Surrogacy Discussion

[Perpet]

A child removed from from it's birth mother via surrogacy suffers the same profound damaging loss as a child removed for adoption. This is the same if the mother has no biological link to the child as they have had 9 months of attachment.
The mother is all that baby has known and the removal leaves a permanent mark on that child.

That is enough for me to think it should be banned but also women aren't rent a wombs. It leads to a trade in poor women who risk their health to give birth for payment. Giving birth is often the closest a woman comes to death and it has a serious impact on her body. I have lasting damage from birth injuries and I have several friends who nearly died.

This isn't what attachment theory says. Attachment is not created by pregnancy alone. It develops through ongoing caring/bonding after birth.

A newborn may recognise and respond to the person who carried them, but that is not the same as having an established attachment relationship.

Even in adoption, researchers do not generally argue that every newborn adopted at birth has suffered attachment trauma because they were separated from the birth mother. The concerns raised by adoptees are often broader and relate to identity, secrecy, stigma, or later separation from established attachment figures, not evidence that gestational separation alone causes attachment injury.

If separation from a gestational carrier inherently caused attachment trauma, we would expect to see widespread evidence of psychological harm among children born through surrogacy. Decades of research have not shown that.

 

[Erling Haaland]

This was the story that shocked me the most

The Baby Died. Whose Fault Is It?

When her son died in utero, a venture capitalist went to extremes to punish her surrogate.

www.wired.com

 

[Perpet]

Even the phrase “gestational carrier” is boak worthy . Murky language is used to conceal what is really happening - she isn’t a surrogate or gestational carrier she is the baby’s mother.

Motherhood is not defined by pregnancy and birth.

 

[Peachsquish]

Surrogate story found on X

Surrogate pressured to abort after cancer diagnosis: ‘The fathers wanted a death certificate’ | Live Action

A young woman contacted the Center for Bioethics and Culture (CBC) with a horrifying surrogacy story, reinforcing how inherently exploitative surrogacy is. According to the story , written by CBC’s...

www.liveaction.org

 

[Perpet]

I am not part of the anti surrogacy lobby wtf that is, but it's a load of bollocks that babies do not form attachment with the mother during pregnancy. Obviously they develop other attachments after that but babies don't even know they're separate beings from their mother till 6 months.

Surrogacy is anti woman and makes both their bodies and babies property to be bought and sold. It's barbaric and shows how little society cares about women.

Newborns can recognise things like their mother's voice and smell. But that doesn't mean that separation after birth inevitably causes lasting harm.

Developmental psychology distinguishes between prenatal familiarity and postnatal attachment. Attachment, in the sense used by attachment theory, develops through consistent, responsive caregiving over the first months of life.

Newborns don't have self-other differentiation it's true, but that's a feature of infant development generally, not of their relationship with the gestational mother specifically.

 

[Perpet]

That’s a bit of a reach. “Sensory preference”, are you referring to the experience of the baby in utero, that it is familiar with the birth mother’s voice, emotions (transmitted via hormones etc in the blood) and heartbeat? The only things the baby really knows when it is born. It’s not a brand new, blank product ready to be sold/donated/upcycled, it’s a person with feelings and emotions.

I was separated from my baby after birth, by cruel and outdated hospital policy. I was furious, and protested, which led to obstetric violence, which led to PTSD. That whole time my husband gave skin-to-skin and my baby was fed colostrum that I'd expressed in advance, but he cried continuously until they finally took me back into the room with him. The minute they wheeled me in, he stopped, before my husband even put him in my arms.

It was a horrible experience for both of us, but none of it means that his distress was due to actual attachment, which doesn't form until about 3 months at the earliest, or that, had I been a surrogate, that lasting damage would have occurred had he not remained in my care. You're conflating different things.

 

[Perpet]

Agree. There are many adoptive mothers/ foster mothers who are wonderful.

But "birth mother" is acceptable as opposed to "purchaser" or "buyer" or "commissioning individual", I suppose.

Are there any mothers via surrogacy who are wonderful, in your view?

 

[Perpet]

No, because surrogacy is inherently abusive IMO.

The anti surrogacy lobby confuses a sensory preference immediately after birth for the person who carried the baby throughout pregnancy with actual attachment, which doesn't come until months afterwards.