I have a kid, so no, I wouldn't do it. We're hoping for a second, and taking some helpful meds, but if it doesn't work it doesn't work.

If we hadn't been able to have the first, we might have considered it. We probably would have considered egg donation first, then surrogacy, then adoption. Why not? It seems pretty win-win.

I saw a documentary on this and it creeped me out.

There are lines and lines of pregnant women lying on the floor, fanning themselves from the heat.

I saw a black American couple, but mostly Brits and Canadians.

There were medical reasons not to do this in India but I don't remember what they were. Same with ethical-what happens to the indian women etc. I forgot all the points raised.

Anyways weirds me out that people are so obsessed with passing down their genetic material.

Oh the reason it's done over there is because the women have no lawful right to the child, in 1st world countries those rights vary (I.e. some women can keep kids that are not genetically theirs) . Also it's way cheaper.

Why should anyone be against this? It's a contract among consenting adults that doesn't affect me in the least, so why should I be concerned?

Why should anyone be against this? It's a contract among consenting adults that doesn't affect me in the least, so why should I be concerned?

Exactly. Its a business agreement, like prostitution. Why the heck do we care what other adults do with thier money and bodies?
Most people pay top dollar to their surrogates and their surrogates healthcare. And in some ways, I think the baby is better off because mom is almost FORCED to take care of herself and the baby. She's being paid to do it. That's a hell of an incentive to get your crap together.

Ironic timing on this post...
Hubby and I have discussed using a surrogate. We've been TTC for three years now and after two very painful missacarriages, and now some possible fertility issues, having a biological child may not be as easy as we'd hoped. I simply refuse to undergo fertility treatments or IVF; I will not martyr myself, my wallet or my marriage to have a biological child. We decided against surrogacy partically due to the financial factor but mostly due to the simple fact that you can't control what happens in anyone elses body more than you can in your own. And, after two losses already, if we hired a surrogate and lost that baby too, we'd be devastated. Not just for us this time but for the poor woman who has to go through it with us. Could you imagine the guilt that woman would feel? We are now leaning towards adoption as our alternative.

I think surrogacy is a beautiful and generous thing to do for someone, personally. You put in all this work and put your body through some pretty intense stuff, just to give the baby you spent nine months carrying to someone else. I don't think I could do it (assuming me staying pregnant in the first place wasn't a problem). And the money sure doesn't hurt. I know a woman who longed to be a surrogate. She loved being pregnant and wanted to be able to do that for other couples after her own two children.

I am quite drawn to pregnancy. It's the raising of a child I'm nowhere near ready for. Maybe someday, maybe never. But I actually gave a passing thought to becoming a surrogate for my brother and sister-in-law. They both want kids and are physically able to conceive, but for some reason my sister-in-law has never wanted to be pregnant. She said herself that it terrifies her and she pushed my brother into adoption. I know he wanted biological kids but basically gave into her, as he usually does. On the surface it would be win-win. I would get to experience pregnancy, my sister-in-law wouldn't have to but would get a child, my brother would get a child he's biologically related to. I'd even get to have a lot of contact with the kid without actually raising it! But it would never work. I could never emotionally handle carrying a child only to give it to someone else to raise, even to family members. Even if I could 100% trust their ability to be great parents, which I sadly don't in this case.

I think my sister-in-law wanting kids but abhorring pregnancy is a little strange, but as I see it there's nothing inherently wrong with preferring to give a home to an existing child rather than conceive a new one. Things that worry me much more than that are that I get very little motherly vibe from her, that she can be quite selfish, impatient, and bossy, and she and even more so my brother don't seem to have more than a vague idea what having a child actually means. They are now signed up with a domestic adoption agency and waiting for a call about a baby. Their whole experience till now, at least the way she has related it, seems distressingly like shopping. So there's no way I'd want a child of my body getting raised by them, or anyone else for that matter. I'm sure I'd make mistakes as a parent if I ever became one, but MY child, MY mistakes... no one else gets to screw up my kid but me!

When I was much younger, and my brother and his (now ex-) wife found out that she could not carry a child to term, I offered to be a surrogate for them. She had a cousin who was a willing donor, and it seemed to be a win-win. They had already adopted a little boy, so this would be their second. Unfortunately, the cousin landed in some trouble with the law, so that option then was removed from the table. Then, brother discovered she was cheating on him, so the whole thing ended. Sad, but I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

As far as carrying for someone else, I'm past that stage so I got no dog in this fight. But I'm thinking there are a lot of factors involved, not the least of which would be family medical histories, including mental health issues. We've got enough kooks wandering around now, why put any more into the mix?

