Surrogacy: Meghan Trainor

[MoreDangerousThanAWomanScorned]

I did a site search and couldn't see a thread about this - sorry if I've missed one. Meghan Trainor (of 'All About That Bass' fame) has recently had a baby using surrogacy. Although it is a particularly 'inflammatory' case (third child after two pregnancies of her own; she posted a picture of herself blatantly posing as postnatal) I still thought the largely negative reaction was interesting in terms of suggesting public opinion has turned a bit on this - a few years ago I am sure anyone criticising this would have got a much stronger, 'be kind' pushback.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/leylamohammed/meghan-trainor-third-child-surrogate-discourse?bfsource=relatedmanual

I have to say that 'We had endless conversations with our doctors in this journey and this was the safest way for us to be able to continue growing our family' particularly bothered me - safest for whom? Presumably not the woman whose womb was rented.

I think the traditional what abouteries are ‘what about adoption’ ‘what about babies who need to go to NICU’ and ‘it’s ok, the surrogate isn’t the biological mother so it doesn’t actually matter’

To which I would say modern day adoption is generally on account of the child needing to be taken away from the mother on account of severe safeguarding issues - look at the trauma historic adoptees speak of despite often having had a loving home.
NICU is the lesser of two evils. Baby may need and want mum but also needs equipment to actually survive
and finally, if the last few years have taught us anything the word biological is only worth the points you’d get for it in scrabble (minimum of 15 assuming no blanks if anyone is interested)

Absolutely.

Plus an adopted or premature child will have these early traumas acknowledged by their parents and schools. The care they receive ought to take this into account.

The child born from surrogacy doesn't get any of this. If their story is told at all it will be through euphemistic language. The trauma will not be acknowledged.

I am that adopted woman with trauma.
I wasn't conceived for that to happen to me, my Mum was 17 in 1977, surrogacy deliberately creates and causes this.
We recognise now the trauma of adopted children, yet it's somehow progressive to deliberately do that.

They'll tell you that the baby will be fine because all it needs it love and people in Meghan Trainor's position must really want it to have paid commissioned it.

The word mother - in every country and in every language - means a woman who has given birth to a child. It can also mean a woman who has adopted a child.

But every woman who has given birth to a child - no matter whose genetic material was used - is that baby’s mother. We used to say ‘surrogate mother’ and now the language has shifted to ‘surrogate’. This is a tactic we have seen in gender ideology where transsexual > transwoman > trans woman.

The language shift is deliberate. It’s an attempt to decouple mothers from their babies.

I remember when Nicole Kidman called the woman who'd recently given birth their "gestational carrier". She did quite rightly get some backlash over it and tried to justify by saying she wanted to use the correct terminology, apparently.

It's such cold, removed wording but something that wouldn't surprise me if it becomes more mainstream as the baby buyers attempt to obliterate women further.

Found the interview. It just sets my teeth on edge. The clinicalness of it.

Kidman has been the subject of much criticism for her repeated usage of that particular term "gestational carrier," rather than the more familiar phrase "surrogate" when discussing the birth. Turns out, it's not just a matter of semantics for the actress. It's a matter of correctness, and the actress was happy to clarify her word choice. "We were trying to be accurate," Kidman explained. "The term 'gestational carrier' is used if it's your biological child and if it isn't, then you use 'surrogate.' I mean, who knows what it is? But she's the most wonderful woman to do this for us."

That’s a really interesting point @DamsonGoldfinch . I hadn’t thought about the terminology become so clinical for a reason
De-personing the process for (surrogate) nother and baby

What evidence is there that proves that surrogacy is “ barbaric” for the baby?

So you see no similarity in the underlying themes or principles?

I'm not looking at every aspect of the plot.

Every aspect of a comparison does not have to be the same for there to be parallels in the main underlying themes.

