Surrogacy

[Annasgirl]

So I'm here in Ireland listening to a national radio show where they are promoting surrogacy.

It seems as if we are all supposed to think it is ok. Now to be fair, the host is not really on board but the young woke roving reporter (a girl) really is!!! And apparently only religious people are against it (according to the woke young female reporter).

I've just found out that there is a bill coming through the Dail to legalise the process in Ireland, although just for altruistic stuff in Ireland. And guess what - they want to make it broader because no woman in Ireland would really want to do this, (why, if it so wonderful) so they want the US and Canada and Ukraine etc included.

Any thoughts?

I know we had a chat on here about it recently and many of us seemed to feel that surrogacy was really anti-women, and yes I really believe it is.

So it has all ended and there was no absolutely no discussion on any ethical issues or women's issues - because clearly that is all religion and we don't do religion in Ireland any more.

Sorry, just needed to rant to you all.

• Post edited at OP's request.

As someone said on a group I'm in, why do we think that it's terribly sad if a baby's mother dies shortly after birth and that child is raised with love but without their birth mother but a hugely positive thing if that same baby is taken from its mother because someone has paid her?

It’s all part of the same anti women, women are commodities to be bought and sold shit show isn’t it?

We need to campaign against it.

The important rights here are the rights of the baby to stay with it’s mother (the adult human female who gave birth to it), wherever that is possible and when it’s not for the deciding factor to be what’s right for the baby.

And the rights of women to bodily autonomy and not to be coerced due to poverty.

Under his eye 😞

The Nebraska story was all over the BBC website this week. 61yo mother of one man gave birth to baby. Egg came from other man’s sister, I think. So about as altruistic as it could be.

Stop Surragacy Now (co founder Julie Bindel) is good reference point:

www.stopsurrogacynow.com/gay-rights-and-surrogacy-wrongs-say-no-to-wombs-for-rent/#sthash.hoQNhufn.dpbs

‘Under His Eye’ indeed

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

I think we need to follow Sweden’s example and end surrogacy in the U.K.

How did we get to the point where we think a woman having an embryo made from her son's sperm wasn't crossing an ethical line?

Who the fuck asks a 61 year old woman to gestate a baby for them? 😳

The risks to her health are enormous!

She's terribly fit apparently Betty.

And I don't care if someone thinks it is altruistic, the altruistic stuff is used as the base argument to soften us up to agreeing to accept it, and as soon as you know it, wombs are being rented for everyone.

Really feminism has to stop thinking the fight is in the boardroom, the fight is all about us, our purpose and our uniqueness, the part of us that is "sacred" and is hated by misogynists, the part that carries a baby, that creates a new human, is being stolen from us. And when we start to say that a gay male couple, were pregnant and had a baby, well... they were not, no gay male can ever be pregnant. Woke is all about erasing women isn't it?

On a positive note, all of the emails read out were critical and made most of our posts, but were read out in the same way that the read out crackpot conspiracy theory emails!

There wasn’t a hint in the bbc coverage that this situation was anything other than a wonderful thing. Tiny caveat about her health and how not every 61yo would be able to do it.

Gary Powell, a long-standing gay rights campaigner has spoken up about this loads. He’s worked with Julie Bindel and Jennifer Lahl.

I don’t support surrogacy for two reasons. It uses women as vessels and disregards her health and safety, and importantly because intentionally creating a child to be separated from its mother is a rights violation for that child.

It’s gaining popularity in NZ where I’m from, as a popular tv host did it recently and is trying to change the law using her connection to Jacinda Ardern. She wants to be able to pay women and to fast track or get rid of the adoption process as she was not happy she had to adopt the child. Ardern has promised her changes are coming.

The 61 year old woman having her sons baby really upset me to see. That’s not good for her at all.

The normalising of womb rental is disturbing on all fronts. It's not just the gay/trans aspect but also the wealthy/celebrities who are more than happy to pay another woman to bear the health risks and inconvenience of pregnancy.

There was an interview a few years ago with the eldest (surrogate baby herself) daughter of the Drewitt Barlows - who run a large surrogacy agency. She spoke about potentially having a child herself via surrogacy for no other reason than that it avoided the undesirable aspect of pregnancy and childbirth.

Disconnecting women and children from the concept of motherhood and the process of child bearing and turning it into a commodity is not something that should be encouraged or emboldened.

As with the Nebraska case it's very worrying when people start eyeing up their female relatives as potential chattel ignoring the very real risks to her physical and mental health but also the risks to the child. Considering that women are labelled 'old' in the context of pregnancy at around 35 I can't imagine the immense risk the 61 year old woman was faced with and in turn the child due to maternal age.

