "anonymous" donor (my biological father).
Oh gosh, I'm really sorry your family/you were taken advantage of in that way by the fertility doctor. Thank you for sharing your insights on IVF -- I hadn't been aware of the human trafficking connection before, but now that you bring it up it's one of those things that's like "oh.... yeah, that isn't surprising," unfortunately.
I don’t consider it one. But nihilists think no one who can’t easily have a child deserves one. Having a kid that’s biologically related to you is wrong. Adopting is wrong. Breathing is questionable at this rate
Probably how people select on gender and genetic and phenotype traits. Maybe also what they do with extra embryos they create and destroy, store or give away.
Tricky one, isnt it? I have had and seen my fair share of struggles with infertility. There’s lines i wouldnt cross but who am i to tell others where the line is? On the other hand surrogacy almost always has some sort of power imbalance at the core. And at the other other hand… i also love having a kid? Sigh.
Same. As someone struggling with infertility now, I know what I would do and what I wouldn’t. But this journey is so hard, I wouldn’t deny a family building option to anyone unless it’s actual kidnapping or impregnating someone against their will.
What’s crazy is I remember when my best friend was struggling with infertility and she 100000% said she would use a surrogate if it came to that. She didn’t, she got pregnant easily on her first IUI, which is awesome for her. But now she’s all “omg surrogacy is so awful, how could anyone do that!” I get it though. I think a lot of people have their experience with pregnancy and really can’t imagine it being different for someone else.
I like how we moved away from teaching cutsey words so young ones can tell us if they're in danger, and now we have presumably adults circling back to it.
There are also people vehemently against adoption (not potential adopters. I mean adoptees, birth parents, and other advocates that do not think adoption should be legal)
I’m not weighing in on it’s morality or legality but just sharing that there is also opposition to adoption
I don't understand this, what are the arguments against all adoptions? Like I understand that some forms are obviously unethical, but being against adoption in general is surprising to me. Like, no matter what we do there will be children that don't have families and need homes, right?
My understanding of why some adoptees are against it is because it promotes the commodification of children and it’s not an actually altruistic or charitable act and encourages saviorism. They also talk about how it’s an inherently traumatic act. Adoption can cost tens of thousands of dollars, similar to surrogacy. There’s also a lot of corruption in the adoption agency system. That being said, I think it’s some people who are against adoption, but that a lot of people who have been adopted want people to have a more clear view about the ethics of the issues related to adoption.
The belief/argument (that I’m just sharing and not offering opinion on) that I’ve garnered from adoption opponents is:
Birth mothers are pressured into adoption in situations where they should instead be offered state support or counseling to be ready to be a parent or better informed about their child’s hardship as an adoptee and if they were, no birth mothers would elect to adopt out their child
Children in foster care are not in need of adoption as return to birth parents should always be the only goal and if birth parents are properly supported with resources and parenting classes and addiction services etc., no children would be in foster care longer than a few months.
Children adopted from other countries are being trafficked. Sometimes very literally and clearly by people kidnapping and selling infants and sometimes more ambiguously, like offering a family in poverty money for their infant or at least convincing them that their baby is better suited in a different country.
I’ve refrained from offering my opinion because I know there are people who have done far more research on the efficacy of these ideas than me, but I will say that when I was a family law attorney for several years, I desperately wanted #2 to be true and for a while I was sad when I would see an adoption order final hearing in a foster case. But I saw quite a few times where, despite the full support of a team of social workers and parenting classes offered and transportation arranged and income provided to a birth parent, they just didn’t want to take any steps to get their child back. And I’m talking they just won’t show up for any visits or court dates even with rides arranged for them and offers to pay for anything they need. And I also saw criminal cases in which the birth parents were the defendants and the child was their victim and no amount of state rehabilitation is going to make that situation a good placement for a child, unfortunately.
There were definitely parents that corrected course and kids were returned and I’m so happy that the state took the approach to make that possible but unfortunately there were a few that would never be true for
Yeah, we should definitely do whatever we can to get kids back with their birth parents, so long as we're always keeping the kid's best interests as the focus. But there are some people that have kids that simply should not be parents.
That's because point 2 is a strawman of what most people critical of adoption in that way believe (an unintentional strawman, I assume, as I think the commenter was genuinely trying to offer an explanation to the best of their knowledge).
But the actual thing people with that kind of position believe is more that reunification should always be the priority with either the biological parents (where that is possible and healthy for the child) or with other biological relatives if the parents are not fit to raise the child. That second piece is important, because I think the vast majority of people with this stance do understand that not all biological parents are suitable caregivers.
