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How do you feel about gestational surrogacy?
Question : How do you feel about gestational surrogacy?
Where the baby would be the biological child of the parents, but would be carried by another woman.
Like many people, I have some concerns with donor eggs and embryos and creating intentional adoptees, but honestly, I’m not sure I have an issue with gestational surrogacy, so I am curious how others feel.
In this situation, would the woman who carried the child (who had no biological connection) be referred to as a birth mother? Should a relationship be maintained between the baby and the woman who carried them?
surrogacy
Best answer:
Answer by Merry C
I’m ok with it if it is done for family, if my sister couldn’t conceive I would carry her baby for her. No it wouldn’t be referred as a birth mother since it wasn’t her egg.
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#2 written by tish_part deux 1 year ago
it gives me the icks..
why:
-it’s inherently classicist and exploitative. (don’t see too many manhattan socialites renting out wombs for working-class infertile couples; the converse, you see a lot.)
-there is a disregard for basic human autonomy (women are expected to abstain from intercourse, undergo invasive testing, terminate at the whims of the prospective parents, et al.)
-women are viewed as “vessels” “tools” “property”, et al; which is dehumanizing.
-it’s potentially damaging to interpersonal relationships (partners are expected to be tested for STI, use condoms to avoid STIs during the pregnancy. children of the surrogate are sometimes confused about the “baby that never comes home.” the physical and emotional changes of pregnancy can damage a marriage; and the “parents” can become intrusive during the pregnancy and birth, and on and on..)
-it’s reminiscent of prostitution. many women enter sex work for the “money” not the “love of sex.” same with surrogacy.
also, i have concerns about the long-term psychological effects of children born this way. and the psychological state of any woman who would intentionally breed to give the child away.
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#4 written by lolo 1 year ago
I agree with it and think its a great thing. I think that the surrogate would not be called the birth mother. The…..i guess……….owner of the egg would be the birth mother. The only circumstance in which i would be a surrogate for anyone would be for my sisters. If either of them could not have children and they were married and had tried everything else then i would do that for them, other wise they dont get much compensation for what they go through.
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#5 written by alleycatjo 1 year ago
My best friend is a gestational surrogate. It’s a pretty amazing process..
The lady who carried the baby would be reffered to as the GS {gestational surrogate} or gestational carrier…
There are some couples who do lik for the surrogate to maintain contact, and others who prefer not to. Depends on what the couples want and contracts state….
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#6 written by Lillie 1 year ago
Perhaps you would be better off asking the “offspring” of these arrangements when they grow up and have had time to process their feelings and emotions about having been carried for 9 months by somebody who was paid to do it.
I have read some blogs, and have a friend who was, and all I can say is, from the people I know (who are NOT still infants or toddlers), they are not too comfortable with the way they came into the world.
I wish people would give more thought to the effects on the children (and future adults) they are creating and less about their own needs and desires.
Try to put yourself in that situation. How would you feel? What would that do to you, psychologically, emotionally, to know that you were created in such a way? Would you feel good? Bad? Happy? Angry? Somewhere in between?
This is something that these potential parents should think LONG and HARD about before they ever start interviewing surrogates. After all, shouldn’t the health and well being of their future child be paramount?
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#7 written by Cleobird 1 year ago
Well, Ive been a gestational surrogate twice, so that will probably tell you where I stand on the issue:)
All in all its a wonderful option for people.
The woman who carried the child is usually referred to as the surrogate. I’m sure some say “birth mother” but to me that implies a woman who gave a child up for adoption. Thats just not the case with surrogacy.
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#8 written by Lioness 1 year ago
I think this is one of the options available for many couples who have difficulties with their own pregnancies, and as such, has a respected place in the world of parenthood. The woman who carried the child is a surrogate, not technically a birthmother, in the adoption sense. If the couples prefers to refer to her as the birthmother, that’s up to them.
Concerning an ongoing relationship between the new parents and the surrogate, that is certainly up to them. In some situations, the surrogate is a family member (sister, cousin, and in one case, the twin babies’ maternal grandmother), so there will always be that connection. When the surrogate is not related, there may remain an emotional connection to the woman who was willing to relinquish her own body for that 9 months to allow another couple be become parents.
