An issue

I remember seeing a movie (a telugu dubbed tamizh..cast sowndarya) regarding this issue.

They had brought out the probs which surrogate mothers face with
a pinch of salt in it.

I refuse to believe, THAT PPL LOOK DOWN UPON CHILDLESS COUPLE.
Its no longer valid, atleast in urban or semi - urban areas.
May be in rural areas, insults are borne by women who are issueless.

There are options, ivf, icsi and what not?!

Injecting sperms down to even embryo insertion is available.
Now this is another option surrogate mothers!!

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From the point of view of chastity, I DONT BELIEVE
THE WOMAN loses her chasitity by becoming a surrogate mtoehr.

But what is motherhood? to bear a hcild and sell it for money?
anyway if we look at it from other end, ITS DONE ON DEMAND BASIS.
sOME couple wants a child, for which they pay. Rather BUYS a child.

What is a child?

A bondage between couples. It is a symbolisation of love between
couples. NOT A SYMBOL OF MONEY TO PROOVE THE EXISTENCE AND SAVE THE EXISTENCE OF ANCESTRY of the MALE.

Being issueless is NOT A CRIME. One can spend useful time,
doing service to society or poor and needy.

If, one feels they need a child...then why NOT ADOPT ONE?

sO MANY CHILDREN ARE WAITING OUT THERE FOR U!! just try.

Infact I would advise all parents, who even has one on their
own TO ADOPT ANOTHER.

Child is a child, AND IT NEED NOT BE FROM UR OWN TISSUE TO
call it ur own.

Think broader.

Surrogate mother..................HAVE IT AS THE LAST OPTION.
preferably................DO NOT HAVE IT AS AN OPTION AT ALL

Cheers

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Roshan

Scorpio,

Thanks for clarifying but let me ask this.. what about the sister's husband? How did they make him agree? I just cant imagine this kind of a situation.

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Roshan,

I dunno what all they did to make the sister's husband agree. I've met that guy in the bank a couple of times. He is a very soft-spoken gentleman. Probably, he would have looked at it as a help to his childless bro-in-law. As he already has 2 children of his own, letting his wife carry somebody else's zygote and delivering a healthy baby to the needy might not have troubled him much.

SP,

On yr exclamation at looking down upon issueles couples, my boss' wife was close to depression coz she was issueless. My boss was a very smart and successful VP in a reputed bank. His wife was his parents' choice. She was not a perfect match for him appearence-wise nor status-wise. I have myself seen and heard my colleagues laugh at her back at her 'luck'. Good for her that she had her own sister to partially repair the damage.

Scorpio,

I think its more on the mentality of each individual, its been injected in our blood that ONLY WAY TO RECIPROCATE the favour(!!!) that husbands do, by protecting us, IS TO REAR HIS CHILDREN(MIND IT, ITS ALWAYS REARING HIS CHILDREN..NEVER OURS :)...)

More than that, if a woman, marries somene who is superior in good-looks or status, the inferiority complex is rooted deeply within a woman (sadly the vice-versa is not true)

I doubt, society (esp educated society) looked down upon her. Its she herself, who fenced the thought that her child HAS TO BE HIS BLOOD(no matter even if she is involved).....she wanted to GIFT HIM HIS HEIR. I am happy for them, cause ANY PERSON NEED TO DO, what they feel is GOOD OR RIGHT.

And perfect match... sadly women should understand (FOR THAT MATTER MEN AND WOMEN SHOULD UNDERSTAND) is NOT in looks or money.

Its in their compatibiilty, or bondage or love between them.

All said n done, I WOULD STILL SAY, childless couple can RESORT TO ADOPTION AS next best choice, rather than torturing themselves orrr to ask the help or surrogate moms.

Sensitive issue...:(...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shakthiprabha

I remember seeing a movie (a telugu dubbed tamizh..cast sowndarya) regarding this issue.

They had brought out the probs which surrogate mothers face with
a pinch of salt in it.

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I think the film was called '9 months'(9 nelalu)&also had Vikram(b4 Sethu) in it.

This entire issue is very complicated:the surrogate mother should be emotionally strong&so should her husband.If the egg is not the mother's then it's actually a case of a step child,will it not prick the woman at some point.Can he give complete love to the child.There's a big difference between bringing up a adopted child&step child.Also,can you hide the fact that the child has a surrogate mother?Will soceity still not blame the woman for not being able to conceive?It's a method to have atleast one parents genes in the child by any means.I maintain that it's ridiculous to spend money&time on this procedure&also risk trauma to a lot of people.Couples will be better off adopting a child.

Someone asked this question in this convesation, but I am going to ask it again - what is motherhood?

