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 would not be at all uncomfortable with how anyone becomes a parent but even if I were, it's none of my business and so long as the child is being brought up in a loving environment, it shouldn't matter to anyone else either. After all, they'll let any twit conceive naturally, whether they're willing or able to provide that environment or not.

Well put, Milly!

I don't believe that Chipmonkey. If someone abducts a child and then brings the up lovingly, do you not care? What about someone who has raped the mother to impregnate her, then taken the child. Do you care about that? What about a baby cut from a pregnant woman's womb and taken? What about someone who has a woman imprisoned for adultery and then takes her child?

Of course it matters who has custody of a child and how they got the right to that child. It is an issue - sometimes of life and death- all over the world, and the use of women's bodies is a huge part of that issue.

I feel I should clarify over non-biological parents as I can see it being misread in terms of gay parents.

I am not suggesting that everyone should be brought up in a household with both of their biological parents. I just think it is in the best interests of the child, that where both biological parents are non-abusive, both of those parents maintain a loving relationship with the child, alongside anyone else who also has a parental role, despite not having a biological relationship. An example might be a child brought up living with two lesbians, but who also spends time with the father.

I am not saying that it is terrible when that doesn't happen. I just think it is less than ideal.

I think I have a particular take on it because DH was adopted by his step father, and because my sister is gay and has been thinking a lot about what choices to make in terms of having a child. I am also rather hijacking this thread.

The problem with ideal scenarios is that we don't live in an ideal world, so all of us have to make choices and decisions that are less than ideal. It is hard to know what the ideal choice is when we live in a world in which many choices are closed off to us and are hypothetical.

If we lived in a society where most men were more involved in the upbringing of children, and men kept contact with children after heterosexual divorce in a way that was caring and constructive, then that would constitute a very different sort of society for gay and lesbian people to make reproductive decisions in. The current practical choices that gay people make about children are really limited by the narrow culture around child rearing that exists in Britain.

Leningrad, I'm not arguing that children who live in dual-parent households do better than children who live in single parent households. I am arguing that it is beneficial for children to have a relationship with their biological parents, regardless of who they live with, as long as both parents are not abusive. The gender thing is not more widely applicable than the biological heritage. I would not see an adopted child as being better off with a two adoped parents of different genders. I see no point in a father figure in the child's life if the real father is not available.

I think it is pointless for gay couples or single parents of any sexuality to compare their parenting to what is going on in straight, going in 2 by 2 on to the ark society, because what is going on in that 2 by 2 society is terribly messed up.

I think parents (and ideally everyone else) should be thinking about what the best possible methods of bringing up children are, and thinking about a lot of different ways we can bring children up. Trying to prove yourself better than the conventional family would be like me trying to prove that I am happier with my body image than Jordan is with hers. I hope that feminism and gay rights are going to allow everyone to think a bit bigger and more freely than that.

the point about comparing other forms of work to surroogay is simple - if you want to say that surrogacy is wrong because -

it incurs a risk
it can be upsetting
it places physical stress upon the surrogate

you have to recognise these things are also true of other forms of paid work.

if you want to say paid surrogacy is exploitation on the other hand, you have to pin down

1. what makes a thing exploitation rather than work
2. how that applies to surrogacy

no-one has done that yet

NB 'Of course it's wrong' is not an argument!

Leningrad, yes that is true. But I would never argue that a single parent household is going to be worse than a dual parent household. I have no reason to believe that is true.

I would be interested in seeing a study that showed the difference in psychological outcomes between children who had a non-abusive relationship with both biological parents and children who did not have a relationship with both biological parents but had non-abusive relationships with other parental figures.

I would also like to see what the outcomes are for children who have close relationships with extended families, and children who are brought up with a lot of care from non-family members. My general feeling is that a child who is brought up with a lot of caring input from non-relatives and relatives has a more rounded sense of their identity than someone who only receives care from a very limited number of people. But I don't think who is resident in the house is of any vital importance (except within the context of an individual family and pre-existing care of an individual child in court discussions etc).

EAP, the question you are asking people to answer about why surrogacy is different from other forms of work requires a very complex answer. It would involve going into lots of detail about attitudes to women's bodies and how society's attitudes to ownership and objectification of women's bodies causes many issues for women and leads to them having problematic attitudes where they split their body from their sense of identity and self.

There is no succinct answer to your question. Probably a lot of what has been said about bodies on threads about trans people and also the pornography threads would answer your question.

Asking why using women's sexual and reproductive organs for financial reasons is wrong on a feminist thread is like asking a group of astro-physicists why the earth is flat. It is just stalling the discussion to go over the same basic yet complex ground again and again on numerous threads.

Nonbody really believes surrogacy is similar to work. Would anyone really be happy if a single mother was threatened with a benefits cut because she refused to consider an advertisement for a job as a surrogate mother in a Job Centre? We have seen from the sex industry debate that we do end up at that eventual situation.

Yes, I would really like to know of any studies. I feel that the more people who are there for a child, the better for both the child and the primary carer, but I would like to see some evidence to back up how I feel.

Milly, I agree with the idea that involvement of non-abusive genetic/biological parents, as well as supportive extended family and community can probably only be a good thing for a child. As long as parents and carers are able to work out boundaries and deal with control issues etc.