Sabrina, the first couple steps of fertility treatments are not very invasive, not as costly as in vitro, and sometimes covered by insurance.

I'm sure you've looked into it but in case you haven't, these are the first two steps:

Step 1: A few months of chlomid. You take Chlomid pills for a few days (how many depends on the person). You go in for an ultrasound, and when the eggs look good you take a shot of Ovitrelle to stimulate the ovulation. Then you either have sex, or go in for a IUI (medical turkey baster).

Step 2: A few months of shots such as Gonal. Same as Chlomid, but you give yourself (or hubby gives you) a shot every day instead of taking a pill. Bit of a PITA but no biggie.

They're really not a big deal. You don't martyr yourself at all.

IVF is much more expensive and invasive.

I think my only objection is here in the US and other first world countries surrogates make (this is from memory) 40k or so. Now in India the cost is a fraction and I feel like they are being taken advantage of. However then I think they could ask for more and they are willing so why not. I myself would LOVE to be a surrogate. I am pregnant now and plan maybe for one more but after that we may consider being a non biological surrogate (I have no interest in someone else raising a child that is biologically mine.)

I wouldn't use a surrogate. Not because I see anything wrong with it, but because I decided before I had my daughter that I would not go through special means to have a child. If it happened it happened. I was fortunate that, after one early miscarriage, my daughter was conceived with little trouble.

We want a second child, so, while I would consider being a surrogate, it would have to wait until after No. 2. I wouldn't do it for money -- again, not because it's wrong to do it for money. I would do it to help people I care about have a baby, but I don't see anything morally wrong with doing it for money.

I hear so many people say, "Why don't you just adopt?" to people undergoing fertility treatments. They seem to be under the impression that the US is awash with newborns being surrendered for adoption. Access to birth control and abortion has made that a lot less true than it used to be. And it's nice when people can adopt older children, but older children often come with a raft of problems that no one wants to acknowledge until it's too late.

I find surrogacy abhorrent, and I support it from a free market perspective.

I do not support egg or sperm donation, the latter which is often conflated with surrogacy.

I hope that the surrogacy market is at least as well regulated as the organ donor market, though I suspect even without regulation the mechanics of gestation necessitate taking better care of a surrogate, generally speaking.

I do not support egg or sperm donation, the latter which is often conflated with surrogacy.

I'm genuinely curious: Why do you support surrogacy from a free-market perspective but not egg and sperm donation?

I hate the people who wring their hands over this (baby-factories? Seriously?). These women have no other way to get this amount of money that will make a huge difference in their lives. They are adults, they consent to this-they aren't being kidnapped and forcibly impregnated and kept in jail till they deliver. Just like I think prostitution should be legal (and yes, I HATE prostitution, but it should be legal).

I could never do it-any baby growing in me will be raised by me. But if others want to, more power to them.

I could never do it; most surrogacy is against my religion.

Other people, though, should do what they want with their own bodies. As long as the babies are cared for and no one is defrauded or truly exploited, it's no one else's businesses.

I think my only objection is here in the US and other first world countries surrogates make (this is from memory) 40k or so. Now in India the cost is a fraction and I feel like they are being taken advantage of.

Yes, but cost of living is also a fraction of what it is here.

I dont think surrogacy is a good idea.

If you cant get pregnant naturally you are a genetic dead end and its not like there arent hundered of thousands of kids in foster care and orphanages.

Quite frankly any I dont think anyone who requires live saving medical intervention from disease or their own stupidity before hitting child bearing age should ever be allowed to reproduce.

Melanie, I think it is myopic to sever a child's relationship to her biological family as a condition for her conception.

In a separate but related travesty of justice, increasingly courts are confirming these donor contracts thereby robbing children of what should be their birthright, without giving them the due process afforded to children who are adopted.

Well, my view is unusual and unpopular, but I think the world is overpopulated with humans, and that what was once a survival mechanism (reproduction) has become our biggest menace. Therefore, I believe humanity has reached the point where reproduction in and of itself is immoral and akin to child abuse. So I am against this because I think everyone (yes, that includes you) needs to stop reproducing altogether for about 20 years.

Not that it's going to happen. Overpopulation is going to blow up in everyone's faces before people figure out what a serious problem it is.

>> As long as the babies are cared for and no one is defrauded or truly exploited, it's no one else's businesses.

The key word there is "business". When it beomes a business, the business model is to minimize costs (bad for baby and surrogate mom) and maximize profits. Of course there will be reputable companies that supply health care, but they will have to compete with the exploitive ones, and standards drop.