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#9 written by Vanessa A 1 year ago
I don’t have a problem with it if it’s between close family (sisters, for example), and the surrogate mother does it purely out of love. I do have an issue with being paying others to be surrogates, which I’m pretty sure is illegal in the US, I don’t know about other countries.
Although personally, I don’t understand why people are so adamant on having children that are biologically related to them when their are so many babies and children needing loving families. If I find out that I’m unable to have children, I definitely plan to adopt, and even if I can have children I still would like to adopt a child.
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#10 written by Serenity71 1 year ago
Kazi
This is one of those area’s where its very personal. Some would say “why destroy the embryos when someone else can give them life.” and then another would say, “We can’t allow that…” for whatever reason.
I feel it should be up to the couple who’s egg and sperm it is in the first place to decide if they feel comfortable having the embryo transferred into another woman with possibility of a success pregnancy resulting from it. If they don’t then feel they can live with it then it shouldn’t happen with theirs.
Through my husbands work I met a lady who donated eggs for IVF and she showed us pictures of three children who are alive today because of her. She doesn’t even see herself as ‘mum’ to any of them. She said all she did was donate her eggs, their mother, father and the IVF team did the rest. (They live in New Zealand.)
I wouldn’t have done a surrogacy to become a mother, but at the same time I won’t condemn people who do. I see comments here about women who are surrogate mothers like she had no say in it and she’s being forced to give up a baby.
How absurd is that she wasn’t pregnant when she met the propective parents and she entered into a legal agreement with them long before the process started to inpregnate her with their baby. (I tend to look at the facts too,) She knew right from the beginning the baby she’s carrying isn’t hers to keep and make choices for. She had a choice to not do it, or to go ahead and carry the baby for them.
Its the same situation as a women who fell pregnant and then had to decide if she wanted to go through with it or give up a baby thats genetically hers. Different situation folks so why throw them into the same basket?
That said… I don’t have a problem with it as long as the couple who’s embryo it is gives consent.
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#11 written by Gaia Raain II 1 year ago
My concern is always how it affects the child. I don’t care who the child is blood related to, when a child is growing in a womb, that child experiences that womb as belonging to his mother. That child will have the same emotional attachment to the woman who carried him that he would have to his own biological mother. Therefore, it would be traumatic to separate the woman who gave birth to the child, from that child. Regardless if any of the adults feel traumatized, the CHILD will. There is still a primal wound in that child. Therefore, it shouldn’t be done. Whether a relationship is maintained or not does not remove the wound. It just should not be done.
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#13 written by Joeys mommie!!! 1 year ago
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I dislike the idea of hiring people to be incubators. It smacks of biological servitude. I don’t think it matters whether or not bio material from the child’s legal parents – the child can still have issues surrounding surrogacy. (The “Son of A Surrogate” blog is an interesting read…)
Nope, most surrogacy is not for me – but I don’t make the rules and I’m not engaging in it. (My cousin is a “serial surrogate” and it has caused issues with her own children’s notions of reproduction and caused her some rather nasty health issues.) I don’t like things like grandmothers making babies with their dead son’s sperm because they wanted a grandbaby or Indian “rent-a-wombs”. I have sympathy for and understand family members assisting one another with surrogacy but it is not something that should be entered into lightly nor do I think it is something that should have a monetary exchange as part of the “transaction”.
They are working other options:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13383
http://living.oneindia.in/tag/uterus
Bio-ethics is such a new thing and I think we have gotten a little ahead of ourselves and we tend to ignore the FEELINGS of the PEOPLE involved when we put so much focus on the “end product”.
“…would the woman who carried the child (who had no biological connection) be referred to as a birth mother?”
I do feel she has a biological connection (albiet an unusual one!), there are still biological exchanges between her and the fetus and she is the one who goes through the biological changes of pregnancy and childbirth. She gives birth, and as far as I’m concerned that makes her a mother by definition of the act of giving birth. I personally would not employ the term “birthmother”. (I know others have a different opinion, but I also wonder how many of them have ever given birth.)
“Should a relationship be maintained between the baby and the woman who carried them?” I think so. Otherwise she is just a thing and the child can never know the person who helped create them.
JMHO.