Brilliant article on the ethics of surrogacy

[JoanOfQuarks]

www.fairobserver.com/culture/surrogacy-legality-ethics-womens-rights-news-018210/

Excellent analysis on the dynamics of power at play, the use of language to cloak the brutal reality inherent in surrogacy, the lack of thought for the needs of the child and the clear parallels with slavery.

“The main conceptual problem in surrogacy — the production and sale of a child — reduces both women and children to commodities in commerce: things.
Many articles and books can be found describing the horrors of surrogacy. Exploitation is common, with abuse and slave-like conditions for women. Often, several eggs are implanted to ensure that one of them will produce; but if that results in multiple embryos, the birth mother may be forced to have an abortion for fetal reduction. At a later stage in the pregnancy, genetic tests are often done, and if it is found that one or more of the eggs is damaged, an abortion will be required even if over the objection of the birth mother.....”

Continues....

www.fairobserver.com/culture/surrogacy-legality-ethics-womens-rights-news-018210/

That’s an excellent article, so clear and articulate.
Very chilling how men’s /fathers’ right are elevated above women’s/mothers’....

Thank you for this excellent article which I have bookmarked.

It is clear that sperm has now become more valid as a marker of 'ownership' over the egg donor who is obviously female and the female who gave birth to the ultimate commodity - the baby.

I would also add that it puts C Sections below the category of 'birthing' which is also outrageous.

Thank you for this

Great article. I hadn't thought of it in terms of the father having more rights than either birth mother or egg donor. Patriarchy in action

Fascinating and very worrying-worth a read.

The female of the “intending parents” may or may not be the egg donor and so may or may not have any genetic link with the child. But it doesn’t matter either way: She is not the mother under law even if she was the egg donor. So the child is legally motherless at birth.

Is that the case though? In countries where commercial surrogacy is allowed - eg certain states in the US - then the 'commissioning' mother and father are considered legal parents even if they have no genetic link to the child?

I’m not exactly sure of what the specifics are in the US are with regards to the legal ownership of the commissioned child. But the proposed ‘Rumplestiltskin’ new surrogacy law that is being heavily pushed by the IVF lobby in the UK (and currently in the consultation stage) wants to strip the mother of the baby she births from as much legal rights as they can. The intention is to make the commissioning intended purchaser ‘parents’ the sole legal parents of the baby regardless of whether there is any genetic link at all.

It’s such a fundamental revolution of the current law. It’s hard to understand how politicians can have had such a rapid change of opinion on this. Up until just a few years ago there was unanimous agreement that commercial surrogacy was abhorrent and to be avoided at all costs.

Shameless bump for this brilliant article