Pope Francis calls for universal ban on surrogacy

[shockeditellyou]

https://www.thejournal.ie/pope-francis-calls-for-universal-ban-surrogacy-6267108-Jan2024/

Good for him. Encouragingly, the comments I’ve seen on another site where this was posted are almost entirely supportive of banning surrogacy, which I wasn’t expecting.

@TheLogicalSong "The Pope is of the most influential people on the planet, and like anyone he is entitled to an opinion, but his qualifications to legislate on this issue are nil."

Are you saying that nobody is qualified to legislate on anything of which they have no direct experience? Not sure how that's going to work.

Then surely they should have the right to choose to be a surrogate …

I have four sisters. We are a close family.

I wouldn't have hesitated to carry a child for one of them, had she been unable to do so. Not for commercial gain, and my 'consent' would have been me freely offering to do so, without being asked.

The situation never arose so I have no way of knowing whether she would have accepted.

Commercial surrogacy is far too open to abuse to be acceptable, and the idea that a woman would pay someone to carry a baby simply to avoid pregnancy taking its toll on her own body is totally sick.

Given the catholic church's history of abusing single mothers, (and mothers in general) I think the Pope has absolutely zero right to express an opinion. His church is just as much an aberration as it has always been.

A very sad fact, but a fact nonetheless. Surrogacy is never right in my opinion.

What about the baby? It’s a human person, not a commodity to be passed on to new owners.

And, no, bringing up adoption is a total red herring. Adoption is a completely different set of circumstances than commissioning a baby to be grown to order.

@Pigeotto "Then surely they should have the right to choose to be a surrogate …"

Come back to me when rich white women are routinely making the choice to carry babies for other people.

Some people don’t realise that even if it’s not her egg, the birth certificate will say the surrogate is the mother. In the UK anyway. It might also say the biological father. The future parents have to adopt the baby, including the biological mother if it was her egg used. The law is very clear that the woman who gives birth is the ‘mother’. I think that’s important and significant.

That'sick

If you find yourself agreeing with the Pope on women’s rights then you have to question if you are on the right side.

It’s not our place to dictate what a women does with her body whether we agree with it or not.
A woman doesn’t need to justify her reasons on why she has an abortion by the same token she doesn’t need to justify her reasons for being pregnant.

As some previous posters have mentioned, they would happily carry a child for a relative, who are we to get in the way of that and pass judgement on other women.

Just because there is a potential for abuse doesn’t mean we should make it illegal. The onus is on the government to make it as safe as possible.

The Pope also believes that women are not property to be gifted and the Catholic Church doesn't allow the "giving away" of women during marriage ceremonies. Sometimes, an institution with bizarre ideas about some things can be right about other things.

Governments have tried to make surrogacy safe and failed. A pregnancy is inherently more risky to mother and child because of the lack of any genes in common.

There's a difference between banning women from doing X to themselves and banning other people from doing X to her. The latter prevents people from exploiting the woman. A surrogacy ban falls into the latter category and it's dishonest to pretend that It's the former, as you have done.

Do you agree a woman should be allowed to sell her organs? How about her babies?

To me the issue of surrogacy isn’t purely one of bodily autonomy. I think the child’s rights need to be taken into account as well. We have a family within our extended family where both children are conceived via double donors and one by surrogacy (same sex female couple, both in their late 40s). So, the baby carried via surrogate has a birth mother, 2 ‘adoptive’ mothers, a biological mother out there somewhere and a biological dad out there somewhere… it blows my mind to be honest, and I think it’s really selfish.

Reframe that, stat!

Should people be allowed to buy the organs of a living person? Should people be allowed to buy babies from their mothers?

It's not about telling women what to do. It's about limiting what harmful things other people can do to women.

No one should be allowed to sell their organs, but by the same token, should we ban kidney donation?

If we want to protect women then have legislation that protects women.
It’s not always gay people who use surrogacy.

1. You are comparing altruistic living kidney donation, that literally stops someone from dying, with creating a baby to order. No one will die because they don't have a baby. You are comparing the gift of a body part to prevent premature death with the creation of a whole new human being with full human rights as if he/she were a new car. They are not the same.
2. The scrupulous health checks undergone by living organ donors are not applied to surrogate mothers because pregnancy is generally deemed not a big deal for women (yay patriarchy). This ignores the elevated complication rate in surrogate mothers.
3. Pregnancy is an ongoing process for nine months, during which people can change their minds or the mother suffer complications and this causes problems that the law struggles to resolve, as I outlined upthread. Organ donation is a once-and-done act: once I've given blood/marrow/kidney, I can't ask for it back because it's in the recipient now and the doctors would manage any complications I incurred without any involvement of the recipient in the care decisions. This protects the recipient and the donor. And because it's a body part, not a human being, if the transplant fails then the organ can be removed and destroyed. If the commissioning "parents" change their minds, what happens to the baby?

