Gestational Carriersnet - doesn't quite have the same ring to it

[Bittermints]

Don't know which US state this is but clearly the legislature had a bulk delivery of KoolAid.

[Katvonbatshitmermaid]

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

These people. Fucking nuts

[Voice0fReason]

Incubator then!
I'll stick with mother thanks.

[ChewyLouie]

I would have welcomed a gestational carrier during the last week of my pregnancy when I was constantly breathless and tired. They could have carried me around everywhere on their shoulders in one of those sedan chairs.

[SignMeUp]

I believe this is applied in the case of surrogacy and adoption. The biological mother is listed on the original document. Then a court order is used to modify it. I think each state is different, but that is the general idea.

[Bittermints]

Yes, I was just looking this up. Not a term I'd come across before.

[GrumpyGran8]

I think it's Illinois. In this particular case, it seems that "gestational carrier" means "surrogate mother", to differentiate them from the woman who will be taking the baby home.
Nothing to do with PC terms, just an indication of how surrogacy has become big business in the US.

[GrumpyGran8]

I'll add that, having looked through the tweeter's timeline, I'm pretty sure she knew damm well what the term actually meant, but was just using it as a stick to beat the "commie PC liberals" with.
Personally, I wouldn't follow her - there are plenty of intelligent, well-informed UK women to follow!

[womanformallyknownaswoman]

I laughed out loud as I thought it was the new name for MN

[Weezol]

Woman as did I.

[userschmoozer]

I wondered how soon surrogate mothers would be dehumanised.

[MagicMix]

In this particular case, it seems that "gestational carrier" means "surrogate mother"

I think we all know that. I know what it is supposed to mean and I object to it.

Commercial surrogacy is the exploitation of women and calling a woman who carried a baby in her womb, created every cell in its body with her own body, and then birthed that baby a 'carrier' like she is just a sort of bag that has nothing to do with the baby is dehumanising and misogynistic.

[FloralBunting]

Nothing to do with PC terms? It's everything to do with PC terms, and I completely agree with MagicMix.

[Bittermints]

That's how I feel about it, MagicMix. I have great sympathy with the few cases where a woman does an incredibly altruistic thing for a close relative or friend who can't have a baby of her own. But when it starts to get more like ordering a baby from a catalogue, no personal connection between the woman and the baby's adoptive parents, I do worry. What happens to the baby if it has a serious medical condition? Do the adoptive parents walk away?

[IWannaSeeHowItEnds]

I've had my arse handed to me before, for using the term gestational carrier on MN. I've thought about it since then and I do still think that the person whose DNA made the baby, is the mother. If you are carrying a baby which isn't biologically yours and that you intend to hand over at birth, you are a gestational carrier and not a mother.
That's not to say that what she has done isn't amazing or should be treated as if she has done something which is no big deal.
There's a lot wrong with commercial surrogacy, but I don't think this term is the problem - it's just a means of differentiating between the person whose DNA made the baby, the one who is taking the baby home and the person who grew the baby but has no genetic link to it or emotional bond.

[Micke]

It frightens me how many women must be being used like this in order for it to be necessary to select it on a form.

Surrogacy is wrong on every level. Buying babies is wrong. Buying a woman's body to create a baby is wrong.

[Micke]

If you are carrying a baby which isn't biologically yours and that you intend to hand over at birth, you are a gestational carrier

What? The DNA - two little cells weren't yours (which is only 50% less yours than a baby fertilized the conventional way).

By the time that baby is born, every molecule in that baby was created by you. It shared your blood supply - your breathing, your heart, lungs and kidneys kept that baby alive. You weren't just carrying it, or incubating it like a chicken egg - you were providing everything that that baby is made of.

Gestational carrier isn't an accurate description at all, neither is the idea that the baby isn't biologically that woman's - if they provided everything to grow it, sounds pretty bloody biological to me.

Genetically is a better word in this case in my opinion.

[Bluestitch]

Gestational carrier is an awful term, designed to commodify women and their bodies and reduce the role of women in reproduction to the same as men, gamete supply. The woman who grew and birthed the child is the biological mother, if a different egg is used they are the genetic mother. Pretending a woman is not the mother of the baby she grew with her body, created a symbiotic relationship with, is absurd. The push to reduce women to 'carriers' is so that the exploitation and risk potentially involved with surrogacy can be ignored. After all, they are just 'carriers', not mothers, not even women.

[ErrolTheDragon]

I've had my arse handed to me before, for using the term gestational carrier on MN. I've thought about it since then and I do still think that the person whose DNA made the baby, is the mother.

Why not use the terms 'genetic mother' and 'gestational mother', then, to make the distinction without being dehumanising?

A newborn baby isn't purely the result of its genes, there are developmental factors as well - even 'identical' twins can have differences. The baby is, in part, 'biologically' the gestational mother's.

[IWannaSeeHowItEnds]

I would happily use genetic or gestational mother instead, despite believing that a surrogate isn't really the mother unless using her own eggs. I wouldn't deliberately cause offensive to a woman who had done this amazing thing for another person and who found the term dehumanising. But I do think that 'carrier' might not have originated as a term to reduce womens role or be dehumanising, more that we talk about carrying babies and it evolved from there.
But I can see how, in these times where it seems celebrities are choosing not to carry their own babies and surrogacy has become commercialised more than it being an act of altruism, that the term could minimise the essential role of the woman physically having the baby. There is a lot of exploitation out there and that is the real issue for me.

[NothingOnTellyAgain]

" I've thought about it since then and I do still think that the person whose DNA made the baby, is the mother. If you are carrying a baby which isn't biologically yours and that you intend to hand over at birth, you are a gestational carrier and not a mother."

Is it the handing over the baby or the DNA which makes this differential for you?

I'm interested becasue a woman who has a baby through donor egg is a mother and a woman who has a baby using her own eggs that she then gives up is also a mother, or isn't she?

Gestational carrier is a fucking awful term, agreed. It utterly invisibilises the facts / risks / everything about what these women are doing.

Is the baby still called a baby or is it a gestational product?
It's always women who get their words taken / changed / distanced.

[NothingOnTellyAgain]

"I've thought about it since then and I do still think that the person whose DNA made the baby, is the mother"

Ah - reread.

If its about DNA where does that leave adoptive mum s and mums through donor eggs

[IWannaSeeHowItEnds]

Yes, I do agree that 'genetically' is probably a better term than 'biologically' - I have been using them as interchangeable terms.

[ErrolTheDragon]

'Mother' is a capacious word, there's no reason at all to exclude any of the women involved in creating and nurturing a child. Where necessary for clarity (in particular for legal reasons) it's not that hard to come up with modifiers. Genetic/gestational ; biological or birth/adoptive/foster.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/mother

[IWannaSeeHowItEnds]

Wet adoption, the adoptive mother has chosen to legally, emotionally and financially to become a child's parent. They do still have a genetic/biological/birth mother.
Motherhood via donor eggs is a tricky one for me. That child still has a genetic mother who isn't the one who gave birth. But I would not tell a woman who had donor eggs that she wasn't her child's mother, since the child exists because of her as much as the genetic parent and she is the one loving and raising that child.
But DNA is important. It influences our lives in ways which may be more important than anything else (predisposition to certain health conditions etc).