Surrogate dies in childbirth, leaves behind two of her own kids

[ConfessionsOfTeenageDramaQueen]

"According to the post, Michelle and Chris decided to help another family who wasn't able to have children after they were done having kids of their own.

Michelle was on her second surrogacy for the same family when she lost her life.

Like any other pregnancy, surrogate pregnancies involve the same medical risks of carrying a child and giving birth."

This makes me really angry. Link below.

www.foxla.com/news/california-mother-of-two-dies-giving-another-family-the-gift-of-life?fbclid=IwAR2RgBrXZnWZa1DES4PQWDYMifkY7YCpLy6WVEOoHj6cD145L9Xof1Iy4mI

It's very very sad, agreed. But why does it make you angry? I'm assuming she wasn't forced to be a surrogate, it's obviously something she wanted to do.

Because her own two children have been left motherless. We have no idea whether or not she was being paid - although in California you can make up up to $80,000 for being a surrogate so it's fair to assume she was being paid.

Humans are not allowed to sell any other parts of their bodies to other people so why is this allowed? It makes me angry. I think it's a fair emotion in response to women's bodies - and lives - being sold commercially.

I get that, but it was her choice, I assume, as I said before. Maybe she wasn't doing it for money. Maybe she just wanted to help. It is tragic.

It's sad and unfortunate but she was trying to do what she saw as a good thing.

I'm angry too OP. Women's bodies and babies are not commodities.

Selling your kidney to someone on dialysis would also be "seen as a good thing" but it's illegal.

Still her body, her choice.

But a surrogate is not giving away a part of their body. They're carrying a baby born from someone else's egg and sperm aren't they?

People forget that childbirth is often the most dangerous thing a woman goes through in her life.
I used to work in a hospital lab and we had a woman that wouldn't stop bleeding after giving birth. Literally bags and bags of blood were sent up to theatre where they gave her an emergency hysterectomy to save her life. Thankfully she lived. It was touch and go though.

@cittigirl If it's "her body her choice" why aren't we allowed to sell kidneys, limbs or other bits of our bodies?

that poor woman and her family.

selling humans is never right.

You can of course donate a kidney. Doesn't say she was doing it for money.

This is obviously very sad ,but unless the surrogate was under pressure to go through a pregnancy then its just a very tragic event .Our friend who died in childbirth was a healthy young woman of 31, whose DH was a Doctor! I would only worry if someone was coerced which Im pretty sure is illegal anyway .Some years back 2 sisters were featured on TV one had 3 children and one was unable to conceive naturally ,Their father and the family, were putting pressure on the fertile one to be a surrogate for her sister ,she was clearly unhappy about it but felt duty bound to go through with it .

We've gone completely mad over the 'magic' of the word 'choice'.

'Choice' isn't an either/or: in capitalism, it's a sliding scale. 'Choice' is shaded by compulsion and coercion more times than not - explicit, overt, implicit, hidden, fiscal, societal ...

'It was her choice' is one of the most vacuous phrases to be wheeled out in contemporary politics. It's intended as a hammer to bring thinking on a political issue to a close, to assert finality and closure forcefully.

But it's meaningless.

If you truly believe in politics - in the idea that distributions of power are available to analysis and critique, and the implicit, concomitant, belief that such distributions are neither natural nor immutable, and if you further believe in progressive politics (the belief that power distributions can and must change) - it is crazy to foreclose analysis of power distributions through an absolute, non-nuanced ascription of full (not partial, not lacking) 'choice' whenever instances of analysis of people's actions under capitalism/patriarchy/whatever arise.

It's a full-stop in thinking.

If a right-wing authoritarian demanded that we never examine the unfair conditions under which the majority of people labour and live in current society, we'd refuse.

I do not understand, for the life of me, why the Left go happily into alliance with authoritarians and libertarians and ascribe a similar force around the use of the word 'choice'.

So ... on Monday, I will get up and go to work in a job I hate.

Sure, it's a 'choice' - but a limited, circumscribed 'choice'.

It is compelled, and my agency enacted within circumscribed limits.

And, yes, it's a nuanced thing - with many others having worse and better choices.

Why have we given up the idea of nuance and things not being either/or?

It's a completely dysfunctional tendency in modern politics.

And, yes, there is so much to discuss in this case and foreclosing discussion through the deployment of 'her body, her choice' is bananas - and the antithesis of the fighting spirit behind that phrase.

It was coined as a spur to enable an onward trajectory - not a nail to hammer women's feet to the ground.

How very sad.

She wasn't selling (unless it was her egg). It's more like renting. She was selling her effort and her time - literally her labour. Same as a an office worker or a Brickie or a prostitute.

True, we have to ask whether a choice made out of poverty is a real choice.

How can you be sure it was ‘her choice’ especially if money was involved, as is likely? How can you be sure her DH didn’t see it as a way to raise funds? Or that they had outstanding medical bills to pay and it was either this of sell their home? Or she had been fed the line that she must ‘be kind‘ to those who couldn’t have children themselves? Even if this was not true, was she fully aware of the risks?

But beyond all that, babies should never be a commodity for purchase.q

Great post Cat

Whilst you cannot sell your kidney you can indeed donate one to someone else.

Or she had been fed the line that she must ‘be kind‘

Even the news story talks about the 'gift' of life to another couple.
Yet this own woman's children are motherless now.

Is surrogacy selfless when so many others are involved?

Risk of the job?

Frankly, I’m completely against this business of surrogation, but some jobs carry some risks.

Brilliant post thecatfromjapan.
I am completely against surrogacy for any reason. Women are not incubators.
There are some things the law prevents us from choosing to do, for good reason.
For a woman who already has children to care for it seems incredibly irresponsible to take such a risk with her own life.
I am pregnant with DC2 and the one thing which scares me is dying in childbirth and leaving DC1 without a mother (Unlikely, I hope, but still a risk.)

That is so sad.

Im glad that surrogacy is banned in most of western europe. It should be banned in uk too.

A superb post thecat. There's far too little acceptance and understanding of the coercive framework in which some choices are made. And even if we essentially treat this as a job she did, a valid and legitimate decision she made about the optimum way to get money for her family, I'd still be gutted and possibly pretty angry to hear that a young person with dependents had died on the job. Let's also not forget that the society in which she lived has much worse maternal mortality rates than it should, given how wealthy it is.

Im saving "its a limited, circumscribed choice" for the next time some idiot explains to me that woman choose to downgrade their careers to have children and yet men don't have to.