The fact that a wealthy, white mother-of-two in California with access to excellent prenatal and birth care, acting as a surrogate for another family in the safest, cleanest, least coercive of all possible surrogacy arrangements, died this week while giving birth really underscores the surrogacy thoughts I've been having recently. Should you be ethically willing or legally able to compel another woman to risk death at worst and major lifetime health consequences at best just so you can have a child that is biologically related to you?
Here’s an article about it.
She died of an amniotic fluid embolism, which is rare but very deadly.
This post gives another example of a surrogate dying and includes this disturbing information:
An article online incorrectly states “the risks of being a surrogate mother are the same as for every pregnancy.” This is not true. Recent studies have shown that surrogate pregnancies are different and are high-risk. Studies show that women pregnant with donor eggs (as in gestational surrogacy) have a more than three-fold risk of developing pregnancy induced hypertension and pre-eclampsia.
W/ the greater risk of hypertension/pre-eclampsia, why? Or rather, is it known why?
Because in a normal pregnancy the baby is >50% related to the mother. In surrogacy, an unrelated egg is used, which means entirely foreign biological material in the woman's body.
Pregnancy is basically a 9 month-long battle between the woman and the embryo; a "healthy" full-term pregnancy can only happen if, essentially, the women's body doesn't realize that the embryo is there, because if it does it will attack it with the woman's immune system as a "foreign body." This is the main reason the placenta exists, to shield the embryo from the woman's immune system (along with nutrient absorption obviously).
The closer the embryo is to the woman, the less likely an immune response will be triggered; this applies to gestational surrogacy, but also relates to things like the sex of the embryo and the embryo's blood type. So, the more genetically different an embryo is from its mother, the higher the overall risk of triggering an immune response, which then increases the likelihood of a smorgasbord of complications given the strain that an immune response causes both the mother and the embryo.
this is just personal observation, but all the people I know who had surrogates (which is only 3 so who really knows), their babies are so so sick all the time. Like months premature, weeks in NICU, multiple hospital stays in infancy, now constantly sick as toddlers, can’t keep weight on, lowest percentiles of height / weight, etc etc. Literally every one of them.
and maybe it’s just a coincidence but maybe you aren’t supposed to implant your eggs in another woman and assume her body will grow a healthy baby for you? not to even talk about what it does to an infant to be forcibly removed from their mother at birth….
This should be obvious to anyone who knows anything about pregnancy/women's healthcare. But because even doctors seem to think that pregnancy is when a woman just incubates a man's offspring for a few months, providing nothing but a chamber in which the baby can grow, they treat it as if it makes no difference where the embryo came from.
Surrogacy is this horrible intersection between modern medicine + capitalism and an almost medieval understanding of pregnancy. Worst of both worlds.
it's not only surrogacy. i meet a lot of kids who are the products of IVF, and the allergies, the immune issues, the eye issues, they are many. I wonder about embryos who have been frozen and thawed. surely that affects the human being? who went through that?
Embryos are not human beings yet. When they are frozen, they are only 1-5 days "old". It is anywhere from 1 to 200 cells big.
That said, in terms of the development of allergies and metabolic disorders that are higher in IVF babies, there is a hypothesis that cells are incredibly sensitive to the environment, which would include being sensitive to freezing. However, nothing is proven specifically about cryo and embryos being worse than fresh implantation.
Interestingly, a very large cohort study found that IVF offspring implanted from frozen cells culture showed no statsically signifant effects for development of immune issues. HOWEVER(!) A link was shown between immune issues and FRESH implantation! The study states it could just be chance, but the number show that it is actually fresh (not frozen embryo) implantation that can trigger immune issues in the offspring later.
Now, the development of immune and metabolic disorders, and especially asthma and allergies, on IVF offspring is quite studied. The biggest factor appears to be in the placenta of women who have recieved IVF protocols. Basically for some reason, IVF treatments mess up the mother's gene expression in the placenta and this alteration in the placenta in turn messes up the fetus, which obviously in turn affects the offspring once born.
There is also the stress load of the mother during pregnancy. Infertility and IVF treatments are incredibly stressful on the mother, both mentally and physically. Mothers doing IVF have increased cortisol and anxiety levels compared to mothers who don't do IVF. This can impact (negatively) fetal development of important immune organs and microbiota.
Studies have shown that the most likely cause so far for the allergy issues in IVF offspring is actually stress levels in the mother PRE-implantation. That doesn't discount any placental or pregnancy complications but it seems that the mother's stress levels and the IVF protocols themselves are the strongest determining factors.
So add all that to a surrogate who as people have explained above is not even genetically related to the embryo! It is ripe with potential problems of placental development.
All this said: you will find a lot of controversy about even the theory that IVF/ART can impact immune development in any way. Personally, I think this denialism is due to the industry and money behind ART/surrogacy. They don't want anything that could ever limit or reduce their bottom-line by scaring away couples. It is a business, not healthcare. Although, I do sort of think the entire worry is unfounded. I don't think 99.9% of the women (and men) who undergo ART particularly care about the 8-14% higher risk their fetus would have of developing allergy, asthma, or other immune and metabolic disorders. I think most wouldn't think twice about that "small" risk. Mostly because I think couples who undergo these procedures don't really care about children at all, they only care about themselves. It is a purely selfish incentive and journey.
But I am anti-surrogacy and anti-ART/IVF so I am obviously biased. I don't think infertility of the human race is a current problem, I think people (especially women) who are that obsessed with having babies are mentally ill and need therapy not children, and the entire industry is corrupt, unethical, and deeply misogynistic and created to prop up the concepts of nuclear family, white supremacy, capitalism, and patriachy and prey on vulnerable women (especially true in the surrogacy industry but also applies to all ART). To me, it is such a good example of everything wrong with society in one single industry.
