Surrogate offered $10,000 to abort baby

[myswtghst]

I'm not sure about trigger warnings, but the article discusses abortion (with a dash of anti-choice rhetoric), reproductive coercion, disability & aborting due to birth defects, custody laws / adoption, and surrogacy / pregnancy. Please let me know if there is anything else I should include here (and Mods - let me know if you'd like this edited

Comments

[lorrybank]

Bodily autonomy trumps all, but I still think this surrogate is kind of a shitty human being.

[wuvvumsoc]

Really? I thought the parents were being pretty shitty. They were threatening to turn the baby into a ward of the state when the baby was already quite vulnerable.

[lorrybank]

No one comes out of this sparkling clean, in my opinion.

But also in my opinion, the parents wanted to make a humane choice for THEIR child. The surrogate seems confused about her beliefs based on how much money is at stake at any given moment. In this day and age, I can't even really blame her for that, but I'm still not impressed by the choices she made.

As I said, it's her body and her choices, as it should be, but it's very lucky that this child did find a home, since the surrogate apparently cared enough for the child to be born (and thus to suffer) but not enough to care for her.

[wuvvumsoc]

I thought the surrogate did care for her. She chose to move herself (which isn't too easy when you're strapped for cash) to a place where they couldn't force the child to be a ward, and around a hospital that could possibly provide her the best care. I think she really tried for someone who didn't anticipate having a pregnancy that complicated.

[liret]

Except they paid her to carry their baby for them, and she did. I don't think they should have to pay from the point where they decided they wanted to end the pregnancy, because that's when she made the decision to continue it. But she'd essentially already 'worked' for them for 5 months. They don't get to make her responsible for the pregnancy costs that were for a baby they, at they time, wanted. Her not having the abortion isn't what cost them that money.

[mythrai]

they paid her monthly, according to the article

[darkmanifest]

Wait a minute, two of their three children were born with medical issues, all three of them prematurely, and it didn't occur to the parents that the fourth might have issues, too? There's nothing wrong with either deciding to keep a kid with medical issues or deciding to abort (so long as it's your own body you're aborting from), but you'd think these fucking parents would have had the drop of sense necessary to be prepared - and to prepare the surrogate - for an event that had happened twice before. Did they even discuss it outside of the contractual terms during their heartwarming conversations? "Hey, we have no intention of supporting another special-needs child, you might want to know that before you do this." Isn't that the kind of talk you'd be a jackass not to have before investing thousands of dollars into surrogacy? (It kind of sounds like these people were gambling for a "correct" child and figured fourth time was the charm, but I admit that's a very uncharitable assumption, even for winners like these

[meran_flash]

It sounded to me like the medical issues of the first children were caused by the early births, and the early births could be an issue with the birthmother and not the fetus, so it would make sense to hope for fewer issues when you remove the birthmother of the premature babies from the equation entirely by having her contribute neither the egg nor the womb.

[ljtaylor]

This. I don't think there should be any grey areas in surrogacy, it's an ethical minefield. Outright ban it.

[osprey_cat]

I agree that the abortion clause in the contract was unethical and not legally binding, but I disagree about banning surrogacy. It has problems and needs to be addressed more than "whatever, we'll figure it out in court", but I don't think a ban is appropriate either. For every horror story like this, there are lots of stories about successful surrogacies, including ones where the children are disabled.

[ljtaylor]

I think both parties behaved rather...naively, shall we say. But that said, NOTHING, not even a contract, should trump bodily autonomy. You should not be able to sign away your right to your own body. That's a slippery slope right there.

As for the prospective parents, I am curious, had they looked into adopting from the very system they wished to place this child in from the outset? I just find it hard to sympathise with someone's "need" for a baby that is biologically their own when they already have three (two of whom need medical attention, no less).

[osprey_cat]

And it's interesting because apparently the egg was donated as well. I don't really understand the couple here.

[ljtaylor]

Yeah I was thinking that. I know how frustrating the adoption system is, but this route is just as fraught with complications and (as we see here) disappointment.

edit for clarity fail

[frelling_tralk]

Even if they were approved as adoptive parents they most likely wouldn't have had a baby from birth though, and so many parents prefer to have a baby that they can raise as their own from the beginning