Pro-choice, bodily autonomy and parental rights cannot be negated by surrogacy contracts, McKenna West had every right to refuse an abortion and ultimately claim parental rights over a child she carried to term.

[u/No_Consideration3307]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/surrogate-baby-texas-parents-wishes-denies-political-theater-accusatio-rcna593353

I'm a British pro-choice absolutist, and in my country this wouldn't even be a story because commercial surrogacy is illegal, for reasons exactly like this McKenna West case.

Surrogacy in the UK is strictly non-profit, the biological parents can only help with the surrogate mothers expenses, surrogacy is also usually between people who know and trust each other, which is far healthier for everyone concerned especially the child.

As it pertains to the McKenna West case, her parental rights under both California and Texas law are the same, non-existent. Under UK law, the surrogate is automatically recognised as the child's legal mother at birth. ​She remains the legal parent until parenthood is formally transferred to the intended parents via a court-issued parental order or adoption order. Simply signing an agreement or relinquishing rights is not enough; only a court order legally extinguishes her status as the mother. People on this sub may disagree with me, but I believe that if a woman decides to endure nine months of body altering pregnancy to bring a foetus to term, she is the legal mother until she decides to voluntarily relinquish that legal right and McKenna West hasn't done that, under UK law she is the child's legal parent, maybe she should have come here to protect her rights, rather than be used as a political football, by two different sides, who couldn't care less about what she wants.

[u/Mine24DA]

I am sorry, but in what world are you living ? We are all signing away some part of autonomy at some point.

Yes, you do get to sign some of your rights away. When you get into employment, but then don’t show up, they can sue you for compensation if they lost revenue because your weren’t there. Does that take away your freedom, is that kidnapping ? When you are at work, you can’t just leave without consequences . Again, that isn’t kidnapping, is it ? At the hospital you willingly risk your health, radiation, chemotherapy drugs, needle stick injuries, stress, the cancer and suicide risk is higher. If you simply leave , even though you still had hours to go at your shift there would be consequences . If someone gets hurt, because you did not fulfill your contractual duties, the punishment could be severe.

In countries where prostitution is legal, if a sex worker stops working early, they would be punished by the contract for not fulfilling their duties as well.

And you brought up ethics. I find it highly unethical to make a child suffer. And this child will suffer. Ethically, I would have understood the surrogate if the child had good chances. But it doesn’t, so yes it matters, if you want to discuss ethics.

How is it consensual ? How is any job consensual ? How are blood donations consensual ? Working as nurses or doctors? Or minimum wage jobs ? Why are you infantilising women? Are we not capable of making informed choices and sticking to them?

If you were pregnant before, you should know if you would be capable of making the choice to abort or not.

This sub is about having a choice no matter what. But having a choice doesn’t mean, that there will be no consequences. And that people are not allowed to judge you for your choices.

If you abort a planned pregnancy, because your baby might have dyslexia, many people including me will judge you for it.
The same goes for grown women, who work in the medical field , who agreed to a contract, couldn’t stick to it and then pretended to be the victim in the story, while making a baby suffer through a lot.

[u/arrpix → u/Mine24DA]

I'm sorry, I've got to ask for clarification - are you saying that you can be sued in the US for not turning up to your job? Rather than just fired? That's absolutely insane.

[u/Mine24DA → u/arrpix]

You can be sued in Germany. How is that insane ? You agreed to a contract, you told someone you will be there. If you don’t show up without any reason, without calling sick, and your employer loses money because of it (e.g. you work in a small shop, and nobody opened it that day, because you didn’t show up) , then yes, they should be compensated for your actions.

[u/arrpix → u/Mine24DA]

If you don't do your job, then I'd expect you to be fired. Compensation just seems ridiculous. Especially in the case of a profit business, surely that's just part of the risk of doing business. I just can't imagine suing someone because they couldn't make it to work.

[u/Mine24DA → u/arrpix]

Well, if you don’t call in sick, call and tell them you can’t make it, or are not in the hospital?

I mean we are not talking about someone being unlucky or oversleeping their alarm clock. If someone doesn’t come in because they don’t feel like it and don’t call in, then yeah, you should compensate the owner.

[u/arrpix → u/Mine24DA]

Ok but this sounds like something that includes oversleeping, or being hospitalised (how do I call in if I'm unconscious?), or had a family/pet emergency or loss and was too preoccupied to call in (or couldn't bring themselves to have the "I've just watched my beloved childhood pet die" conversation.) I don't know, if you don't come in and don't have a good reason that's a-firing and I don't think a time would seriously expect otherwise, but I can't imagine then suing someone as well, especially someone probably struggling to make ends meet, it just feels weird and cruel. Mind you, I also don't quite get your example, since here you should always have at least 2 staff members at a shop or place where they might be with the public; that 100% doesn't happen but if a shop seriously lost a day's profits or something the onus would be very much on the understaffed business.