So upset by commercial surrogacy

[Soggiemoggie]

Considered posting this in AIBU but thought I might get some deeper more sympathetic discussion here...

I know it's a topic that really splits views but I am so upset to hear about distant family friend who has adopted a baby through commercial surrogacy in the US (they live here in the UK). DM told me a about this a few months ago and this week said she's seen photos of the baby and another family friend has visited them. DM has expressed (privately to me) that she thinks it is a horrible thing for the baby and that is equates to buying and selling of women's bodies. I wholeheartedly agree with this view. They happen to be a gay couple and before anyone calls me homophobic - I don't care a jot about that and it doesn't change my view at all that this is such an entitled and selfish act. I don't believe it is a human right to have a baby and if you can't have children of your own for whatever reason, why not look into adoption or fostering for the many children who are already in this world and in dire need of a loving family and secure home?

Anyway when my DM mentioned it again this week and I asked how old the baby was now and when she answered, for some reason I just burst out crying in front of DM and DF. So embarrassing (!) But I just had this overwhelming upset feeling thinking about the baby away from his mum and his mum who god knows how she must be feeling.

I myself have a 8 month old DS (PFB...) so obviously such strong feelings about this are because of my own bias about being a mum to a helpless tiny baby and having my whole universe revolving around DS...

So Mumsnetters please share your views on commercial surrogacy, tell me it's OK to be distraught at the thought of this, or tell me to piss off for being so judgey...

Sorry this is so long - I really needed to get that off my chest!

I think you need a different line of argument other than trying to accuse those who oppose the commodification of women and children of being 'sexist'.

By all means oppose the commodification of women and children if that's how you view it. But saying that surrogacy is somehow worse when on behalf of mothers than anyone else is ridiculous pandering to sexist ideas of gender norms.

Biologically it is certainly her child and always will be, even if she later decides to forego legal rights to it. How she 'feels' cannot change that.

How she feels determines whether or not she undergoes surrogacy and whether or not she forgoes legal rights to the child. So how she feels can change quite a lot really.

I have no idea why feminists are so determined to dismiss the views of women about their own lives and bodies in the name of shutting down transwomen. Isn't this what MRA's want?

By all means oppose the commodification of women and children if that's how you view it. But saying that surrogacy is somehow worse when on behalf of mothers than anyone else is ridiculous pandering to sexist ideas of gender norms

Like I say, not one person is buying the notion that your concern here is fightting 'gender norms'.

How she feels determines whether or not she undergoes surrogacy and whether or not she forgoes legal rights to the child.

It does not change the fact that she is that child's biological mother and that that child does not 'belong' to the commissioning couple, as you suggested.

I have no idea why feminists are so determined to dismiss the views of women about their own lives and bodies in the name of shutting down transwomen. Isn't this what MRA's want?

Oh do give over. A 'view' isn't automatically valid or praiseworthy just because a woman has expressed it. Just as a 'choice' isn't feminist because a woman has made it.

Like I say, if you're going to argue for the commodification of women and babies - which is clearly what you are trying to do here - you need to try a different approach. This one isn't workin.

I have no idea why feminists are so determined to dismiss the views of women about their own lives

It depends on whether or not we are discussing things in terms of how it affects each individual or what it means to women as a sex class. Surrogacy is not positive for women as a sex class and it ignores the rights of a child.

Like I say, not one person is buying the notion that your concern here is fightting 'gender norms'

That's a shame, because it is. I'm not sure why that's such an outrageous concern on FWR. I think there are plenty of ways to object to surrogacy without resorting to sexist criticism of mothers.

That's a shame, because it is

Really? So you clicked on a discussion about surrogacy in order to fight 'gender norms'? That was and is your sole motivation here?

I'm not really sure what your point is. I did expect a thread on surrogacy on the feminist board to involve a discussion of feminist issues, yes. Didn't you?

I’m annoyed that a Times writer, can’t remember her name, recently won an award for her series of articles about her experience of seeking to become a mother through commercial surrogacy.

I have great sympathy for anyone who would like DC but cannot have them, but find her articles give almost no consideration to anyone else’s interests.

I'm not really sure what your point is. I did expect a thread on surrogacy on the feminist board to involve a discussion of feminist issues, yes. Didn't you?

It does. A discussion about the horror of commodifying women and babies. A discussion which you are trying to derail with your faux 'feminist' concerns which are about as transparent as a freshly washed window.

And I think I've made my points quite clear so unless you have anything substantial to say on the issue, this will be my last response to you.

*I’m annoyed that a Times writer, can’t remember her name, recently won an award for her series of articles about her experience of seeking to become a mother through commercial surrogacy.

I have great sympathy for anyone who would like DC but cannot have them, but find her articles give almost no consideration to anyone else’s interests.*

That's the thing, isn't it? It's all about them and the belief that because they want their 'own' child so very very badly, they have a right to persue that want at almost any cost. In fact, it's almost considered noble and brave for them to do so, when in fact all they're doing is indulging their own selfish desires.

Maybe I should start a separate thread about this (and I should have done it in a more timely manner) but did anyone hear last week's one to one on radio 4? It was two gay men talking about surrogacy. One of them has previously made a programme about his (US) surrogate but the other one had bought his two children from India and Nepal and I found the programme so upsetting - the women were never mentioned, the one who bought a baby from India said that Indian women basically loved surrogacy and it was patriarchy that had stopped them doing it (???) and that went unchallenged.