Some things you just don't want to save money on.

Eric, I agree with you, though I presume that the market is only for healthy babies, which requires 9+ months of care for women.

I wonder what the lawsuits will look like when a legal parent is presented with a surrogate-gestated baby that they deem to be less than perfect. And how long it will be before a surrogacy coordinator accepts a child as a return and offers a do-over to avoid a lawsuit.

My mom is a senior citizen now, so this isn't an option for her. But she told me once that she would have been very happy being a surrogate for money, as she "loved being pregnant."

I wouldn't hire a surrogate OR be one, but I don't have any moral objection to it. I already have a kid, and I didn't enjoy being pregnant enough to do it for other people.

We have friends that might hire a surrogate. She has some type of blood clotting issue that would make it incredibly dangerous to conceive and carry a child. They do well financially and can afford the $100k or so that it will cost. The husband's sister had such a negative experience with domestic adoption that they won't even consider it. (The sister brought a baby home that was taken away after the bio grandparents claimed it. She eventually got to complete an adoption, but the little boy's mother smoked crack while she was pregnant. No negative effects so far, but the kid's still a baby.)

MonicaP, I mistakenly addressed you as Melanie. I apologize.

Multitasking, screen scrolling, thumb typing, long day.

"I could never emotionally handle carrying a child only to give it to someone else to raise,..."

A thousand times this. I had a blessedly easy pregnancy overall. I enjoyed being pregnant. I hope to do it again. But I loved talking to the baby inside. I fell in love with him the minute I saw a heartbeat. It would utterly shatter me to have to give that little peanut up. I remember silly things - Thor was the last movie we saw before delivery. he didn't stop kicking the entire movie. And who is his fave superhero right now? Thor. Things like that give me little bursts of joy.

I would never consider using a surrogate. There was a much-publicized case down here, where the surrogate decided to keep the baby. It was, of course, years in the courts. I think they finally sided with the surrogate (I believe that she was also the bio mom, but don't quote me). The thought of going thru that torment would be unthinkable.

I see nothing wrong with it.

What will happen if they come up with artificial wombs? I'm sure some company is working on it.

Would you have a different view if another human wasn't involved?

I have a 5 month old. I wanted to have 2 kids. My pregnancy was complicated. Too risky to try again.

I see the only way to have another would be surrogacy. We don't have that kind of money so it won't happen. I understand the desire. I'd rather someone I knew doing it rather than someone for only the money but again to each their own.

Would you have a different view if another human wasn't involved?
Posted by: Jim P. at October 2, 2013 6:24 PM

I would still find it abhorrent, but even more troubling. It's already impossible to ensure that one's "extra" fertilized eggs, or donated sperm and eggs, are not implanted in a surrogate and adopted out to strangers, babies manufactured for sale with no one to step up for them if things go horribly wrong.

Now lower the cost of production by gestating humans inside a climate controlled machine that cannot form a bond with it - how long 'till people plant multiples and cull or or sell the unwanted with abandon?

I'm pro-choice out of an abiding respect for women and children. Sometimes women choose abortion because it is the best way they can prevent their offspring from having a life of unmitigated suffering. But I think separating human gestation from the human body makes it even easier to treat people as manufactured goods with a worth that is determined by the market.

On a biochemical level - all those pregnancy hormones that change a woman's mind and body during pregnancy - do we know what if anything they contribute to a developing fetus? Do we have even a basic understanding of how it might alter a human being to be gestated outside the biosphere of a human being?

Do we have even a basic understanding of how it might alter a human being to be gestated outside the biosphere of a human being? -- Michelle at October 2, 2013 7:12 PM

Not yet, but science is heading there.

But the most recent movie on cloning I know of is The Island or the The 6th Day as an older reference.

But The Island has more references to moral choices. What if you had a good chance to live a long life if you had the heart of your clone?

What if we had/will achieve a large society that lives in space. But it isn't safe to gestate/give birth in space?

I agree that abortion is not completely wrong. I would say that a five-six month limit is about where it should be.

So then the question becomes where to limit science from becoming "God™" and limiting "God™" in science decisions?

The problem with women is this - they want to do everything in the world to make easy money other than work or educate themselves and work. And when something goes wrong in what they do(especially when it is something illegal or risky), then they start blaming the whole world for it and demand special protections though they do nothing to deserve it.

