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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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

676 replies

ConfessionsOfTeenageDramaQueen · 18/01/2020 07:31

"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

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riskysubject · 18/01/2020 10:07

Anyone who thinks surrogates are doing this for free are completely naive. Yes it's not here's x amount for the baby it's here's x amount for your food, towards your mortgage etc. It is the exchanging of money that well and truly removes any choice.
It's an exploitation of women in my opinion and I'm sure we'll be seeing the mental health of surrogates affected long after any physical injuries have healed.
Tragic that she died leaving her own children behind.

pineing · 18/01/2020 10:07

I completely agree with you, @ThumbWitchesAbroad

Hearhoovesthinkzebras · 18/01/2020 10:07

thecatfromjapan

I'm just interested in how widely you apply your theory.

Applying it to surrogacy it works but can you, and do you, apply it to all.other areas too?

Other people are giving examples of risky or dangerous activities that people do - are they being coerced too? Is someone who joins the armed forces making a free choice? Arguably the same pressures could come in to.play as the ones you say apply to surrogacy so do you argue that people shouldn't be allowed to join the armed forces? What about parents who are killed whilst on active service? Their children are no.less parentless.

How about other dangerous jobs. Arguably those people are forced into those jobs by a capitalist society and poverty too and many of us benefit from the people that do them. Should we ban those jobs and are then people that benefit from.those jobs complicit?

FleetsumNJetsum · 18/01/2020 10:09

I was going to say that very thing, MrsOnions (love your name). I have had three babies and two miscarriages, and these "complications" are so common that they really are not the exception. Again, because it happens to women, the enduring impact on a woman's body of birthing a child is kept under the radar. Some of you--wait until you are sixty. Your body will remind you of those pregnancies!

The pp who called pregnancy "renting"...no. That's not what is is, unless you mean renting her body for the rest of her life. How do we accept the concept of renting another person's body, anyway?

YetAnotherSpartacus · 18/01/2020 10:10

Surrogacy and Prostitution should both be banned.

IcedPurple · 18/01/2020 10:14

I can't believe we have people on a feminism board bringing up the banal 'choice' argument or comparing gestating and giving birth to a baby to being a brickie or secretary.

FFS.

And all this 'gift of life' thing makes me a bit queasy. The article doesn't say if she was paid but given this is California it's almost certain that this was indeed a commercial transaction. Because, to put it bluntly, why would you give something as a 'gift' when you can get a 5 figure sum for it? Unless they were very close friends, in which case they should not have asked her to do this, however much she may have 'chose' it.

Surrogacy is the commodification of women and babies. It is an affront to human dignity and should not be allowed in any circumstances.

zsazsajuju · 18/01/2020 10:15

People are paid in the US to donate blood. And people do it for no consideration too. Does that make you angry too?

LyingWitchInTheWardrobe · 18/01/2020 10:16

Such an erudite and thought-provoking post, thecatfromjapan. I've never been comfortable with 'her body, her choice' because in the 95% of cases where it's a benign decision of relative unimportance regardless of the outcome, the 5% of decisions, if you take those individually, right back to the bare bones, come from a place of pressure applied by somebody else.

I agree that surrogacy should be banned, once and for all. It's been driven 'underground' in this country and isn't fit for mainstream life choices.

SoupDragon · 18/01/2020 10:17

Surely the real thing to get angry about is that women are still dying in childbirth.

LuisaRey · 18/01/2020 10:17

I can't believe we have people on a feminism board bringing up the banal 'choice' argument or comparing gestating and giving birth to a baby to being a brickie or secretary

I know- this thread goes against the grain when surrogacy is usually discussed.

Surrogacy should be banned. Being a prostitute is not a job like any other.

YetAnotherSpartacus · 18/01/2020 10:18

I can't believe we have people on a feminism board bringing up the banal 'choice' argument

Happens frequently in respect to changing names upon marriage, marriage, wearing make-up, watching porn etc.

AnotherEmma · 18/01/2020 10:18

I didn't actually say it was selfish. I said it was irresponsible. And I stand by it.

I'm having a second child because I think the benefits to my family (including my existing child) will outweigh the risks to myself.

Being a surrogate for someone else is of no benefit whatsoever to a woman's own children.

LuisaRey · 18/01/2020 10:19

People are paid in the US to donate blood. And people do it for no consideration too. Does that make you angry too?

No idea what point you are making. Donating blood or even selling blood isn't an activity which remotely compares to surrogacy.

Beerincomechampagnetastes · 18/01/2020 10:21

Altruistic surrogacy is the same bullshit minimization that brought us the false concept of the happy hooker.
Total bollocks designed to make it more palatable. Neither exist.

Barracker · 18/01/2020 10:23

That poor woman and her bereft family.

"It's her choice"

I'm not judging her. She lives in a world that tells women the most adorable act we can do is to be self sacrificial in service to another, preferably with our bodies.

I'm judging the 'commissioning parents" whose choices led directly to the death of a woman, a risk easily anticipated as an eventuality of pregnancy and childbirth. A risk they decided she could take not in service to saving their own lives, or health. No, because they wanted to become parents in a particular way, using a particular method that necessarily creates risk to two other lives that is entirely avoidable.

I'm judging the medical staff who created her pregnancy knowing that such pregnancies are higher risk, and knowing that the embryo they were implanting would be created into a baby by the body of this woman and at risk to her health but for someone else's interests, not her own.