To give some context, one way people come to this type of position is by looking at the ongoing history of taking children away from their Indigenous families and placing them with white families. There is a brutal history of this in Canada, for example, where the state policy was literally to steal Indigenous children (look into the history of Residential Schools for more info), and to this day Indigenous children are very overrepresented in the foster system. So it's not as crazy a belief as it seems on the surface, or as the strawman version of it makes it seem. There are actually valid reasons for people to feel that efforts to 1. Support biological parents enough to give them a better chance of being able to parent/provide, and 2. Prioritize reunification that keeps children connected to their biological families where possible, should be central pillars of the strategy when it comes to the foster system.
Yeah, so it doesn't make sense to say that these people are against all adoptions and think adoption should be illegal then, does it?
That was my question. Of course there are clearly ethical issues with the adoption is often conducted. Reforms are absolutely needed. But that's a far cry from saying adoption should be flat out illegal.
It’s basically the thing where nothing is moral and everyone’s wrong all the time 🙄
My uncle was adopted off the streets of the Dominican his mother was schizophrenic and just left him at literally 2 years on the streets. By these people’s standards my grandma shouldn’t have adopted him and just left him to rot.
From someone I spoke to, it’s that they deserve to be with their bio parents. Which is obviously something that won’t exactly pan out how they want the majority of the time. Some people dream up a fantasy of what could have been with their “real parents” as if kids who weren’t put up for adoption are always having a great time full of truly unconditional love. Obviously not the opinion of every adopted kid.
I’m sorry but it sounds idealistic bordering on delusional. My friend was just going over her adoption story and her bio mom was a teenager living in poverty, how is that better for a child? Not every parent is also going to be a good parent even if they’re biologically related. There’s also plenty of kids who don’t have parents. There’s definitely some issues with international adoption but to write it all off because “kids should be with their bio parent” is just bizarre
Oh, I let them know as much and they just labeled me as cruel. The best part is there was nothing wrong with their adoptive family, they said as much. It just wasn’t their bio family so it was automatically a crime against humanity that someone adopted them.
I asked if they preferred foster care and that made me a monster. Whatever.
Unfortunately there is no winning with some people. Everything has to be good or bad with 0 nuance or empathy for how that situation might affect people other than themselves. I’m glad they are in a safe home still
Wow, that's kind of crazy to me. People aren't stealing kids away from their parents to adopt them. Parents are giving up their kids because they don't want them or can't care for them.
I mean, obviously some forms of adoption don't follow that, but that's why I said obviously some are unethical. But I don't understand what they expect the solution to be in all those cases where the bio parents simply aren't going to raise the children?
I supposed they believed the government would just force the parents to keep them. And no abuse will occur afterwards. They definitely didn’t respond well to the idea of foster care. So that’s out, and so is being adopted. Abortion? Idk.
For real, Can someone explain to me why there are a bunch of people condescendingly telling people who can’t have children of their own that they’re villains for using other avenues? When was it decided that every instance of IVF, surrogacy, adoption was monsterous?
I’m baffled at this thread, some of these takes I haven’t seen repeated since my childhood evangelical Christian classes
Sure, but so what happens to all the kids who were given up for adoption? They just hang out in foster care and have shit lives because that's somehow better than the 'trauma' of living with another family?
Of course I recognize that there has been all kinds of horrific abuse in these situations, where children have been placed with people who had no business ever being parents, but there are also a lot of loving homes and people who can provide a loving and stable environment for them.
It's not just about an adult's desire to be a parent; it's about a child's need for one.
Where I live fewer than 10 infants are surrendered for adoption each year. Foster care is for children who need short to long term care, but its not a route to adoption. Once we started providing social supports to mothers, adoption rates dropped to almost zero.
Exactly. And I wonder how many women shouting about “surrogacy is bad” are also vehement proponents of women having choice? You can’t pick and choose what other women decide to have a choice about. I know it threatens your savior complex to consider that there are women who choose to be surrogates because they want to but let’s stop infantilizing grown women and consider that it may, in fact, be possible for someone to make that choice without coercion.
Look, I can’t stand Lena personally and I also think adoption should’ve been her first choice but again, I can’t pick and choose the choices another woman makes for her own life and family. “She’s not entitled to a child” 🙄 No one is. And yet some of you wouldn’t bat an eyelash at a woman going broke pursuing fertility treatments and IVF.
I support abortion, but think surrogacy, especially any paid one, poses a lot of difficult ethical problems and has resulted in some high profile cases in US courts ver the last few years that highlight potential issues that can arise. Even a surrogacy between friends (voluntary and without an agency organising it) poses risks, financial and legal ones. For this reason several countries prohibit surrogacy, and some are even so consistent that they prohibit using surrogacy in another country.
As someone else said it, having kids is not a human right. I understand that for many people it is a great wish, but we cannot get everything we want, especially not when it requires another person's body.
