I've transcribed some of the closing discussion from the Filia podcast I linked earlier, which I think summed it up so well.
Listen to Renate Klein from FiLiA Podcasts in Podcasts. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/filia-podcasts/id1461524178?i=1000447756888
Renate Klein talking to Heather Brunskell-Evans
R: I think at the end of the day, surrogacy is a deeply patriarchal institution and basically who it profits most is men. I’ll give you one example, say you go to the USA , to the states that allow commercial surrogacy, as a heterosexual couple and you have this child made by this woman, and you pay her, and then you want to take this child back to Australia. In the case of Australia all you need to do is to go to a consulate or an embassy, and the man has to do a DNA test, and if his genes are in the baby, he is then declared the father and the baby gets an Australian passport. The birth mother, (the surrogate mother) doesn’t have to be there, nor does it matter if the female partner of this man, if it’s her eggs that are in this baby or if they used an egg donor. It’s the erasure of women, it’s the erasure of mothers at the same time. And really that’s what it’s about, it’s basically men wanting their precious genes in their own babies.
H: Gasps, Yes.
R: That’s what it comes down to.
H: To conclude, what it’s brought up, talking to you, is the ways in which it has become quite impossible to talk about this in the same way it’s quite impossible to talk about prostitution without culturally returning it to the individual. What I think you’re wanting to do, what I like to do in my own research is look at the broader social issues and say that we can’t make decisions on the basis of what the individual chooses or wants, because all of our choices, all of our laws, have to be made on the basis of the greater good, as it were. And it’s very difficult for people to hear that, and to also to hear that there is a relationship between what we all do personally and larger social structures and capitalism. These kinds of discussions are shut down now, I think, on the basis that, as you said earlier, you’re phobic if you make any criticism at all about an individual person’s choice.
R: I’m agreeing with everything your saying. Of course I didn’t mention capitalism before but that’s what it is. It’s a growth industry in male liberal capitalism and you’re absolutely right, it’s all about “sorry, who are you to tell me I can’t have my child, I want my own child with my own genes”. And when you look at what this does to the collective women, many people say “I don’t care about that, I just want my child and who are you to talk to me like this” and that’s when the name calling comes in, “you’re just a bigot, you’re mean or you don’t have any empathy”.....
So many people are such individualists, narcissists and couldn’t care less.
And of course, what we haven’t said, is it’s extremely expensive, the whole process. The surrogate mother only gets a pittance, even if it’s a paid surrogacy.....so the people who can even envisage going down that road have to be rich. They almost always are either white or they are members of the ruling class or the group who is in power. Surrogate mothers are often of a different skin colour and certainly of a different economic and educational class as well.....
It’s a grubby grubby industry that is really only set up to make money under the guise of saying “oh but we’re helping so many desperate people”.