I'm judging the society that treats both the woman who creates a new person, and that new person, as inconsequential in comparison to a man who made a sperm and a woman who made an egg.

I'm judging the agencies who make big money from transactions that exploit women and their bodies, that trade their babies, and that milk the desperation of women who can't have their own children, or the arrogance of men who reduce the importance of motherhood down to the production of their ordered product.

I'm judging the politicians who create the laws that permit people to be produced to order like farmstock, by women treated like farmstock.

I'm judging the whole system. The one that already declares you can donate a pint of blood in one sitting, but not three. Why, if personal choicy choice is paramount? Because the risk to a person's health becomes unacceptable. You can donate a kidney to an ailing patient, but not two kidneys to two patients. Why? Choicy choice says you could live on dialysis yourself. Because the sacrifice to yourself cannot be justified against the gain to others, it is weighted too heavily. A system that places limits on how much one person can take from another, on how much society can prevent individuals from sacrificing themselves too much, yet such a system has a purposeful blind spot when it comes to a particular type of exploitable body, the female type.

Choice is properly limited by the fairest societies.

Because at the other side of the equation from choicy choice is always takey take.

It is those people, the takers, who we should seek to rein in. Those who see other people's bodies as resources to exploit.

I don't judge the woman who died.
I judge everyone else who let her be statistical collateral damage in a system that exploits women's bodies for the wants of others and cynically markets it as 'choice'.

IcedPurple · 18/01/2020 10:24

How about other dangerous jobs. Arguably those people are forced into those jobs by a capitalist society and poverty too and many of us benefit from the people that do them. Should we ban those jobs and are then people that benefit from.those jobs complicit?

First, can I clarify that you consider gestating and giving birth to a baby to be a 'job'? Your post indicates that you do.

If so, what is the going rate? How much paid leave are you entitled to? How much time off per week? What are the health and safety regulations?

Most importantly, how can you leave the profession if you decide you no longer want to do it? A fire fighter, policeman or soldier can do this pretty much anytime they like, even if they may risk being sued for breach of contract if they don't go through the proper procedure. If a pregnant surrogate decides she doesn't want to continue in the 'job', what are her options?

AnotherEmma · 18/01/2020 10:26

Excellent post Barracker.

Cam77 · 18/01/2020 10:26

At the end of the day doesn’t the moral dilemma simply come down to the question of the morality of an often (but not always) rich person/couple paying a (often but not always) poor to do a relatively uncomfortable/potentially dangerous job on their behalf?
Men do such jobs all the time and we don’t bat an eyelid.

Bushhbb · 18/01/2020 10:27

*I didn't actually say it was selfish. I said it was irresponsible. And I stand by it.

I'm having a second child because I think the benefits to my family (including my existing child) will outweigh the risks to myself.

Being a surrogate for someone else is of no benefit whatsoever to a woman's own children.*

You don't think £tens of thousands would benefit her family.

She still could have died having her own child.

IcedPurple · 18/01/2020 10:27

Also, jobs like joining the police, army or emergency services do carry an inherent risk, but that's because those who do these jobs may put themselves in harm's way to protect and maybe save the lives of others. So you could say the risk is justified. There is no such justification for surrogacy. Infertility is sad but it's not life threatening. Nobody has a right to a baby, certainly not a right to use a woman's body to give them that 'gift' of a baby.

AnotherEmma · 18/01/2020 10:28

"You don't think £tens of thousands would benefit her family."

No I don't think it would make up for the loss of their mother.

HTH

IcedPurple · 18/01/2020 10:29

At the end of the day doesn’t the moral dilemma simply come down to the question of the morality of an often (but not always) rich person/couple paying a (often but not always) poor to do a relatively uncomfortable/potentially dangerous job on their behalf?

Since you consider pregnancy and childbirth to be 'jobs', could you answer the questions I posted above?

thecatfromjapan · 18/01/2020 10:30

Hearhooves

When I was 16 one of my friends was on a youth training scheme and was crushed to death when he was working on a faulty lift.

It was, in some senses, 'his choice' to be there.

But what a hollow, evacuated notion of choice we are working with there.

Why wouldn't I invoke my ability to question, to lean on the notion of 'choice' in such a situation?

Wouldn't it be an act of friendship, an act of class solidarity, of human love and honouring all he was (and never was able to be) to refuse to swallow down the sum of his life and death as 'his choice'?

There were so many factors that put him at the bottom of that lift shaft (not least, the YTS scheme). I enumerate them, sometimes, when I think about working class lives.

To enumerate the constraints, coercions, limitations - and also the inducements, - isn't to nullify his being.

In fact, it fills it; gives colour and depth and movement.

Honestly, operating with this either/or notion of 'choice' is limiting.

kalinkafoxtrot45 · 18/01/2020 10:30

That’s so very sad. Women’s bodies should not be for sale or hire in this way.

midgebabe · 18/01/2020 10:31

UK stats

So according to be bbc

1 in 2500 black women die from pregnancy/childbirth
And I think they are saying 1 in 12500 white women

According to government statistics there are on average 2 firefighter deaths per year across all their activities ( between 1986 and 2012, training & RTA included) and there are around 35,000 firefighters currently ( numbers fallen since 2012)

So your risk of death is higher from pregnancy than being a firefighter.