Some disjointed thoughts and questions about surrogacy and feminism

[ZogZogZog]

I have some very good friends who have just got married and they are looking into surrogacy in order to start their family. They are both men.

When we were discussing it recently I realised that I feel really uncomfortable with it, and I'd like to examine why.

I'm pretty certain that it isn't homophobia - I have no sense of discomfort or unease with gay couples being parents, although I'm very happy to be challenged and really analyse my views here, in case I do have any latent homophobia.

My instinct tells me that it is related to a feeling that I have that biology is increasingly being disregarded. I've been reading the trans threads with interest and somehow my feelings of discomfort about gay men using surrogates feels linked but in ways I'm not completely able to articulate. I think I'm concerned that although of course gay men suffer from homophobic attacks and prejudice, my friends are overall very privileged - highly educated, rich, white, and of course, male. The fact that they are willing and able to pay for a commercial surrogate abroad makes me consider the links to prostitution too - men paying for the use of underprivileged female bodies.

I'm sorry that this this is such a disjointed stream of consciousness. I'm quite new to feminism and I'm trying to really think about things in light of the reading I've done so far. I'd be very interested to read other people's perspectives on this - and I hope it will help me to develop my own views as well.

Julie Bindel aka the devil incarnate allegedly has written quite a lot about surrogacy.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/20/commercial-surrogacy-wombs-rent-same-sex-pregnancy

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/apr/01/outsourcing-pregnancy-india-surrogacy-clinics-julie-bindel

Altruistic surrogacy is, I think, slightly different, but an enormous number of people opt for paid surrogacy services and these tend to be of the "renting brown women's wombs for money" type arrangements.

Children and women in developing nations are certainly very vulnerable in this arrangement. It has a very consumerist feel about it too- I want a baby, I'll pay for one.

I think you're right to see commercial surrogacy and prostitution as cut from the same cloth. Both involve women's lack of economic agency and inequalities in job access and earning power to commodify women's bodies and coerce women into undertaking dangerous activities. In the case of prostitution risks include STIs, violence and even murder (someone on one of these boards recently posted a link to statistics suggesting that prostitutes were somewhere like 20 to 60 times more likely to be murdered than women in the general population).

Pregnancy and childbirth remain risky. Even in this country the risk of dying in childbirth is 8 per 100,000 live births. The global average (just googled UNICEF's figures) as of 2015 was 216 per 100,000 - so in excess of a 1 in 50 chance of dying in childbirth. Okay, commercial surrogates are likely to have access to the best maternal care their country can supply - but it's still a long way off being risk free. Then there's morbidity following childbirth - long-term issues like fistulas, prolapse, incontinence (urinary and fecal), etc.

There are also issues of social control and coercion, lack of privacy and removal of right to a family life. In order to ensure that the foetus really belongs to the donors rather than the birth family, I believe it's not uncommon for commercial surrogates to be expected to spend their pregnancy in hostels run by the surrogacy agency, not allowed to see their husbands or birth children.

Pre-babies, I couldn't see the problem with surrogacy. Now the concept revolts me.

It's 24/7 physical work which is nearly always hugely undervalued. They are planning to pay someone to risk their life and future health for them.

Do they understand they are thinking about paying someone to risk death? Incontinence? Prolapse? How can they get past that?

I can maybe just about understand it if a couple knows someone who loved being pregnant and enjoyed birth, and wanted to do it again but didn't want another child. An altruistic arrangement entered into 100% freely I would consider a private thing that I don't have a right to comment on.

But paid surrogacy? It's like prostitution.

D'oh Diane Abbot moment there - in excess of 1 in 500! (One day I will learn to divide, but today is not that day...)

I think if it's for a sister or best friend, I can see its a lovely thing for both parties. Although not without potentially massive problems.

I can't see how any other scenario can be positive for all concerned. Its nearly always going to be the richer paying poorer women to use their body. It isn't a choice wealthy women make, no matter how much she enjoys being pregnant.

I agree, and clusterfucks like this can happen:

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/hope-for-gammy-fund-set-up-after-australian-couple-refuse-to-take-downs-syndrome-baby-from-thai-9642364.html

Again no problem if anyone who has a spectacularly close friend or relative will do this for them, so I am not against it in principle.

However exploiting women from developing economies is clearly wrong.

Generally, if something is banned in the UK there is a good reason for it. Using one's wealth to go overseas and circumvent the law is possible, but one would hope that they would at least have stopped and thought about why it was not possible to access commercial surrogacy at home

Paid surrogacy is prostitution on steroids. Paying a poor woman from the third world to get pregnant, carry your child for 8 months and then give you the baby at the end of it is appalling.

