Lets discuss

Xan921 · August 2014

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/surrogate-mom-offered-10k-abort-baby-disabilties-article-1.1279997

Pro choice/Pro life aside, do you think that a surrogate should have any say in whether or not a couple wishes to terminate the pregnancy?

Apollo11235 · August 2014

It sounds like there needed to be better communication all around, so that ideally it's not about anyone's "say," since they've all discussed and agreed on courses of action in various cases. Of course, it's impossible to go over everything that could possibly go wrong, but in this case someone should have at least attempted to define "severe fetal abnormalities" in writing.

As far the surrogate's rights, yes, I think she should have a say in what her body goes through. An abortion at 22-23 weeks is a huge deal for the mother, surrogate or not. Given that her objection was moral rather than health-related, it's tough to say. Ultimately, since it's her body and "severe" was never defined, I think she's in the right here.

ETA: I should have added, I think what she did was pretty shitty and the legal parents can probably sue her for lots of money, but it's a civil issue rather than criminal. The bottom line is, while none of them should have put themselves in this position by not agreeing on worst-case scenarios ahead of time, you can't force a woman to get an abortion; all you can really do is take her to court if she was supposed to do so.

KonaCoffeeBean · August 2014

I absolutely believe it should be the surrogate's decision. Abortion is an elective surgical procedure that no woman should endure without her voluntary and informed consent. The situation that the couple encountered is incredibly sad, but I think that it is one of this risks assumed by utilizing third-party reproduction. During the pregnancy, some of the decisions inheritantly belong to the surrogate.

LooneyLife · August 2014

This sounded very familiar to me so I did some searching. Here's a post about it when GP discussed it last year.

Warning: There is some sensitive discussion which may be a trigger for several people here.

http://forums.thenest.com/discussion/8856992/debate-it-wwyd/p1

Apollo11235 · August 2014

LooneyLife said:

This sounded very familiar to me so I did some searching. Here's a post about it when GP discussed it last year.
Warning: There is some sensitive discussion which may be a trigger for several people here.
http://forums.thenest.com/discussion/8856992/debate-it-wwyd/p1

I thought this looked familiar, too. I'm not sure if I followed the other post before, since I didn't intro until a couple months later.

BeeLu · August 2014

I think the thing that strikes me with this story (which I've read before), is that the surrogate signed a contract at the beginning agreeing to terminate if the baby was going to have significant problems. If she wasn't sure or was wavering about her feelings on this in the beginning, she should not have signed the contract. If it wasn't clear what this might entail (i.e. later term abortion, how severe the problems would be before termination would be discussed, etc) then that's a failure of communication between all parties, and the sort of thing that needs to be made explicitly clear for surrogates so that they can make informed health decisions that avoid the heartbreak all of these people are going through.

Xan921 · August 2014

Thanks @LooneyLife; I wasn't sure if it had been discussed before or not and was too lazy to go search for it lol. They were talking about it on the radio this morning as if it were new news but then after look at a couple of articles about it I realized that is was dated.

nfp147 · August 2014

I think the surrogate was completely in the wrong here. This was not her child and not her decision to make.

poppies717 · August 2014

My sympathy ended here: "Kelley... told CNN that she would have the abortion if the couple, who was not identified, would pay her more."

ETA: This makes it pretty darn clear that this wasn't a moral/ethical dilemma; it was all about the Benjamins for her from the start.

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