As always when the topic of surrogacy comes up I always think of the saying 'just because you can doesn't mean you should'. I have grave concerns that in the current climate surrogacy is not going to be banned or further restricted but made easier due to the behind the scenes lobbying that undoubtedly is going on currently by various orgs.

Even the words are stolen from us. A "surrogate" means "in place of". The woman carrying the pregnancy is doing the actual work. Give her the dignity of calling her the gestational mother. It is her blood that feeds the embryo. It is her bones and teeth that the fetus will leach for its calcium needs. It is she who bears the risks, as well as the baby. Her risks are not surrogate: from gestational diabetes to life-long pelvic floor problems.

In addition, calling her a gestational mother makes it clear that she is not the genetic one. "Surrogate motherhood" as a term can refer to women carrying their own genetic child, as well as women who carry embryos unrelated to them. The former used to be common, but technology means the latter predominates, ensuring the woman who gives birth has even fewer rights.

Brokers are doing big business. A few years ago, the market was worth hundreds of millions of dollars in India alone - but their government decided that keeping poor women in pregnancy hostels (practically prisons) wasn't such a great idea after all.
Wikipedia is interesting but out of date:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_surrogacy_in_India
But here's The Telegraph from December:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/20/india-bans-commercial-surrogacy-stop-rent-womb-exploitation/

Oh yes, it's all surrogacy, like we said on the other thread the celebrities are even worse at trying to make it the norm. But also, outsourcing pregnancy because it is inconvenient, as I said, it is trying to remove the essence of us from us.

And before you all shout at me, I mean our essence as being capable of giving birth, whether we choose to or not, and also being born with a womb and ovaries even if they need to be removed or cannot function due to illness. Etc,

I have come to the conclusion after considering the arguments for and against surrogacy that surrogacy should be banned. Because it affects the child's rights - the right to not be taken away from it's gestational mother, or to be treated as a saleable commodity. As far as I can see surrogacy is only ever in the selfish interests of the adults paying, never in the best interests of the child.

Plus of course all the risks of pregnancy to the gestational mother, some of which can be permanent and affect the rest of your life, which isn't discussed enough. Like prolapse.

Agree that the comparison of people's attitude when a baby's mother dies in childbirth or shortly after and the attitude to surrogacy really needs examining.

Because it affects the child's rights - the right to not be taken away from it's gestational mother, or to be treated as a saleable commodity.

Would this extend to a lesbian couple using a sperm donor to conceive a baby? Does a child not have an equal right not to be removed from its father too?

Not if one of the lesbians is the gestational mother. The cruelty in removing a baby from their gestational mother is to do with the so called fourth trimester rather than the right to know their parents.

Is it not about turning babies into commodities though? Surely, if you are against people having babies because they are not able to have them naturally (see above comments about gay men) then that applies in all cases?

A lesbian couple is no more able to conceive a child than a gay couple.

Is it surrogacy across the board that people are against, so in instances of surgery or illness too?

I'm not massively keen on anonymous sperm donation because I feel in an ideal scenario everyone should know and have access to their genetic history/parents.

I find it less problematic and exploitative than surrogacy though. To the best of my knowledge no man has ever been at risk of health complications or death from ejaculation.

Also the removal of a newborn from the familiar body that gestated them is a different scenario from an absent father.

There is no equivalence between sperm donation and pregnancy.
Removing a child from the mother in whose body she has been created, grown and nurtured bears no resemblance whatsoever to dropping off a turkey baster and getting on with life never looking back.
Do I think a child has the right to know as much as possible about their parental origins? Yes. Do I think the absence of a father is equivalent to the absence of a mother? No. Not in most species, and not in us. We're remarkably adaptive and we can handle circumstances where there is no mother, and exceptional fathers can do a tremendous amount to compensate for that loss. Some extraordinary fathers will do a better job than a mother.
But of all the circumstances where the differences between the sexes is most profound, this is the biggest. Childbirth and the infant maternal bond.
The more I hear people attempting to bring an equivalence to equal parenting rights the more I think I've been brought up believing a crock of shit.

Anonymous sperm "donation" has been rendered very unanonymous by DNA home-testing kits. Any competent 12 year old can order a kit online, and find close relatives (half siblings, cousins etc) who have also done the test. There are lots of men who sold their sperm as students, and 15, 20, 25 years later discover dozens of children, or rather, the kids find them via ancestry.com or even facebook. Presumably this will soon be happening to ova-donors too, although the demographic differs in significant ways (usually young-ish women seeking fertility treatment).