If the woman is doing it as a favour for a friend or a relative, then ok, but if it is to make money, then there is definitely a problem here because soon you will have a woman having a line of surrogacies as a career and then she will become weak or emaciated or some other damn thing (side effects) and then you will have some idiot suing the people paying for surrogacy or conducting the surrogacy of millions of dollars because they did not care about the woman who was actually being the surrogate. Helloo...they did the medical tests at the beginning and the woman consented to it knowing fully well that there are risks involved. In some cases, the doctors would just ask the woman involved if she had had more than 2(or whatever safe number of surrogates) and the woman would lie that this is her first because no medical test can detect it and then some damn complication would happen and the innocent surrogacy provider or the surrogacy user gets sued like hell because she lied and the crappy misandric courts will also go ahead with that and side with the lying woman.
Also, in case of this kind of contract, what if the woman carrying surrogate suddenly changes her mind and says she wants to keep the baby? Then again the courts will side with her and make the people who paid for the surrogacy pay for their entire lifetimes for the so called welfare of a child whose mom would probably be using the kid as a cash cow. There are a lot of grey areas here purely because nobody ever holds a woman accountable to a contract and there is a long line of psychiatrists who would say anything just to be on the right side of feminists.

Jim, thank you for the book recommendations.

I wrote a longer reply, but must have bungled the send process, because I don't see it here.

The short of it is, I only support surrogacy in that I support a woman's right to use her body as she sees fit. Absent a human carrier, I have no argument in favor of surrogacy.

...And I find thumb typing maddening and kinesthetically unsatisfying. Had to say it.

The problem with women is this - they want to do everything in the world to make easy money other than work or educate themselves and work. And when something goes wrong in what they do(especially when it is something illegal or risky), then they start blaming the whole world for it and demand special protections though they do nothing to deserve it.

Redrajesh, why do you hate women so much?

One thing I wonder is: How often is the child genetically related to the surrogate? Is it still more than half the time? (I can imagine that a gay male couple might pay extra for an ovum just to make it harder for the surrogate to get public sympathy should she change her mind. Some say white couples often choose black surrogates to carry their already-created embryos for the same reason.)

Regardless of what you think of her, Katha Pollitt wrote a long, famous 1987 column: "The Strange Case of Baby M."

(In all fairness, maybe I should mention that Melissa Stern - now 27, married, and known as Melissa Clements - cut off all ties with Mary Beth Whitehead in 2004 and will not talk about her, IIRC.)

http://www.thenation.com/article/strange-case-baby-m#

Five pages long. It got a ton of responses, though you can't read them at that link.

On page 2:

"The question of payment is crucial because although contract mothers prefer to tell the television cameras about their longing to help humanity, studies have shown that almost nine out of ten wouldn't help humanity for free. (Well, it's a job. Would you do your job for free?) But women to whom $l0,000 is a significant amount of money are the ones who live closest to the economic edge and have the fewest alternative ways of boosting their Income in a crisis. Right now contract motherhood is still considered a rather outré thing to do, and women often have to talk their families into it. But if it becomes a socially acceptable way for a wife to help out the family budget, how can the law protect women from being coerced into contracts by their husbands? Or their relatives? Or their creditors? It can't. In fact, it can't even insure uncoerced consent when no money changes hands. The New York Times has already discovered a case In which a family matriarch successfully pressured one relative to produce a child for another. If contract motherhood takes hold, a woman's 'right to control her body' by selling her pregnancies will become the modern equivalent of 'she's sitting on a fortune.' Her husband's debts, her children's unfixed teeth, the kitchen drawer full of unpaid bills, will all be her fault, the outcome of her selfish refusal to sell what nature gave her."

Page 3:

"The closer we get to the murky realm of human intimacy the more reluctant we are to enforce contracts in anything like their potential severity. Marriage, after all, is a contract. Yet we permit divorce. Child-support agreements are contracts. Yet a woman cannot bar the father of her children from leaving investment banking for the less lucrative profession of subway musician. Engagement is, if not usually a formal contract, a public pledge of great seriousness. Yet the bride or groom abandoned at the altar has not been able to file a breach of promise suit for almost a hundred years. What have we learned since desperate spouses lit out for the territory and jilted maidens jammed the courts? That in areas of profound human feeling, you cannot promise because you cannot know, and pretending otherwise would result in far more misery than allowing people to cut their losses.

"When Mary Beth Whitehead signed her contract, she was promising something it is not in anyone's power to promise: not to fall in love with her baby. To say, as some do, that she 'should have known' because she'd had two children already is like saying a man should have known how he'd feel about his third wife because he'd already been married twice before. Why should mothers be held to a higher standard of self-knowledge than spouses? Or, more to the point, than fathers? In a recent California case a man who provided a woman friend with sperm, no strings attached, changed his mind when the child was born and sued for visitation rights. He won. Curiously, no one suggested that the decision stigmatized all his sex as hyperemotional dirty-dealers."

