surrogacy, Julie Bindel is right, it is human rights abuse

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www.byline.com/project/43/article/820
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I have to say I didn't realise that surrogate clinics existed to provide service to rich foreigners.
It is exploitation on many levels.

I think that it would be the lesser evil to ban it entirely.

Whilst there are certainly surrogates doing it for entirely altruistic reasons, a greater number are doing it for money, and many of those are doing it for money they desperately need. I think that just because some people are happy to do it, doesn't make the exploitation of so many others justifiable.

Green, I do see your point.
I would like for the global surrogacy industry to be regulated, like it is in the UK.

But if surrogates are compensated for their paid pregnancy, and it improves their standard of living, I also don't have an issue with it.

We can agree to disagree!

FrankUnderwoodsWife

Your examples are not true choice, i the choice was phone a helpline or sell a kidney to get away from an abusive partner which would you choose?

Would you carry someone else's child if you could either do that or take your child to hospital?

I would regulate the industry, rather than waste time trying to ban it altogether.

They really needed people like you around 300 years ago when they wasted all that time banning slavery.

Still happens today after all. Maybe we should just regulate it?

Sashh, it's true, they're not true choices for me living in the UK, but it is the unfortunate truth for many women in places like Brazil and India.

(And yes the selling of a kidney was evocative and extreme!)

I don't think selling a kidney is any more extreme than grown an entire child and selling it!

Since having kids I'm much more aware of the toll pregnancy has on a woman - I'm not sure of the affects of only having one kidney, but I imagine that they're no worse than the continuum of effects of pregnancy and birth, none of which can be predicted for a given pregnancy.

Ahhhh Bathtime.

As I keep saying, I believe the issues of slaves being stolen and forced onto ships, being brought from Africa to the US and UK, poles apart to the issue of using a surrogate.

I find it extraordinary that you can actually compare the two?!

"People like me" 😂😂😂 wow, so angry for a Sunday morning!! Is the oxygen thin up there on your high horse?

Yes I am being extremely rude to you.

I don't believe it's akin to slavery. Slavery is slavery. This is not.

Not quite as far as slavery.

But taking a woman from her home, putting her in a dorm, controlling what she eats, how she exercises, requiring her to submit to medical examinations as they feel, then choosing for her how she births a baby which she then has to give away, before sending her home to her money in trust somewhere - it's not really freedom either.

There have been cases in Pakistan where entire village has only one kidney including kids cz their parents were forced into debt and then had the choice of giving up their own and their kids kidneys or never seeing daylight against. When money comes into play you can always find increasingly desperate people to exploit.

I can see similar for the cases of surrogacy whereoneu changes hands and it gives the purchasing couple and the clinics power over the surrogate

Your argument is that we have to legalise and regulate surrogacy because it is going to happen anyway.

But slavery happens anyway. So according to your logic, it is wrong to ban it and it should be regulated and legalised.

If immoral industries that exploit the bodies of the poor and vulnerable must be legalised for safety reasons, that applies as much to slavery (if not more) than it does to surrogacy.

If you think exploiting people for body parts should be legalised, but exploiting them for forced labour is so immoral that it should be banned regardless of "safety" issues, then you need to explain the moral difference.

And talk about "forcing people onto slave ships" won't cut it. Because that is not the experience of today's slaves.

When there are babies waiting to be adopted I'm not sure surrogacy can ever be ethical.

It is complex. I think it is abhorrent. For a while I thought we would never have kids, and while we considered international adoption, I would never have contemplated paid surrogacy, so please don't talk to me about the pain of infertility justifying this even for a second.

However, these women come from countries where some of the "choices" are horrific - sometimes choosing which child to sell into slavery so the whole family don't starve. I think paid for surrogacy is probably better than that.

So I hugely judge the wealthy people who exploit these women, but can see why it doesn't seem such a bad option for the women.

Of course women being paid aren't to blame! The entitlement of the wealthy and the way they must dehumanise the mothers is pretty gross.

Green, I believe you are implying that none of this is her choice?

What about her right to chose to improve her life, and if carrying another woman's baby affords that, then why not allow her that choice?