Is a baby that is carried for 9+ months something like an organ that can be donated, like a kidney or something perhaps?

Motherhood goes beyond mere thoughts and emotions. Science has revealed that a lot of mother's love and affection for the offspring has to do with hormones. That is why everything, from animals to birds to humans exhibit a very striking similarity when it comes to the maternal instinct. Every mother (and not just human mothers) is fiercely protective of her offspring.

Experiments have also shown that even male rats injected with the hormones produced in a female during pregnancy and childbirth can endow the male rat with curious maternal tendencies such as protecting and caring for the young.

And with humans, we have the additional dimension of emotions, coupled with hormones. I think it will be reasonable on my part to say that a woman that bears a child is hardly in control of herself, influenced by factors such as hormones and emotions, to say nothing of society. No amount of counselling can help her cut off all relations with the child she bore, as though it were the umbilical cord being cut off.

Just because science today allows surrogate motherhood doesnt make it ethically or morally legal, anymore than cloning is. At least, these are my strong thoughts.

I do sympathise with all the childless couples who look upon surrogate motherhood as a boon, but think a while about the mother who bears the child. She may do it for the money, but may be she doesnt just realize everything that is involved.

As the blahblah bunny rightly said, God in His infinite wisdom surely would have a better package waiting for you...

The mention of harmones urges me to explain another grave aspect of this issue: After delivery(even as labour starts) the mother's body experiences a host of harmonal changes. Lactation starts, along with it as the mother starts suckling the child the uyerus starts shrinking to its original size which takes a few weeks. In the case of the surrogate mother if she is to part with the baby soon after delivering it without setting eyes on it what a hell she must suffer for stopping the lactation process! The swollen breasts if unrelieved can be very painful leading to development of fever and abscesses which may necessitate surgical removal. The milk would be expressed and medicine given to stop lactation! What an atrocity! These things if happened to a luckless woman whose baby died after birth one can get reconciled to it, with grief, of course. But having to undergo this hell for a few thousands of rupees, for the selfish desire of a couple is really not palatable. So the "wise" laws behind this option & the media publicising this option cannot fail to fall under criticism from any sensitive,humane human being.

Well guys, I hate to be the dash of cold water thrown in Pa!! But the truth is, we are all empathising here with our feelings and sentimentality thrown in!

The truth is if everyone feels the same way abt babies and children, born in this world, why are so many kids treated callously by adults????? Motherhood, lactation, post-partum blues etc are feelings of women towards a child, she would have wanted, but the truth is there are many women out there who do not bat an eye in carrying out this deed unemotionally.

Having a child is no mere bonding for mother and child alone, what of the father???? In surrogating, the women have no emotional bonding with the sperm donor, so to all practical intents she really is renting out her womb, Pa!! Sure, it's a real baby, but one that was conceived without any real attachments or bonding with a man!

I in all honesty, do not feel it's wrong, if there are women out there willing to do this deed for a good cause. Eventhough, money may or maynot change hands, I still think it's a good deed for a woman to help a childless couple to have a child. At least genetically, the man shares half of the child's gene pool which an adopted child would not have, Pa! :)

**Warning –rea…lly lo..ng post, couldn’t help it :) **

Surrogacy - yet another ethical double-edged sword in the world of choices ad nauseum!

Before we go into this is an ethical practice and examine the intricacies of the mother-child relationship, let's look at the historical options that have been offered to the childless couples.

Firstly, adoption came into practice - in our Indian society (sub-continent, to be politically correct) adoption of one's own blood relative was the customary answer to infertility. Later, the adoption of children born into other families started coming into practice slowly, with the concomitant qualms about such a practice. Could the child be really 'yours' if he/she is not from your caste, family, having some genetic connection with you even in the remotest way - were the kinds of apprehensions that were faced by people, and still continuing to be faced, from family elders.
Then came, treatments for infertility - artificial insemination and subsequently IVF or in vitro fertilization.

Artificial insemination is probably less ethically controversial of the two. IVF would have to simply boggle the mind of a 'creationist' - insertion of a sperm into the ovum and simulating conducive conditions for artificial fertilization and formation of embryo. Why is this all of a sudden a more acceptable practice when compared with surrogating, atleast for some? Aren't we not deciding which sperm will fertilize which ovum, thereby totally erasing the natural selection process in a way? Or according to belief systems, aren't we denying "God" the chance to see to which sperm will fertilize the ovum, thereby carving one more notch in the tree of god-playing tactics?? (This is an argumentative statement – not a personal one).

