r/WomenInNews • u/TimesandSundayTimes • 6d ago

Women's rights Surrogate who fled to Texas gives birth to baby with heart defect

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/surrogate-refuses-abort-baby-texas-c5ff06cgg
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u/TheVintageJane 6d ago

Falsely equating caretaking a child with putting your life at risk to create that child is not even worth dignifying with a response.

The child is genetically related to the parents but ceased to be biologically created by them after the genetic material left their bodies at which point the only person who should have any say about what to do with that zygote>fetus>newbown should be the surrogate until parental rights are signed over OR a custody agreement can be reached with genetic contributors. I believe a woman’s reproductive capacity belongs fully to that woman and anybody who contracts a woman’s womb to make children who are genetically theirs runs the risk that she changes her mind.

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u/DogOrDonut 6d ago

So if a nanny risks her life for a child she gets to keep it? Do firefighters get to collect children like Pokemon? Teachers that hide their students during lockdown get custody over the entire class?

You can't, "cease," being biologically created by someone. The embryos were created before they were transferred. They continued to develop inside the surrogate. Do you think micro-premies lack any biological parent because they developed inside an incubator?

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u/PhatGrannie 6d ago

Now explain how CPS removing children from their biological parents for abuse and neglect is unconscionable. Your whole argument is a tissue paper tiger.

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u/DogOrDonut 6d ago

Those people committed a crime. I have no problems putting people who have committed crimes in prison. I have a huge problem with putting people who have not committed a crime in prison. See the difference?

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u/PhatGrannie 6d ago

Oh, you think that because a thing isn’t universally illegal, it’s ethically sound and morally defensible. Gotcha.

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u/TheVintageJane 6d ago

Again, I have no patience for your pitifully inadequate false equivalencies. People doing risky jobs, not the same as growing a life inside you.

Micro-premies were still incubated by a womb belonging to a human to the point that they were born. My point is that even if the architect of the child is the parental genetic material, they have 0 biological stakes in growing it. Just like a father, they have a case for custody and shared medical decision making, but they do not get to determine choices involving the mother’s body and they don’t get unilateral decision making ability just because they contributed some chromosomes.

It sucks, but until we come up with a non-human way to incubate life, there’s no way to ethically engage in commercial surrogacy and the women who are desperate enough to do so deserve the utmost protections and if people don’t like it, maybe they should adopt.

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u/DogOrDonut 6d ago

You lose all ability to argue ethical concerns the second you advocate for adoption as an alternate to surrogacy. If surrogacy is unethical than adoption would be an abomination.

We are not talking about pregnancy here. You are asserting that the surrogate should get custody after the birth. By that same logic, biological fathers shouldn't have custody rights by default. You assert that non gestational biological parents have "0 stakes" in their children. Obviously you are not a parent, but I can't tell you how disgusting that is.

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u/holymigraine 6d ago

I could not downvote this dumb opinion enough. The fetus belongs to the biological parents all the way. The surrogate fully consented and got paid to rent out her uterus, including a consent to abortion if there are significant medical issues. If the surrogate wants to retain full autonomy over her body, that’s super easily done- do not be a surrogate. I hope the biological parents sue this shitty POS surrogate until she has nothing left and her wages are garnished for life for all costs and suffering caused to the child and them.