Especially as some of these women may have been married at 13, given brith to their own children through no choice of their own?

Is it fair for us to take away that choice from these women because we disagree with it?

Choice to starve or be a surrogate is not a choice.

The concept of 'selling' a child doesn't really take into account the complexities that modern IVF techniques have introduced in relation to who the baby actually belongs to.

In Britain there is widespread consensus (about 3 in 4 surrogates, even), that the law needs to change in order to reflect the fact that the baby they carry often isn't genetically their own. Ironically, the law that exists today was brought into place to protect egg donors. Now, there is merry chaos. Our delightful surrogate's husband was, much against his will, legally the father of our baby. Although supportive of his wife, he had not been involved in the surrogacy arrangement, in the IVF treatment and was not related to our baby. My husband, on the other hand, could not even go down on the baby's birth certificate as the father. Yet as far as the surrogate and her husband were concerned, they didn't want another child and didn't have another child. That left our child in legal limbo. We were the 'real' parents yet for a considerable portion of our child's life, the people with parental responsibility didn't want it and the people who were actually related to the child and bringing it up didn't have it. hat's all a bit archaic and had the potential to become hopelessly messy if, say, our surrogate's husband had been a different kind of person and decided to exploit the situation.

I'm going into all that because there is a similar misunderstanding on these threads about 'baby selling'. Now that we have IVF (and it's against the law for the surrogate to be related to the child she is carrying), it is possible to carry a baby that isn't yours. It's not like a kidney, which is actually part of your body and is your own organ.

That introduces an ethical minefield about the rights and wrongs of someone using their body as a 'carrier', which to my way of thinking is a more appropriate ethical debate than 'baby selling', which is more about child trafficking than selling a child who was never going to be your own.

Posie Surrogacy is a very popular choice in India and women who are considered desirable surrogates are not starving. A malnourished woman would be more likely to miscarry.

Frank

So isn't it better to try to lift those women out of poverty? To make choices real?

www.globalgiving.org/projects/provide-safe-homes-to-130-abused-women-in-india/

So $150 keeps a woman homed and safe for a year. Another $100 pays for a training course for her.

How much would £8000 change lives? How much of £8000 do you think actually goes to the woman carrying a child for a western parent? About £3K possibly, and yes it will change her life and that of her family, as long as her husband doesn't take it. Does she know this is her money? Does she think it is her husbands?

As for the not making informed choices when you are illiterate - how do you know what you are signing when you can't read it? Do you know if you are signing over all rights tot he pregnancy? That you will have to have a C Section?

Whatever the reason, who are WE to tell them they shouldn't be doing it?

I'm not, I'm saying rich people shouldn't be paying for control over a woman's body. I don't care if you are white, black or brown, live in India or the UK. It is wrong.

It is fair to take away (as much as possible) the "choice" of rich Westerners to exploit the poor and their bodies.

That applies to the organ trade, prostitution, surrogacy, and slavery.

What about her right to chose to improve her life, and if carrying another woman's baby affords that, then why not allow her that choice?

That applies equally to her choice to sell herself into slavery to improve the lives of her children.

Is it right to take that choice away from her?

And India is the beacon light for feminism

When feminists discuss the hiring of a womb as anything other than exploitative we have slipped into handmaidens territory.

I have never said it isn't exploitation of these women's bodies!

Do I wish I wasn't happening? Yes

Do I wish poor, illiterate women didn't exist in a country as wealthy as India? Yes

Do I think it's my place to tell them what to do? No

This is what I am saying.

The concept of 'selling' a child doesn't really take into account the complexities that modern IVF techniques have introduced in relation to who the baby actually belongs to.

Yes, it does.

The revolting attempts to privilege genetics in this way is part of why this is so gross.

The baby inside my body, that my body is growing, that would not exist without my body creating it out of a few cells, is my baby. I am its mother.

My amazing body is growing a new human life within it. The idea that I am nothing but an incubator for someone else's baby, that their genetic material is everything and my 40 weeks of creating a person is nothing and that baby "belongs" to them, sickens me.

The law in the UK is right. The woman who grows the baby and births the baby is its mother unless and until she gives it to someone else by free choice in an act of altruism.