Can a Surrogate Mother Get HIV Or STDs?

A lot of women keep asking what chances they have getting infected while playing the surrogate for a mom who is HIV positive. We know that AIDS is transported from one body to the other in many different ways. But will carrying an HIV positive mom's egg lead to the same thing? Read more...

To go to the core of this query, the first thing a woman should do is educating herself about home surrogacy. Take the instance of a government funded clinic in America. It recently came to the headlines by refusing to assist in any type of surrogacy for homosexual men couple.

Both of these two persons were carrying HIV-positive. Their whole scheme here was to fertilize an ovum off a female donor with sperms from one of those gay men and then implanting that within a 2nd female who had previously agreed to bear the pregnancy.

However, the gay couple challenged the decision of the surrogacy clinic on logical grounds. They emphasized on the point that there were hardly any research findings that documented any cases of HIV-positive sero-conversion within the recipients of the gametes off HIV-positive donors.

They also challenged the decision as they had evidence that a woman was clearly agreed for carrying the pregnancy. Still, though that clinic was offering assisted conception to both the HIV-discordant gay couples (and as same-sex couples, they denied to undergo this procedure.

Their argument was that those superseding ethical concern in such a case was to protect of the prospective surrogate mom from getting HIV infection. If it was assumed that the risk of this woman's getting an HIV infection was zero without the surrogacy contract, or implantation of that fertilized egg. However, due care was undertaken for reducing the risk of this unusual HIV transmission - this, they felt would fully eliminate the risk for that surrogate woman.

But all these arguments were turned down by the ethics committee, as it expressed clear supports to the decision of the clinic regarding not performing the process or their reasoning behind it.

As you understand how vague the situation is. And it should be also clear by now that it's tough to give a verdict on whether a surrogate mom should carry an egg from an infected woman. The decision can be only directed by your ethics. Hence different people may have different view points regarding this. Consider the case of the following women when she commented on the above mentioned case.

When she was 13, this woman found that she was born with NO UTERUS! At the age of 19, her initial sexual encounter was a horror when she came to know that the sex made her HIV positive. Just 2 years later she met her husband who happens to be a great person. This guy as well was HIV-positive. The woman found hope that she's found someone at least who she could consider her life partner.

Despite being HIV positive she found her love. Now wonders whether she can get a surrogate mom who'd want to carry her baby knowing she is HIV-positive!