But coming down to your level of the very basic analysis of things, if, as you say, you read the books and watched the series or film, you'll recall that there was complicity by some women with the program. And some of the surrogates were 'happy' to be surrogates. Happy to comply.They felt altruistic about it. Some of the wives were also happy with it, because they benefitted by getting a baby and also negated being the direct targets of a tyrannical patriarchal system. That did not mean they were any less coerced into that stance. In fact the entire program was couched in altruistic themes. 'Giving a child a 'better' home, helping to save humanity from a world wide depopulation crisis, helping infertile women have kids'. Was the fact some were happy to comply and even felt positively about it, mean the practice of a woman's being stripped of her personhood, being demoted and deconstructed to that of a living womb and carrying and giving birth to a child for someone else and it being ripped away from it's mother any less barbaric and immoral?

Margaret Atwood was well aware that other women are capable of undermining their own sex. Of complying with narratives that help to restrict their worth as equal human beings and reduce them to merely being facilitators of breeding. That's why she put that in her book.

In my opinion women who agree to surrogacy and think it's great and cheerlead it at either end are totally undermining their sex as a whole, including themselves, and dehumanise the value of humans in general because the effect on the newborn baby human is dismissed for convenience. They are facilitating the corporatisation and commodification of pregnancy and birth. It's pure materialism.

And as a big aside (because I don't agree with this either for somewhat similar but different reasons), but there are plenty of women, often religious women, but also not, who put their own lives at risk to extend their families. Critically, they don't pass that danger over to another woman or pay another woman to risk her health for them. They risk themselves. If MT wanted a baby that badly she had the right to risk herself. She could have made that decision. She's trying to say she had no choice but to use another's woman's body to put a positive spin on it. I also wonder if it was about saving her figure, because if so, that is unbelievably immoral.

It's traumatic for the baby. (Edit specifically, removing a baby from it's mother at birth is traumatic. A trauma which, unlike with adoption or birth injury, will not be acknowledged throughout the childhood)

What is barbaric is a society where intentionally causing trauma to an infant is legal.

A society which knows (even if some individuals do not know) this practice is wrong and has outlawed it with puppies and kittens.

If your request for further knowledge on the subject is genuine I'd suggest starting with any library book on babies' development in utero designed for pregnant mums to be. These should be pretty accessible. Books on trauma aren't so accessible but there are a lot. The Body Keeps the Score is a famous one.

I would honestly enjoy debating with you in depth the motivations behind Janine and Natalie’s apparent complicity! Not often I get the chance. But I don’t think this thread is the time or place, so I’ll decline.

Too bad. Maybe another day x

The comments on here are shocking, unkind and very judgmental. Since when do women pull other women down for their choices? Skin to skin is a normal thing for any small baby. A dad can do it and he has not given birth - to call Megan 'unhinged' because she is doing it is cruel. wishingonastar101 . If she is happy and someone was happy to do it for her, then good luck to them. Very disappointed in these comments - basically this forum can be just a bunch of mean girls baying for blood.

Care to engage with any of the actual points raised about why people object to surrogacy?

I'll own "judgemental'. And I'll go on being "judgemental" whenever somebody's actions are harming a vulnerable person/ people. In the case of surrogacy, that's always newborn babies AND usually disadvantaged women.

As someone who has experienced skin to skin over prolonged periods post partum in a NICU with all the education that comes with that….

The woman whose body nourished and developed the baby from a few cells to a living breathing beautiful baby - that person who has the baby’s cells within her - that’s who the baby wants skin to skin from, and who the baby will respond to. It’s science.

If the baby was beloved by Trainor she would have let the baby be assured and transitioned from birth to the world by the only person who sustained the baby into being.

A post birth snap of a child removed from the woman who gave birth to it for global consumption smacks more of showing off one’s latest purchase of a handbag.

I pipe up on here all the time about surrogacy and how abhorrent I find it because I am an adoptee. Relinquishment trauma, often called 'the primal wound' has life long consequences including attachment, emotional regulation and feeling safe, and people should not be able to put a baby through this just because they don't fancy putting themselves at risk during pregnancy, putting on weight or because they want to "grow their family." A woman's womb should also not be for sale.

I agree and I say that as an adopter. Many people seem to think that DNA, birth mother etc are irrelevant. They aren't.

I wonder how those celebs who have given birth naturally then used a surrogate feel about the children, whether there is a difference in how they treat them, how bonded they feel, how the children feel, how their wellbeing compares. I bet there are differences.