I am wholly opposed to surrogacy, but personally , I would always be wary of the motives of the Catholic Church when it involves itself in women's reproductive rights.

If a woman decides to became a surrogate mother because she wants to help her family member or friend or whatever reason some I may not agree with, then that’s entirely her choice.

All your other points are why it should be severely regulated!

It goes to my point, is the statement on surrogacy by the pope to protect women or attack the gays?

Option three: to protect children from being treated as commodities.

All the regulation in the world doesn't stop surrogacy from being predicated on the idea of a child as being a commodity.

Which part of "this causes problems that the law struggles to resolve" didn't you understand?

Regulate this away:

If Alice and Bob commission Carol to bear their baby and Alice realises at 12 weeks that Bob has cheated on her, she has no right whatsoever to instruct Carol to abort so that Alice can leave Bob unencumbered by a shared child and have a fresh start. Carol would be left literally holding the baby, a baby that she thought she would be handing over. Any law that allowed Alice to force Carol to abort would be in violation of Carol's human rights.

By contrast, if Alice was pregnant, she would be in control of her abortion decision and could take that fresh start.

If the law forced Alice to take the baby that Carol refused to abort, what kind of life would that baby have?

Some 40% of pregnancies have complications. Some women abort because of these complications. If Alice is paying Carol for a baby, which is what happens with overseas surrogacy, that discourages Carol from putting her own health first if an abortion would be the best option for her. Even in the altruistic case, Carol knows that she risks her friendship with Alice by aborting. If Alice and Carol are sisters, an abortion even on medical grounds would probably result in estrangement.

By contrast, if Alice is pregnant with her own child, it's up to her to decide how far she is willing to risk her health for her baby. She doesn't fear the loss of surrogacy income. There can be no contract that could financially penalise her for prioritising her own health.

I know a surrogate. She's done it four times, three times successfully, and has four children of her own.

She jokes she has an addiction to pregnancy, just absolutely loves the idea of it. She is on a website offering her 'services'. Would it not also be wrong to ban her from having this choice over her own body?

I personally would never do this and I find it hard to get my head around what she does, but it feels wrong to tell her she can't do this.

“instruct Carol to abort”
Fucken hell! Maybe you are forgetting it’s up to Carol to do decide what she wants?

I assume Carol is an intelligent human being capable of making her own choices.

I don’t agree money should be exchange because it creates a certain imbalance. Address that issue instead of a blanket ban that will have unintended consequences.

First and foremost it should be about the child. All because a woman is happy to rent out her womb the implications for the resultant child should be taken into account.

Maybe you are failing to read the scenario I outlined, in which Carol is left with the baby that Alice no longer wants because of Alice's relationship breakdown.

I write again: "If the law forced Alice to take the baby that Carol refused to abort, what kind of life would that baby have?"

There is a child involved in surrogacy and the welfare of that child must be paramount.

This is the same language used by the anti-abortion types.

VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia
i don’t think you have an idea what’s involved in surrogacy.
To answer your question, Carol is capable of making those decisions herself!

What's involved in surrogacy is Carol being at risk of being left with a baby that she expected that Alice would adopt. This is a life-changing outcome for Carol that makes it extremely risky for her to #bekind by letting another woman borrow her uterus. No one has the right to ask Carol to put herself at such risk, and if Carol offered, the appropriate response is to decline her offer because it's such a huge risk. In the same way, my boss should never ask me to work at heights without fall arrest gear and, were I to offer to do so, he should tell me not to. Just because someone's willing to take a risk, doesn't mean that we have to take them up on that offer. We are not slaves to someone else's consent.

This is the same language used by the anti-abortion types.

We all speak English on this board, so yes, we use the same language as the English-speaking anti-abortion types. I'm being facetious because that is such a poor counter-argument.

The implications for the resulting child absolutely should "be taken into account" when the pregnancy is intended to result in a child. This isn't an anti-abortion stance in the least because you can believe that and still support the right of women to choose to end a pregnancy so that no child will result.