Politics & Current Events
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Intense Surrogate Story
Did anyone else hear about this? This is going to be an interesting legal case.
http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/what-are-a-surrogate-s-rights--ct-woman--211138554.html
Re: Intense Surrogate Story
Pro/Anti-choice debate aside...
She never should have signed the contract if she couldn't adhere to the stipulations due to her beliefs.
I think it's terrible a gestational carrier can move to another state and gain legal custody of another couple's biological child that she's carrying. I would be livid if someone made medical decisions for *my* child against my wishes.
The fact that at one point she was willing to terminate for $15,000, even if she "changed her mind", tells me perhaps her convictions weren't as strong as she wants people to believe.
I know she'll be seen as a heroine for the Anti-Choicers but I'm Team Bio Parents on this one. Once the surrogate signed the contract, she committed to following the parents' wishes and she broke that contract.
I do hope that baby lives as comfortable of a life as she can while she is here.
I just can't stop thinking about the poor little girl born to suffer. She has severe issues and most likely won't live long. And all because of someone's misguided "morality."
Oh yeah, the surrogate is so moral that she lied to the parents and signed something saying she would abort in the case of severe abnormalities with the fetus, but then refuses to do it. Oh yeah, she's so moral that she would have taken an extra $5,000 and had an abortion, but when the couple refuses to be extorted, she stole what should have been THEIR decision, and made the choice herself. This surrogate makes my blood boil. Opportunist to the max.
They are the ones that most deserve the credit in this story, for sure.
I think there are a lot of things about this story that are morally wrong and mostly with the things that the surrogate did. She should never have agreed to become pregnant if she could not abide by the contract. However, legally under the way our legal system views pregnancy she's 100% legally right under the way right to privacy laws have been interpreted. It doesn't matter whose baby is in there, she currently has a legal right to decide what happens to her body. The bio-parents have no more legal right to tell her what to do than a bio-father has a right to tell a woman to continue to carry or to abort a child. It's either her right to choose or it isn't. Her moral character and potentially financial motivations don't matter just like they don't legally matter in any other abortion situation in our country.
If the bio-parents are pro-choicers they should have understood that.
The CNN article linked near the top has some more details not in this one.
I don't have a lot of sympathy for this woman and I really question her motives. Before becoming a surrogate this woman's only income was child support. The article didn't say if she had actually been a surrogate before but she had worked with the agency. She wanted to get pregnant to pay her bills and oh yeah, help another family.
The bio parents/ dad wanted a surrogate to carry their child because their other children were born premature and still had medical problems as a result. They wanted this child to avoid what their other children had gone through. I completely understand them wanting to terminate the pregnancy to save their youngest child from suffering.
The surrogate was getting paid monthly. The $10,000 the parents were willing to pay for the surrogate to have an abortion is basicly what they would have paid her to carry the baby to term. That wasn't enough for the surrogate to agree. She would have had an abortion for $5,000 more.
It's easy for her to say now how she wanted to help another couple, how pro-life and moral she is, and how she cared so much for this baby and wanted to protect her but her actions show how motivated she is by money. Sure she may have morals but they are for sale at a pretty low price.
This is true. They can sue her for breach of contract, but that's about it.
That said, the surrogate is a pretty awful person, IMO.
I think it is safe to say a Pro Life person understands the Pro Choice argument, they just don't agree with it.
I don't believe the premise is any different, this woman made the choice to continue with her pregnancy just as someone who makes a choice to terminate a pregnancy. Each woman has that right, to choose what she believes to be in her own best interests (right or wrong, good or bad) it is her choice.
Exactly. Pro-lifers do not believe that every (any) woman should have that right.
Oh I call bullcrap on that. I know several women who staunchly believe women have a right to choose but don't believe in late term or partial birth abortion. Does that negate their Pro-Choice view?
???
You said:
Each woman has that right, to choose what she believes to be in her own best interests (right or wrong, good or bad) it is her choice.
That is the pro-choice position. If you believe that, you are pro-choice. If you don't believe that, you are not. What am I missing here?
"Partial birth abortion" is not an actual thing, by the way. It's a made up term that has no scientific or medical meaning.
"Each woman has that right, to choose what she believes to be in her own best interests (right or wrong, good or bad) it is her choice."
In the context of this post, I don't see you confusion. You believe a woman has a right to choose, why does that not extend to a woman's right to choose to NOT terminate a pregnancy?
And, partial-birth abortion is a non-medical term used to describe a type of an abortion procedure which is performed in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy, with the goal of delivering a fetus that is not alive. So, while a non-medical term, it is a term which people are aware of in conversation.
I don't understand why it is so hard to grasp that I believe a woman reigns supreme over her own body but I also believe in the dignity of life. I advocate a pro-life stance (duh, I am adopted) but I also understand there are times when an abortion is medically necessary (think the young lady in Ireland who died because she was denied an abortion).
Again, it was in the context of this subject regarding the surrogate. Why would be acceptable for a woman to choose to terminate a pregnancy but not acceptable for a woman to decide NOT to terminate a pregnancy.
I do believe a woman reigns supreme over her own body. If she so chooses to terminate her pregnancy, that is her right. I just personally don't agree with it.
I was re-reading and yes, you were referring to this situation. Sorry for the confusion. The pro-choice view would certainly support this woman's right to choose to not have an abortion. That is the whole point of the pro-choice viewpoint: women should be able to choose what happens/doesn't happen to their own bodies. I think the issue some people had with this particular situation was her breaching the terms of her agreement with the parents. That said, even if the parents bring a breach of contract claim, I think her lawyer's argument will win (i.e. that she controls what she does with her body, regardless of the language of the contract).