I think it's slavery. A woman is enslaved to give the baby she gestated for nine months and then delivered, away. And it's not just gay men who enslave women in this way. It's invasive and intrusive. That woman will never forget what she did.

I do consider paid surrogacy to be exploitation. I suppose it is very similar to the would you donate a kidney argument actually. You might choose to do it for a close friend or relative. There may be a few people who would donate altruistically to a stranger (?) but if someone is paying you £20000 for a kidney it's exploitation.

What are the laws on traveling abroad for that sort of surgery? Is it legal? I think that overseas surrogacy should be illegal anyway. It is almost impossible for it to be ethical.

Thanks for the links and all of your thoughts. I agree - it is extremely exploitative and I think that's at the core of my discomfort with it.

But I also wonder if there is a bit more to it - it seems to me to be linked to the commodification of women's bodies - through transgenderism and the artificial wombs that were in the news this week, to the apparent extinction of women as an identifiable sex class. I suppose I'm trying to say that it all feels a bit handmaids tale - there are people, and then there are breeders (formally known as women), and I feel that commercial surrogacy feeds into that too. Ugh, sorry if that doesn't make any sense!

I agree. It's commercial exploitation of poor women. The only surrogacy that is acceptable is wholly altruistic by someone known to you.

And no, what you say makes perfect sense OP. Women are incubators, uterus bearers and hosts, to both right and left.

Well, sperm donation has been about for years. You could argue that is commodification too, though lower level.

I have some very good friends who have just got married and they are looking into surrogacy in order to start their family. They are both men.

They are both men, and they need to come to term with the facts that men cannot give birth, and therefore won't be able to have biological children unless they happen to be friends with a lesbian couple who needs sperm donors.

It is no wonder that the massive entitlement involved in them wanting to start "their family" makes you uncomfortable.

This is the exact same attitude that I strongly suspect is the very root of patriarchy. Men feeling entitled to children. That's why they started enslaving women. Not just to raise any child, but to use women's bodies to make more of themselves.

And quite probably, that's why patriarchy is okay with gay men now: Because they now, that sex is no longer required for reproduction, gay men are eager to participate in the oppression of women.

Well, sperm donation has been about for years. You could argue that is commodification too, though lower level.

Um, no. Sperm donation is nothing like it. Sperm is a waste product that teenage boys produce in excess and throw into the wastebin every day.

You could call as well call it "commodification" when human feces are used to fertilizer - which is done in most low-tech agricultural societies.

I mainly agree Vestal, but wonder if the ethics of non philanthropical sperm donation is also a bit dodgy. It was often used as a fundraiser by poverty stricken men. Perhaps still is in the us? It still suggests an entitlement to children, to me. Of course the insult and invasion of women's bodies is of a higher order all together.

I think the dodgyness of that comes from the genetic connection though pickle. Not from sperm production and donation being a huge investment of time and energy, risking the very life of the donor. Pregnancy and sperm donation are separate issues. Sperm donation is more comparable to egg donation (which again is more exploitative than sperm donation but a lesser league than pregnancy).

pickle, there is a fundamental asymmetry in that sperm donation poses no risk to life or health whatsoever.

Having been through IVF, I'd also point out that egg harvesting is a highly invasive procedure with health risks attached - including ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, a side effect which can in rare cases be fatal. In no way comparable to wanking into a pot.

Fear of homophobia is a red herring, if your point of contention is the exploitation of poor women, the same applies to heterosexual couples seeking surrogacy. You are just being consistent.

Generally, if something is banned in the UK there is a good reason for it

That's a good point.

Well, sperm donation has been about for years. You could argue that is commodification too, though lower level

In the U.K donors can get up to £35 to cover expenses/ time off from work etc so hardly an incentive. And it is "up to" not automatically £35.

I once read an article and a couple who had used a surrogate mother used the phrase "gestational carrier" and it utterly revolted me. A woman carried and gave birth to their beautiful baby and she was given some creepy, dehumanising name.

I agree the phrase 'gestational carrier' is vile. Vestal - you've really put into words what I've been struggling to articulate. Thanks everyone.

As always, Glosswitch has the answer:

www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2016/02/paid-surrogacy-makes-disadvantaged-women-walking-wombs-unacceptable

www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/05/feminist-history-surrogacy-how-much-right-should-pregnancy-give-woman-over-baby