Urgh.

A discussion which you are trying to derail with your faux 'feminist' concerns which are about as transparent as a freshly washed window.

I'm really not sure what you're accusing me of. Yes I have feminist concerns about some of the criticisms of surrogacy raised here - I thought that's what we were here to discuss? Or are the only feminist issues relating to surrogacy that we're allowed to discuss the ones that interest you?

He actually said 'in India surrogacy is a life changing amount of money' as if that made it a good thing, rather than the obvious reality that offering selling their children as a sole route of poverty to desperate women is incredibly immoral

Hasn't surrogacy - at least when the purchasing parents are foreign - been banned in India?

Yes, that was his objection! (And why they bought their second child from Nepal). He claimed that this was due to 'men in government' and that Indian women were marching on the street to have the right to be surrogates...

I think you need to stop being so self righteous and judgemental. I have offered to act as a surrogate for someone in the past and I would choose doing commercially over being reliant on the government (of it ever came to that) any day. This is none of your business and I suspect you are only dwelling on it because you get a certain kind of sick satisfaction out of it,

I think you need to get a grip. Crying is well over the top. You don't know the mother and you barely seem to know the relatives you are talking about so you have no idea how the mother is feeling and/or anything about the circumstances surrounding how this arrangement had come about. With some surrogate arrangements the women remain involved and it's not their egg and they are happy to be acting altruistically. So maybe find out the facts before you go crying into your tea. Stop thinking that everyone thinks like you. They don't. People think about things very differently.

I don't have a problem with surrogacy per se. I think if the woman is more than happy to be a surrogate and wants to do this as an altruistic act I can't see a problem with it. Giving a couple a much wanted child is a wonderful thing to be able to do. Not for me but if it is for you that is your business.

The difficulty comes if women are doing it because they feel they have no choice as they need the money. Then the whole thing becomes more concerning. However in India when they tightened up the rules and stopped overseas surrogacy women were out on the streets protesting as a way of them earning life changing amounts of money had been cut off. It's ok for us sitting in our first world country dictating how women from theirs world countries should pull themselves out of poverty. It's a complex issue.

Telling women that they have to feel a particular way because that's how you would feel is patronising and fails to recognise women's agency.

If it were about women's agency you would be having wealthy Swiss women becoming surrogates for impoverished Bangladeshi fishermen and their wives

It's economic exploitation, and the fact that the exploitation can only happen to women is misogyny.
That's why it's even worse if it's a gay couple, or a single man (which has happened)

I also caught that interview and found it really disturbing. The bit about it being a life changing amount of money was so horrible to hear said so casually.

The other part that enraged me was the part where they compared forgetting the stressful experience of red tape and bureaucracy with a woman "forgetting" the pain of childbirth.

There was a problem with a passport for the baby which caused a 6 week delay bringing the child to the U.K. When asked why he decided to use an overseas surrogate for a second time after the stress of this he laughed and said "I guess you just forget what it was like!" and then both men laughed and said this was much like childbirth.

I listened to that programme this morning.

One to One - Being a Gay Dad - @bbcradio4
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006zt8

It has really hit me - this whole surrogacy business has nothing to do with the odd infertile woman. They were just the unwitting Trojan horse. This is all about men's rights. Men's rights to female bodies and the use of.

I feel so pissed off and upset. Whenever women make a stand we are accused of some sort of bigotry and phobia. Don't want men in your sports and changing rooms? Transphobia. Don't want women used like breeding cows? Homophobia.

I am against surrogacy full stop, whoever is doing it. But I really think there is a conversation to be had (whisper it) about men who treat women with contempt but want the use of our bodies when it suits them.

I am so disgusted at that couple, heading off to India to get their baby, and then off to Nepal for the next one. It's no different to the abuses and exploitation of colonialism past, except that this one focuses especially on explosion women. It's the new slavery, taken to the poor person rather than them being taken to the rich person. It disgusts me.

It’s incredible isn’t it FannyCann that the strict rules relating to adoption don’t apply to people buying babies?

The entitlement inherent in a couple of rich men stealing a poor woman’s baby just because they have lots of money and then laughing about their ‘trauma’ with bureaucracy. That woman is physically and mentally scarred from pregnancy, birth and the coerced abandonment of her own child and they have the audacity to suggest that their paperwork compares to that. So sickening, so heartbreaking.

It has really hit me - this whole surrogacy business has nothing to do with the odd infertile woman. They were just the unwitting Trojan horse. This is all about men's rights. Men's rights to female bodies and the use o*

This is such a good point, I talk a lot on threads about marriage being patriarchal, a way of men controlling reproduction, through their insistence that the wife be monogamous. Someone replied to me that marriage is no guarantee of paternity for various reasons, even though it means the man can keep a very close eye on the woman so the odds of him being the father are better. Dworkin basically argued in Right Wing Women that although marriage is a good deal for men, the patriarchal ideal is not marriage, but surrogacy: this being the most efficient and effective way of getting the desired result, with the bonus of being 100% sure that the sperm is theirs.

Sakura I agree that females being the gatekeepers of creation is something that seems to have always dropped Ben men to try to control women’s reproduction as much as possible. As Germaine Greer said in the Whole Woman, the ultimate aim will be to create an artificial womb so that women can be entirely left out of the act of creating life. Until then surrogacy seems to offer men who see women as an inconvenience a way to buy a baby but without attaching any value to a woman.

I’m really not sure what my spellcheck did to that sentence!