Surrogacy and feminism

[TheBossofMe]

Just picking up on a point that Sakura raised a little while ago on another thread about surrogacy. Is it anti-feminist? Will confess to having seriously made surrogacy arrangements with a friend (her egg, my womb, baby for each of us) in the past (not needed by either of us in the end). Did my desire to have a child blind me to the oppressive nature of surrogacy, ie reducing women to a talking womb?

I interfere with nature daily

Interfering with nature, on a personal level, is desirable and seems necessary. I don't want my children to die of chest infections, so I give them prescribed antibiotics, etc.

However, I realize that Mother Nature doesn't need me or my children to be alive, and in fact may be trying to kill us off for a reason. Us being part of the big organism and all. Etc.

I will of course continue to mess with nature despite the above.

AnyFucker, what is it about payment for surrogacy that you find ethically unacceptable?

dittany...you know there is no way a child born from surrogacy would be told that

clear advice is also given on disclosure children born from sperm donation, from IVF, from artificial insemination

do you think they go against nature, too ?

Surely expenses means covering costs incurred by the pregnancy. Wouldn't that make surrogacy profit neutral?

Isn't that why surrogacy is not seen much in the UK? Unlike in the states and elsewhere, where it is an income generating activity?

but many of these practices interfere, sometimes very profoundly with the natural order of their menstrual cycle (controlling it, suppressing it, hypersensitising it etc etc), with their hormones, often with their emotional/mental state

payment for sperm...where does that sit ?

Donating sperm doesn't incurr risk to the donor, unlike egg donation.

FWIK, sperm donors get approx £60 for 'expenses'. A much better deal for the sperm donor than the egg donor.

I don't know any sperm donors who donated (anonymously to a clinic) for altruistic reasons.

Actually, you could argue that sperm donation does incurr risk as any resuting children will be able to access their genetic fathers idenity under new changes.

dittany...do you think surrogacy should be banned in this country ?

under it's current form ie. a woman paid "reasonable living expenses"

because what sakura referred to was discussed upthread

and I am not talking about that now

I am talking about what happens in the UK, under the current rules and regulations

Commercial surrogacy doesn't just impact upon the 'poor women' negatively or positively. It also has implications for the children.

Agree that there is not much feel good about if your genetic father was the £60 donor.

Kitty, I agree there are some tricky implications if, for example, random single guy buys donor egg and rents surrogate's womb, thereby depriving child of any mother at all.

I also think it's sad these children wouldn't be able to breastfeed, when mother's milk contains stem cells etc. I suppose the surrogate could also provide milk - at the very least colostrum.

dittany - the expenses thing is a real red herring since you have to provide a receipt for any claimed expense and it has to be for items such as maternity clothing that are directly related to the pregnancy.

Also, most of the surrogates I met were hosting on behalf of people they knew - sisters, cousins, friends - rather than for complete strangers. Yes, they get paid expenses as above, but it doesn't take away the altruistic side of what they (and I) were prepared to do to help people they knew and loved in genuine need.

Am a bit at your assertion that interfering with nature is anti-feminist. Does that mean you think egg-donation, IVF and the pill are anti-feminist???

BTW, that's the first time anyone has called me a prostitute - nice.

slouching - re the breastmilk, again, its pretty common for surrogates to express to feed baby EBM, for a few weeks at least.

Kitty - Hadn't even thought of the single guy scenario! Guess it never occurred to me that anyone would do that, or that any surrogate mum would agree to that.

Has anyone seen any statistics on how many surrogates are "known" vs "strangers" in the UK? I suspect the former is more common in the UK, whereas the latter maybe outside the UK.

I think that offering to bear a child for a friend is a fairly wonderful thing to do, and I don't think that paying for the expenses of that is problematic (given that they are the expenses that you would be bearing yourself otherwise).

I think that selling your womb is deeply dubious,

and I think that making money out of other people selling their wombs is probably fairly close to pimping.

For children originating in altruistic surrogacy I don't see that it's very different from knowing you started off in a test tube. I don't think that there is any particular evidence of psychological harm to children who have been started off through IVF.

nooka - I'm not sure that in the UK, women really enter into it as a "selling your womb" thing.

I think (based on the few surrogates I met) that most enter surrogacy to help a friend/relative etc.

Then having done it once, and having seen the incredible gift that they have given to another family, they become interested in doing it again, so that's where "stranger" surrogacy tends to enter in. So still altruistic.

I suspect the "need money=have a baby" scenario is actually pretty rare in the UK.

And not sure if anyone except IVF/AI clinics is making money from surrogacy.

Totally agree that I don't see how surrogacy is potentially any more damaging than IVF or adoption or sperm donation.

I meant damaging to the child in that last sentence.

Also had another thought - slightly off at a tangent - about whether overseas adoption of babies is as exploitative as overseas surrogacy. Given that many of these babies are a) not orphans and b) some level of payment to the family is often involved. Or is that somehow OK because the baby has already been born?

Dittany what horrible things you have said.
My daughter understands everything. How devastating it was for my husband and I to not be able to have a child, how my friend oculd easily fall pregnant and yet didn't want any more (she had 4 abortions which dd, due to her age doesn't know about yet but I will tell her one day if she asks) - she understands that her birth mother "gave her away" because she was conceived specifically FOR me - not because she wasn't wanted, but because she was wanted so much. There is no rejection, there is no unwanted baby being ripped from the womb and handed over.
I am talking about western surrogacy by the way - not the commercial poor Indian women surrogacy which I know nothing about and therefore am over looking at the moment.

Your comments, some of them (and I don't just mean Dittany) are a bit much, how do you KNOW it's all poor women to whom £10k is a lot of money? My friend holds a degree and a frigging much better job than me, it's offensive in the extreme when you make sweeping comments.

QOD - hear hear.