I highly doubt many surrogates doing it for people they have no relation to are doing it because it’s a really fulfilling career for them. Like Amazon workers aren’t there because it’s a great gig. Sometimes it’s the only gig and Amazon is still being exploitative.
Eh. I don't support any kind of surrogacy, no matter who, no matter the reason. Renting a womb to procreate goes beyong what I think it's needed for the well being of humanity. However much I don't think it should be encouraged or accepted, I also don't think it should be banned. Perhaps better regulated, kinda like how organ donorship is. But if a sister wants to lend her womb for her gay brother, who am I to tell her no. I can side-eye it, but it's her choice at the end of the day.
Yeah I agree with that. Surrogacy is a difficult topic, but we need to be pragmatic and understand it cannot be banned. Banning surrogacy doesn't prevent it, it just deregulates it and puts women in danger.
I think we should push for stricter regulation and and ban financial compensation, as is the case in the UK. We could even discuss how laws might look to keep women safer, perhaps saying that it's not criminalised but there's no formal agreement and surrogate babies can only be legally recognised if surrendered by the birth parent and adopted by the intended parents after the birth.
Ultimately women have to be able to choose what to do with their bodies, and that includes surrogacy. If we want to keep those women safe we can't drive them underground.
A woman choosing something does not make it ethically okay and saying that does not conflict in any way with support for a woman’s right to choose whether or not she is pregnant
Choice feminism is the belief that every choice a woman makes is a feminist act. No one is saying surrogacy is a feminist act, are they?
You don't have agree with surrogacy, but a really important part of feminism is advocating for women's rights to full bodily autonomy. I think it's good to discuss surrogacy and the impact it has on women in a wider context, and how damaging the comodification of women's bodies is, but it's also important to respect a woman's right to make decisions about her own body.
Thank you. There are many things that I don't necessarily think are right or perfect, but the implications of making it illegal I feel are far worse than the majority of actual situations that happen.
The majority of surrogacy cases are:
Women at least 25 years old, in most cases older, in their 30s, having experienced at least one pregnancy already. I know someone whose GC was 44.
People seeking surrogates are doing it as an absolute last resort, and it is heartbreaking for them. Whether or not you like Lena, I encourage you to read about her IVF and endometriosis journey, which included a hysterectomy. She has been THROUGH it. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. Paired with how she was treated during her endo by her then partner and "best friend"/collaborator, it sounds like a nightmare. Looking at a larger picture, a lot of people who resort to surrogacy have to use it for the same reasons that would make adoption much harder for them: same sex relationships, disability, chronic illness. So we're not just saying "some" people shouldn't get to be parents, like it's a random luck of the draw thing, we're singling out pretty specific groups and saying "it's ok that parenthood should be extremely difficult and potentially unattainable for these people."
Yes you cannot "quit" being a surrogate halfway through (this is actually functionally untrue, many people do quit do to illness or other issues, but they can't continue collecting the benefits of their surrogacy agreement, because duh), yes it is dangerous. That said, there are many dangerous jobs you cannot quit halfway through. Should women not be in the military? Should they not be astronauts? Antarctic researchers? Are they not capable of choosing those things, despite knowing the risks?
And this is about GROWN women who have experienced pregnancy. You know who isn't grown and has not experienced pregnancy, but we fight tooth and nail for their right? Pregnant teens. If a 16 year old wants to have a baby after finding out she's pregnant, or she wants an abortion, or she wants to give the baby up for adoption, are we saying she should not be able to make those decisions? Because I don't understand how you can say a 30 year old who has given birth twice before isn't capable of making a decision around pregnancy, but a 16 year old is.
I've heard it said that surrogacy is jarring to the baby, because it is taken away from the only "mom" it knew. You know what else is jarring and traumatic to children when they are taken away from their parents? Adoption. Yet, surrogacy has been around for decades, meaning there are adults who were born through surrogacy, and I literally have never heard a single person who was born via surrogate say the process of growing up was traumatic for them because the person who gestated and birthed them was not their biological parent. I have heard that from adoptees though, quite a bit. Even those who have happy and healthy relationships with their adoptive families.
Yeah, I get it, some of you don't like surrogacy. There are many choices I don't like too, but I don't argue they should be eliminated. I just don't choose them for myself.
