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.

All that banning would do is drive surrogacy underground, as happened with abortion pre legalisation and create unsafe conditions and also drive the trade towards poorer countries where the women may have little choice. The need will always exist.
It is better to create as ethical a framework as possible. The commercial surrogacy set up in the states, and people getting surrogates just to keep their slim body, is bizarre.

@Chimen as an adopted person I say again the child must come first, not the desire of someone to become a parent. That child will grow up knowing there was a financial transaction and most likely not knowing the mum who gave birth to them

Do you feel like this about other sorts of people trafficking?

Of course, legalisation of prostitution in Germany was supposed to help stamp out people trafficking by bringing the industry into the sunlight but it has had the opposite effect and the problem has become much worse.

Abortion differs from surrogacy in that abortion is about a woman wanting not to be pregnant, whereas surrogacy is about wanting someone else to be pregnant for you.

Abortion is more like prostitution in that both involve the hiring of a woman's body. As other posters have outlined, decriminalisation of punting and pimping has not prevented the trafficking of poor, often Eastern European or East Asian women to be raped for money by men: the opposite in fact, it has legitimised male entitlement to hire women's bodies and removed any possibility of law enforcement stopping the abuse of these women.

Although sad, it's neither right nor wrong that she cannot carry a child herself. It just is what it is.

However, exploiting a vulnerable woman and commodifing a child to satisfy her desire for a child is definitely wrong.

Surrogacy is more like prostitution in that both involve the hiring of a woman's body.

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

What? Unlike abortion, surrogacy does usually lead to a live newborn at the end. How is considering a born persons interests anything like anti-abortion?!?!

There are certain things you can't do with your own body. Like making yourself a eunuch, we had that one recently. Selling your organs.

Surrogacy involves a third party (child) being grown and sold, it's not just a woman's body involved.

If the surrogate in question has capacity to make an informed choice, then it is her choice!
Even if we disagree with the decision, it’s still her choice!
It’s not in our place to dictate how a woman should or should not bring a child into this world.

Anyway the law in the UK is you cannot pay a surrogate other than expenses.

The UK has one of the best legislation in the world when it comes to surrogacy, in terms of protecting women in the UK.

However more legislation is needed to protect vulnerable women from couples who go abroad.

@Chimen why do you ignore the child, do you just see them as a commodity?

There are stricter laws around animals than commercial surrogacy.
I saw a video this week of a new born baby being placed on the chest of one of the male couple who had bought it. The distress of the baby was horrible to watch. Completely different from the response of a new born placed on it's mother's chest. Of course it is awful when a baby's mother dies, or the baby has to be rushed to NICU, but why recreate that situation deliberately?
Surrogacy within close families is slightly different and could be managed over a longer period in the right family.

@Chimen "
If the surrogate in question has capacity to make an informed choice, then it is her choice!"

When affluent white women start making that choice then I might agree with you.

If the surrogate in question has capacity to make an informed choice, then it is her choice!
Even if we disagree with the decision, it’s still her choice!

The choosy-choice argument ignores the well-being of the resulting child and treats the child as a commodity, assumes that women are making decisions in a vacuum free of outside influences, assumes that we have a 100% reliable mechanism for screening out women who are mentally unwell or otherwise opting to be surrogates for harmful reasons (I've heard pregnancy addiction mooted), and ignores the effect upon all women as a sex class of legalising the hire of women's uteri as commodities.

A ban on surrogacy isn't a ban on women becoming pregnant, it's a ban on someone else using her as a walking uterus to produce a child. It's not about women's choices, but other people's sense of entitlement to women's bodies and babies at any cost.

why not? They no longer carry out these practices, times have moved on, you learn from history.

perhaps this is a pope who has learned that staying silent on these wrongs is wrong. And that speaking up is the best way to end these practices rather than trying to hide them or deny they happen.

should people not speak up against slavery because their parents once owned slaves?

should dr’s not speak up against practices they now find unethical because they once carried out those practices?

someone needs to speak up. I couldn’t give two fucks who it is or what their history is. Speaking up is the right thing to do.

Firstly, the vast majority of surrogates are paid surrogates whose economic circumstances are such that they don't have a real choice. If it's mainly economically vulnerable women becoming surrogates, it is exploitation. Very, very few surrogacies happen in the UK, presumably because it is more difficult to exploit vulnerable women.

Secondly, you have completely ignored the child in this scenario. There have been cases of paedophiles commissioning surrogates. Even if the purchasing parents are loving, it is still creating trauma for a baby who is being treated as a commodity.

I agree with others that the pope should publicly support further unethical practices so that he/the Catholic Church is not seen as hypocritical. That's would be the sensible thing to do.

Does the same argument hold with sex work?

if a woman makes the choice to prostitute herself, than that is her choice.

doesn’t matter if she’s doing it because she’s desperate for money, because she can’t feed herself, or her kids, or she’s doing it because her boyfriend has asked her to and she loves him.

she makes the decision to rent out her body, therefore it’s ok?

pregnancy is not without risk. Women die, or are left with life changing injuries.

there’s also the discussion around less than perfect babies. Surrogates left with disabled children because the commissioners don’t want a “faulty” product.

He is right on this issue. Surrogacy is disgusting and needs banning everywhere.

Whilst I have concerns about surrogacy banning it will make things worse for vulnerable women. At the moment it is Licensed and done in the best way possible.
Imagine a women being coerced into sex and having the baby removed from her if surrogacy were banned.

How does what you've described differ from adoption? genuinely curious.

Adoption is the least bad option for a child who is already born. It is making the best of a bad situation.

Surrogacy is deliberately creating a situation that is detrimental to a child. It is deliberately creating a bad situation.

Surrogacy creates a child in order for them to be deliberately taken from their mother. Adoption is different, it’s making the best of a situation that already exists. Surrogacy is about the selfish wishes of adults. Adoption is doing what is best for he child.

Do you know what I’ve had such a massive change of heart 180 on this subject.

@BigGlassHouseWithAView This is so well put💕

What I find really shocking is that there’s so little emphasis on the baby in discussions on surrogacy.

Setting aside the many valid reasons why surrogacy is harmful for women, it’s awful for the baby.

It’s not disputed by anyone that the baby bonds with its birth mother, even with donated eggs. At birth, her scent, her voice, her heartbeat all calm the baby. Surrogacy organisations recommend the baby has skin to skin contact with the birth mother to help calm the baby after birth. Incredibly hard for the birth mother, but again let’s set that aside for now.

The baby is handed over to the intended parents. The very best that can happen is that there is a “transitional object” that carries the birth mother’s scent. Sure, the baby will survive but it inflicts unnecessary distress and trauma on a newborn. It’s not about cuddles and milk. It’s about the reassuring presence of the mother the baby has known for nine months.

In birth adoptions the same issues exist. But this is a sad fact where there’s no other safe option for the baby, and where it would be at physical harm if left with its mother.

As a society we are agreeing to inflict trauma and distress on a baby, we are agreeing that it’s fine for a newborn to be denied the comfort they need just because someone else wants a baby.

If you want to be a parent and can’t carry a baby, adoption is an alternative. It may not be what you would have ideally hoped for, but there are many babies and children who desperately need a loving home.

None of us have the right to wilfully and deliberately create a situation that inflicts distress and harm on a baby.

And that’s without considering the harm it inflicts on the surrogate, whether she realises it or not.