I didn't mean to compare surrogacy to adoption, but I do think there are some lessons to be learned from the painful experiences of adoptees who long to know their genetic heritage, as well as best practice in open adoptions.

'Asking why using women's sexual and reproductive organs for financial reasons is wrong on a feminist thread is like asking a group of astro-physicists why the earth is flat. It is just stalling the discussion to go over the same basic yet complex ground again and again on numerous threads.'

I think that on open threads it's always reasonable to question presumptions.

STW, yes I agree with all of you said. I seem to be tying myself up in knots on this thread!

There are obviously some ways that it is good to compare surrogacy to adoption, as you have said. I just think there is a distinction between a decision to create a child and a decision about what to do with a child that already exists.

I don't think that EAP was unreasonable to ask the question. I just think that she is getting many replies to it because everyone is a bit worn out by covering the same topic or very similar topics when discussing women's bodies on the trans and porn threads. It is more the timing of the question than there being anything wrong with it.

I really must get off this thread, as I am just drawing it further and further off topic.

I meant 'I just think she isn't getting many replies because...'

where i'm coming from is that I genuinely belive if men could carry babies, paid surogacy would be legal in this country, and what is more men would claim

1. to be better at it
2. higher pay!

the closest comparable form of paid work is clinical trial - this is work done almost exclusively by men (well, 85% of clinical studies on human subjects are on men).

it is highly regulated and well paid. they are not expected to do it out of the good of their hearts. The law recognises this is a choice you can make with your own body - to risk it in a clinical trial.

i think the base argument being against paid surrogacy is a 'silly women don't know their own minds' one - essentially misogynist. Men in a similar situation are recognised to be capable of making their own choice.

also i find some of the generalisations about how women conceive of their bodies rather annoying - how i conceive of my body/ reproductive function is unique to me.

EAP, the fact that how you conceive of your body is unique does not mean that many other women have not been damaged by women's sex organs being treated as a consumer object. It is just another argument that we have been through on the porn threads. We can generalise about women's experiences without extending those experiences to all women. Without discussing the impact of social actions on women as a group, there is no feminism.

The fact that an individual woman does not feel exploited by being a paid lap dancer does not mean that her behaviour isn't damaging to other women's sense of identity or that the majority of sex workers around the world are not exploited and don't have limited choices. The argument against surrogacy is the same. It is not about women not knowing their own minds.

Milly, I was too exhausted to even read all of those threads, and way to tired to post on them, despite having lots of strong feelings coming up, particularly on the trans threads.

I'm veering this way then that on this one too.

England, I think that how I conceive of my body/reproductive function is totally un-unique to me. Still, I want to manage my own risk etc.

V good and interesting point re paid clinical trials. Yet selling breastmilk is controversial.

Really interesting point about clinical trials - there does seem to be a sense that if you're a woman (especially a poor one), you are deemed incapable of making a decision for yourself and need the protection of the law to stop you from utilising an asset that the male sex is allowed to exploit at will (ie their own bodies and womens bodies).

TBOM - surely the law is the same for men and women? Both sexes are allowed to participate in clinical trials, but neither sex are allowed to sell their organs. So I'm not sure how you are arguing that there is a difference in terms of men being able to use their bodies as commodities more frequently, when this is clearly not the case in our society.

Clinical trials are of much more importance to society as a whole than surrogacy is, and there are a variety of laws in place determining the limits on what people can do for money with their own bodies within a work context, including in clinical trials.

As for the idea that women should be able to commodify or exploit men's bodies in the way that men currently commodify or exploit women's - I have no idea what that has to do with this thread, but I certainly don't think feminists should be encouraging the commodification of any human being.

People living in poverty have always done physically problematic things to themselves in order to work. Look at matchbox girls - should we have let them take up employment that ended up losing parts of their faces, or should we have put in employment laws to end that way of working - despite these women 'knowing their own minds.'

To argue for surrogacy as a paid job is to ignore the current exploitation of women's bodies and the climate towards women that we are currently living in.

Quite apart from that, the idea that women should be paid to have other people's children but not their own again supports the idea that being a mother to your own children does not constitute work that society should be paying for. If we paid poor women properly to be mothers, they wouldn't need to have other people's for profit.

i don't think you can claim surrogacy is necessarily dangerously unsafe - that seems to be what you are implying by the matchbox girl comparison.

clinical trials are done essentially to earn money for pharmaceutical companies. it is very rare for a really groundbreaking drug to be tested - it is almost always men who sign up for these trials and i would not underestimate how physically involving they are (some invlove living in a clinic for months upon end)

i think that's as close a comparison as you get.

re the distinction between adoption and surrogacy. Of course, there is a difference.

However, you could argue that in both cases the child is the commodity. In surrogacy, the birth mother is the tool that provides the commodity (child).

I should just say that I dont think surrogacy as it exists in the UK should be banned.

I think it is a feminist issue but also a child protection issue.

EAP - most clinical trial participants are young men. Women in the same age bracket are often excluded because of the potential of being pregnant, being postnatal, breast feeding, recent surgery etc. Men may also be less risk adverse?

I dont think it is a question of men being allowed to benefit from their bodies in clinical trials whilst women are denied that possibility with surrogacy. There are other issues at play.