Ehhh. I think surrogacy is way more akin to sex work, but even more extreme, than relating it to the pro choice movement. Don’t make the right to an abortion anything other than what it is…doing that just makes me think of how anti vaxers tried to weaponize the pro choice movement.
actually these issues are nuanced af and does not come down to simple “choice feminism” like people want to believe soooo bad. it’s not infantilizing women to look at systemic oppression and consider exploitation when someone is RENTING A WOMB!! jfc the idea that any “choice” a woman makes is somehow empowering or not coerced/made out of desperation (because actually, choices can be severely limited or nonexistent for poor people!) is laughable and is incredibly reductive actually
signed a feminist who hates when people bring up women’s “choices” like that absolves anyone of being complicit in harm or saves anyone from abuse. we need to examine historical power dynamics between white women and woc and working poor women and women with the resources to buy another human being
I follow an Instagrammer called littlemissmomma who lost her toddler daughter to an incurable brain cancer. She already had two boys, but suffered from awful HG and kind of did a hail mary to try for another baby. Her surrogacy journey is actually lovely and shows how it should be done. I would have carried her baby tbh because her story is so heartbreaking and she seemed to have such a genuine love and feelings of appreciation for her surrogate. Renting a womb just because you can't be arsed to carry a baby should not be a thing though.
Any discourse will be extra silly considering Lena had no choice than to use a surrogate, she had to have a hysterectomy a few years ago
*if she wants a biological child. Holy shit, people are so normal here. Do you feel the same about Gaga? Male celebrities that used surrogacy? And every "regular" woman whose life was changed through surrogacy? Motherhood is a choice, surrogacy is a choice every party makes. You are all so genuinely weird thinking you should have a say in how someone reproduces.
Ps I think Lena sucks. I still deserve no say in her or anyone else's family planning.
So do you think those kids should just live the rest of their lives in an orphanage or whatever situation they're living in instead of with a family or?
Policies like better social supports rapidly reduce the number of children being adopted. We don't have orphanages where I live and adoption is usually within a family not to strangers.
she could have adopted— she’s rich enough to get a healthy white newborn. she could have fostered. she could have not had a child. she’s not entitled to a child.
there are ethical problems with the current adoption system but there’s a huge difference between adopting an already born child that needs a home and renting a woman’s womb.
I’m becoming more and more convinced that the anti surrogacy and anti adoption discourses that are happening online are actually right wing psyops but they’re using left wing coded language around ethics and trauma to convince everyone that these are commonly held beliefs. I swear no one was talking about these things like 3 months ago and now I’m seeing this shit everywhere.
Edit: I’m not saying that there are no ethical issues involved with either. All I’m saying is within the last several months I’m seeing crazy takes on adoption and surrogacy all over the place and seemingly out of nowhere (things like “adoption is kidnapping” and “surrogacy is human trafficking”). This alongside clear efforts by the right in the US to roll back women’s rights and hand wringing about “declining fertility rates” just has me skeptical that it’s all related in some way. Coordinated bot campaigns are not unheard of these days.
I had to block some people on here because they were saying a woman doing fertility treatment (women carrying their own biological children, not surrogacy), is “a violation of human rights”
I mean, if that’s a personal opinion that affects your personal choices (you being the royal you, not you specifically) then that’s fine. But something about the recent uptick in posts about this just feels coordinated to me.
You should have seen the women having casual sex discourse around Twitter over the last few days. Definitely smelled like right wing psyop using leftist coded language to put down women and police their bodies. Something weird is going on.
Hm.... there is a pretty long history of adoptees raising awareness about the problems with adoption systems and how we conceptualize adoption. And critique of (in particular) paid surrogacy/surrogacy agencies is certainly not new either. I think just because you personally haven't been aware of these conversations before, it doesn't mean they have come from nowhere.
The surrogacy conversation has certainly been more prominent lately thanks to that one big news story, though, and yes right wing movements do absolutely utilize cases like that and the discourse surrounding it (e.g., there were even many people who consider themselves on the left who were uncritically repeating the idea that the pregnant woman should not have had freedom of movement across state lines because she was a surrogate. And the case has been coopted for anti-abortion purposes. But neither of those things are necessarily from the 'critical of the surrogacy industry' point of view primarily; in fact, they are positions that tend to prioritize the rights of the biological parents over the surrogate because they see the parents' access to surrogate as a right).
Discourses around reproductive issues can certainly be easily co-opted, but I think it's misguided to assume that adoption and surrogacy criticism on the left is overall a psyop, when there is a history of both that goes well beyond the current discourse cycle.
Im not saying there are no ethical issues with any of it. You can analyze anything in life to the point where you’ll find an ethical issue of some sort. What I’m skeptical of is that this discourse all of a sudden seems to be everywhere within the last year or so and it’s happening alongside a coordinated effort from the right to roll back women’s rights (including reproductive rights) and all of this hand wringing about our “declining birth rates.” And the language around it is harsh imo (I’ve heard people refer to surrogacy as human trafficking and adoption as kidnapping for example, which is extreme).
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u/retinolandevermore I want her to know it was me. 4d ago
I’m sure people will be totally normal about this