Furthermore most of the IVFs lead to multiple pregnancies since more than one embryo is planted into the womb of the woman, in order to maximize the chance of becoming pregnant with atleast one fetus. Is this not an unnatural way of procreating, forcing multiple pregnancies upon the woman, endangering her health as well as having to witness the painful decision of, in some cases, having to abort one of the embryos so the other(s) can survive??

Given that none of the above options are not without moral and ethical questions, what is so different about surrogating? It is only yet another ethical dilemma that the society faces. Here, it is important to specify that I'm only talking about willful volunteering of the surrogate in order to help the childless couple, NOT the 'womb for hire' type, which adds multiple dimensions to this already complex situation.

Recently, there was news of a Gujarati couple living in UK who had a child by a surrogate mother, this wasn't different from any other surrogate cases, EXCEPT the surrogate is the mother of the biological mother of the child, making her the first woman in history to give birth to her own grandchild!! I'd like to see Vikramadityan answer this riddle!! After the child was born, the proud grandma claimed, she would have done it any day for her daughter, to give her the gift of ‘motherhood’. Is this the pinnacle of motherly love for a child (grandmother and mother) or a twisted tale of sordid relationships abandoning all moral pillars upholding the institution of family??

Another peculiar case, this from the US - famous TV personality Joan Lunden recently had a pair of twins through a surrogate, the reason why this piqued my interest is that Lunden already has three full grown daughters (naturally conceived by and born to her) and she resorted to surrogate to bear these children because 'she yearns to be a new mother again' and could not conceive naturally since she is over 50. Now the twist is, after the birth of these two babies, she plans for more through the same surrogate!!!

I feel the urge to brand this woman (Lunden) as a psycho maniacal breeder of livestock but what do you folks think?!

The surrogate has been doing this as a sort of a profession - she is a single parent with 2 daughters naturally conceived by her, and she has borne many children previously, for others. Lunden claims that the surrogate is involved in the lives of the children and will be recognized as part of their family. What is this, 21st century “Brady Bunch”??

In the end, it seems that humanity’s constant urge to propagate itself has led to such circumstances. It is the built in desire to genetically replicate our selves that drives all of this. Before we judge the couple that resorts to a surrogate, claiming that they should rather adopt, let’s think about their unique positions. Not everyone is capable of parental love towards someone else’s child. I’m sure we all have seen people who treat their biological children as precious creatures and every other child as the spawn of evil. It is not an emotional bond that can spring out of nowhere; if it is not innate it cannot be forced upon.

Again, to reiterate, this argument assumes that the surrogate and couple understand the consequences and the surrogate willingly helps the couple to bear a child of their genetic makeup. In the case that PP has mentioned above, where women are subjected to the cruelty of having to ‘rent their wombs’ for a few thousand rupees, it is utterly deplorable and saddening. But I got to point out one thing though. In the past (may be even to day, I don’t know)“wet nurses” as they are called, some women were hired to feed babies in cases where the biological mother could not lactate or died due to birthing complications. Isn’t that a testimonial to the fact that motherly instinct overcomes relational barriers, and that if that was acceptable why not a ‘gestational nurse’ who volunteers to actually carry the baby in her womb? My personal choice, given the circumstances would be a different one, but this line of thought, I felt, deserved some merit.

Motherhood is one emotion that seems to be shared by almost all vertebrates. Care for young ones is the first emotion in this universe. All other feelings came much later. In the animal kingdom too there are surrogate mothers, although something like IVF and stuff is not there. In a pack of wild dogs there is always an alpha male and female. Alpha female is the "Godmother" for the entire pack. Whichever female gives birth to young ones, alpha female barges in and carries the pups to her den/burrow and starts feeding them her milk. The disconnection of bonds between natural mother and her pups is immediate. The natural mother is in tremendous mental (?) and physical pain and tries unsuccessfully to snatch her pups back so many times. The tussle between the natural mother and the alpha female goes on for months. I saw this on the discovery channel and was amazed by the whole gamut of feelings the natural mother in a pack of wild dogs displayed. The pain as Pavalamani madam has put it rightly is always for the surrogate mother. But looking at the other side of the coin at what scorpio says also makes sense in a way. We humans have from time imemorial have made it a habit to inculcate certain altruistic tendencies, like some among us have sworn to remain celibates and serve society like the monks and nuns of missionaries while some among us have attached ourselves with a cause and sacrificed many things for that all while going against the natural order. Although the concept of human surrogate mother is altruistic in its foundation, the fact that it has degenerated into "womb for hire" is a cause for concern. Compared to that the story of a sister acting as a surrogate for her sibling's off spring is in line with natural tendencies as well as the altruistic tint among humans.

Hi,
I don't mind to be a surrogate father!! :wink: :lol: