To think there's a valid discussion to be had about the ethics of surrogacy?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Just what the title says.

I know some women become gestational surrogates out of altruism, and that in some places (not the UK) women can be paid quite a bit to be surrogates. But I still think the ethics of it is worth discussing.

I'm curious how other people see this. I worry that it's so easy for women to be exploited. And it does seem to me that there's a gendered issue here. I'm not sure men 'get' how difficult and potentially dangerous pregnancy is.

LRD but if me being a surrogate for a couple is kept quiet, or within a circle of people such as family/friends/the surro community, then i too will escape the nastiness. Does that make sense?

mustbemad17 - if not at the time of the PO when you like the parents to have full legal parental responsibility? At some point in the pregnancy or just sooner after birth?

OddBoots sooner after birth tbh. Because it can get tricky otherwise. I was single when i carried, but for my married friend she had to put her hubby on the BC (i still don't get those rules!!). This meant that altho her IPs took the baby home straight away, they were in a really tentative legal position

Whiskeyowl I would say social reproductive labour is what Marx used to refer to the passing on of class privilege, or lack thereof, between generations. Reproductive labour is the work involved in pregnancy and childrearing. It is rarely paid for, and even when it is low paid work.

Just to clarify, I do think other forms of work are exploitative, but there is an extra misogynistic angle here.

Women are criticised for paying for childcare or a cleaner (even if there is a bloke in the household), whereas two men can get/pay for a surrogate to carry a child that they will take away from its mother at birth for their own benefit, and this is celebrated, nay even heralded, as progressive. I think this is the crux of the issue.

Pengggwn as above. I'd like to see IPs get more legal rights from birth. If a surrogate is married for example, her husband has to go on the BC. This gives IPs no legal standing over a baby they take care of from day one...and it also potentially leaves surrogates open to legal repurcussions

I also find it quite problematic that people are talking about voluntary, even unpaid surrogacy as somehow 'better' than women being paid for it.

It's kind of like saying 'you can do whatever you want as long as you give away your reproductive labour for free'. How is that is any way progressive?

It is really fascinating to hear about the diverse range of experiences that surrogates themselves have had. I have a question for those women: do you think it makes a difference to the way you perceive and feel about surrogacy if the work is paid, compared to cases where it is voluntarily undertaken as an act of care?

wazflam - No, (socially) reproductive labour in Marxian discourse is what I have described it as being over the last couple of pages - the unpaid, caring labour that is largely done by women outside of the realm of productive labour (e.g. in factories). It's not really related to class privilege except tangentially. The Wikipedia article on this from which you're drawing is talking about a wider concept of social reproduction in sociology (Bourdieu etc) which is slightly different.

Others seem to be making a rather different argument- that there is something inherently more wrong with surrogacy than with other kinds of work. I'm interested in what additional reasons the latter group could argue

A friend of mine offered to be an altruistic surrogate for us after we'd been through numerous miscarriages. I think I would have considered it and even paying for sure (though she is far wealthier than us), had it been possible with mine and my husband's gametes (but it's the gametes that are causing the miscarriages, not my body). I think what is making me so uncomfortable is my friends using a woman's eggs and her uterus and effectively buying a designer baby from a brochure. And I think that's probably as much, if not more, about the child than a young woman's choice to be paid for reproductive work.

I think what upsets me is the idea of a surrogate mother who is unrelated to the baby being legally allowed to keep it.

Penggwn of course they should. Biologically the baby is not her husband's, why should he get a say in that?? One would hope that the couple were fully in agreement before the baby was conceived! The biological father should, surely, be named on the BC from the start?

Intended parents (IPs) should imo acquire rights as soon as they take the baby home.

Whisky i'd have done it for nothing had i been allowed. My expenses were low - yep, i got the 'are you sure this was your choice?' from CAFCASS because of this. The only argument i had with my IPs was once baby was born...i tried to give them back a chunk of expenses that i hadn't needed. They declined.

Sadly currently if your expenses fall below the average (this was between £10-12k when i carried) it is automatically assumed by CAFCASS you are being exploited & they dig to ascertain otherwise ime.

A surrogate mother isn't unrelated to the baby even if her eggs aren't used. Her body has nurtured, grown and birthed that child, created a symbiotic relationship with them. Do you think that a mother should have her newborn removed if there was a mix up in an IVF clinic and her egg wasn't used?

I don’t think that it’s a feminist issue tbh, but I do think that if one debates surrogacy along with egg/sperm donation (all of which should be up for discussion IMO) for any other reasons you are considered to be a heartless bastard on account of the fact that “well, you can’t possibly know the heartbreak that couples who cannot have children have to go through,” which might or might not be true, but it doesn’t IMO change the view that just because something can be done, doesn’t mean that it should.

It does unfortunately go without saying that in the case of both surrogacy as well as egg donation, women are potentially more exploitable due to the fact that the treatments a woman has to go through in order to either donate eggs or in order to carry a pregnancy is far more invasive than it is for men who donate sperm. However as much as this could be seen as exploiting vulnerable women it should also IMO be seen as commodifying children. Can’t have a baby naturally? Pay a surrogate, pay for someone’s eggs/sperm and have one that way.

And when anyone brings up the matter of how the children of these deals feel about it people will tell you. that the children will of course rather feel that they would rather be here than never have been here at all. Which isn’t really a valid argument.

The laws around anonymity of donation have been changed for a reason - because children feel that they have lost out on half of their heritage by being the products of donation. Some people might argue that to say that Tom Daily and his partner having a child is wrong because same sex couples can’t produce a child. Well reality is that they can’t, be they male or female. And neither can single women/men without someone donating their sperm/eggs/potentially use of their uterus. Sometimes the choices we make in life mean that we can’t just have what we want when we want it.

alpine there has been a recent case of a surrogate keeping a baby despite not being biologically connected (donor egg). Her IPs took her to court & the baby was handed over to the IPs.

IPs can take surrogates to court for custody in cases like that, but obviously it takes time & money. Would wonder what good that does the baby to be raised by one person for months & then handed over to another set of strangers.

I know of a surrogate who terminated her surrogate baby out of spite because her IPs refused to up her expenses...she then callously sent her IF a father's day card from 'bump'

stitchedglitch

I think I would want my actual baby back if there was a switch-up with my eggs. And no, I wouldn't view a surrogate as related to the baby if eggs weren't used.

In the case linked earlier the surrogate had a donor egg and one of the IPs was the biological father but she was legally acknowledged as the mother and given full custody.

But that's my point Pengggwn to me it shouldn't be that way. We have all this uproar when a woman decides not to put the father on the BC for whatever reason, but in surrogacy it's okay to lie on the BC because someone is married.

There will always be complex cases that need additional legal review but we have to be very careful what gets put into law. For example, as much as the case mentioned of the surrogate who terminated the pregnancy sounds upsetting and problematic the only legal alternative would be to bar terminations for surrogate pregnancies (without the IPs agreeing) which would be absolutely wrong.

stitchedglitch

You mean the donor-egg surrogate was given custody over the IPs? And the IF was bio father? Yeah, I think that's wrong.

Custody is the same as within regular couples, on a case by case basis of who can best meet the child's needs. But IPs have the right to take surros to court if they decide to keep the baby.

I'm still waiting for that link to load properly, it might happen in this millenia if my phone bucks up

Chaos I also agree with you that there is a big problem with the commodification of children. People on the original Tom Daly thread are arguing that he and his partner are just as 'entitled' to a child as a straight couple.

Err, I don't think anybody is entitled to a child. Or to use a woman's body for their own gain for that matter.