Page 4:

"Now, it's probably true that some women will bear children for money no matter what the law says. In the privacy of domestic life all sorts of strange arrangements are made. But why should the state enforce such bargains? Feminists who think regulation would protect the mother miss the whole point of the maternity contract, which is precisely to deprive her of protections she would have if she had signed nothing. If the contracts were unenforceable, the risk would be where it belongs, on the biological father and his wife, whose disappointment if the mother reneges, though real, can hardly be compared with a mother's unwilling loss of her just-born child. The real loser, of course, would be the baby-broker. (Noel Keane, the lawyer who arranged for Baby M, made about $300,000 last year in fees for such services.) And that would be a very good thing."

Page 5:

"Regulation might make contract motherhood less haphazard, but there is no way it can be made anything other than what it is: an inherently unequal relationship involving the sale of a woman's body and a child. The baby-broker's client is the father; his need is the one being satisfied; he pays the broker's fee. No matter how it is regulated, the business will have to reflect that priority. That's why the bill being considered in New York State specifically denies the mother a chance to change her mind, although the stringency of the Stern-Whitehead contract in this regard was the one thing pundits assured the public would not happen again. Better screening procedures would simply mean more accurately weeding out the trouble-makers and selecting for docility, naïveté, low self-esteem and lack of money for legal fees. Free psychological counseling for the mothers, touted by some brokers as evidence of their care and concern, would merely be manipulation by another name. True therapy seeks to increase a person's sense of self, not reconcile one to being treated as an instrument.

"Even if the business could be managed so that all the adults involved were invariably pleased with the outcome, it would still be wrong, because they are not the only people involved. There are, for instance, the mother's other children. Prospective contract mothers, Mrs. Whitehead included, do not seem to consider for two seconds the message they are sending to their kids. But how can it not damage a child to watch Mom cheerfully produce and sell its half-sibling while Dad stands idly by? I'd love to be a fly on the wall as a mother reassures her kids that of course she loves them no matter what they do; it's just their baby sister who had a price tag.....

"The Vatican's recent document condemning all forms of conception but marital intercourse was marked by the church's usual political arrogance and cheeseparing approach to sexual intimacy, but it was right about one thing. You don't have a right to a child, any more than you have a right to a spouse. You only have the right to try to have one. Goods can be distributed according to ability to pay or need. People can't.

"It's really that simple."

Flynne - tell me one word of what I said that is wrong in todays world and you will have your own answer. Is there anything in the world to go against the women who claim that it is their right to be irresponsible,immoral,unethical,lazy,selfish(except amy and Dr Helen and the men whose voices are always silenced)? And show me one case where women take accountability instead of playing the victim - of course the media, politicians, legal system etc enable it, but that does not stop the women from taking accountability.

Do we have even a basic understanding of how it might alter a human being to be gestated outside the biosphere of a human being?

Posted by: Michelle

Nope, but the effects would be fascinating to find out. I'd sugggest testing on monkeys and see how non hormone, regulated hormone and naturally induced hormone beings differ in apperance, and psychology, and how their offspring (if they can reproduce) react

Lujlp, I'm guessing primate trials would be part of any sane approach to this.

How awful, to be born without belonging, pieced together from other people's discards and beholden to a manufacturer and its client.

There are a lot of grey areas here purely because nobody ever holds a woman accountable to a contract and there is a long line of psychiatrists who would say anything just to be on the right side of feminists. -- Redrajesh at October 3, 2013 4:17

Flynne - tell me one word of what I said that is wrong in todays world and you will have your own answer. -- Redrajesh at October 3, 2013 10:14 AM

What is your profession? I don't think it's contract law. If she is caught in a lie, especially on paper (i.e. In some cases, the doctors would just ask the woman involved if she had had more than 2(or whatever safe number of surrogates) and the woman would lie that this is her first because no medical test can detect it and then some damn complication would happen) then she would be screwed.

But your stream of conscience post just has not a real point to it.

"she would be screwed." - Jim P. at October 3, 2013 10:40 PM

show me the last time a woman got screwed for reneging on a contract(either commercial or non commercial). Hell, in misandric countries like USA and Europe, they even get away with murder more often than not(mary winkler, amber cummings, casey anthony etc).

The solution to misandry is not misogyny.

I'm pretty weary of all the bool-hooing about how men just can't get a decent deal in this country because all the big bad women are pissing in their soup. You guys are actually the same as all the far-flung feminists, just with different genitalia.

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