Mermaids 'power couple' Hannah & Jake Graf say surrogacy laws must be changed to force women to hand over babies

[QuietContraryMary]

Jake & Hannah have joined a surrogacy agency and want to rent a womb. Hannah says, however, the law should be changed to compel the rented woman to hand over the baby at birth.

www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/transgender-couple-ready-start-family-call-uk-surrogacy-law-141118630.html

a woman carrying a baby inside her for nine months

We don't just carry the babies though do we? They are made of the nutrients provided by our bodies. They are made of us entirely, apart from the couple of cells that initially unite to create the blue print.

We are much more than carriers and the womb is not just a pocket.

Anyone read the kids book The Giver? It’s a really good book.

This reminds me of that.

Even I’m worried about this and I couldn’t be more pro trans rights. But I think this isn’t a trans issue, it’s a surrogacy issue.

I’m not generally opposed to surrogacy, but I think it’s only acceptable when women who act as surrogates have absolute autonomy over their bodies and the babies they have. If they decide at any point up to the moment of formal adoption that they no longer want to give up the baby, they should be able to do so without facing any kind of penalty. There also needs to be a significant cooling off period so that the adoption process can’t be commenced right away (not sure if that is currently the law).

I also think we need to tighten up the law so that surrogates aren’t paid more than compensation for their actual costs / expenses. I think we have to be very careful not to create a situation where poor women feel economic pressure to be surrogates.

I think this isn’t a trans issue, it’s a surrogacy issue.

Definitely - I'd venture to suggest that far more 'straight' couples than trans or gay will use surrogacy.

I completely agree with you, Heronymous

Seriously, it’s like Handmaids Tale

Didn’t Ms Atwood say once that there is nothing In that book that hasn’t happened somewhere?

And I find surrogacy deeply disturbing. There’s too much baggage attached to patriarchal ownership of women’s bodies.

Here is an interesting intersection between trans and surrogacy...

The author of this pretty bizarre article
www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/terf-trans-women-britain.html is also the author of an upcoming book which calls for an increase in the availability of surrogacy
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/600137/full-surrogacy-now-by-sophie-anne-lewis/9781786637291

So it seems having very strange viewpoints on both things can go hand in hand

Surrogacy came up on another thread. Once surrogacy is normalised you can end up heading to some disturbing places:

www.versobooks.com/blogs/3654-gestators-of-all-genders-unite

www.forbes.com/sites/julianvigo/2018/09/24/the-ethics-of-transhumanism-and-the-cult-of-futurist-biotech/#74f10414ac54

Bah! I should have said that the links in my thread came from the NY Times article linked to in the preceding post.

I've just read that article.

So this is a heterosexual couple who vooluntarily made themselves infertile, and now they're calling for the enforcement of women's bodies to satisfy their desires to have a child?

It's obscene.

And I'd say that even if they were a same sex couple or not transgender.

Using women's bodies as incubators is obscene. In fact, words can't express how horrifying I find this.

Nauticant, the comments below the Sophie Lewis article are good, though the bits of the article I thought I could understand were pretty offensive. She has a PhD in geography, physical I assume.

When I read stuff like that, the name Mengele comes into my head. I know that invokes Godwin but I don't care. Having looked at the comments (I hadn't noticed them before) it seems I'm not alone in picking up that impression.

This is what the wokest of the woke looks like. Left unchecked the things it could enable defy the imagination.

When I read stuff like that, the name Mengele comes into my head.

My mother said exactly that.

Mengele. Yeah that’s been my thought too. Along with ‘hey! What happens if we like, totally stop puberty?’ And surgery on kids.

I find it so disturbing.

where are the comments against that article, I can't see them?

Mengele has been mentioned in this house too. And I know that the answer the Genderists will give to the question "How are your experiments on kids different to Mengele's?" will be entirely based on good feeling and bad feelings. They see nothing at all wrong with replicating all sorts of horrendous things because they are the good guys.

Most people understand that being 'good' or 'bad' is a judgement made on what you do or don't do. If you do the same bad things as a bad person, it doesn't matter if you 'identify' as a good person. You're not.

Absolutely- the left at the moment are convinced everything they do is correct just because they’re left. They identify as the good guys. But they’re not. Actions, not identified.

Only selfish narcissists who have no thought nor care for women would want this

They see nothing at all wrong with replicating all sorts of horrendous things because they are the good guys.

YES. That’s exactly it. Because they feel they are on the right side of history (and if that’s not colonist thinking, I don’t know what is), they assume anything they are doing is right.

And btw, I may not be able to have biological children, due to medical condition

@littlecabbage - absolutely agree with you.