California commodifies women and babies for gay men

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(100) Telling it Like it is Without the Gaslighting (substack.com)

I don't think you are asking in good faith, but obviously the biological roles of males and females in reproduction are quite different and that has repercussions for the whole process.

This feels like the standard ‘look a squirrel’ diversion approach implying it’s homophobic to object to the baby-supply trade.

surrogacy is abhorrent who ever is buying a grown to order baby.

The point in the article is that the anguish of ‘infertility’ fig leaf is being extended to situations where there’s no bodily dysfunction; it’s simply biologically impossible for two men or a single man to produce a pregnancy. Claiming men in these situations are ‘infertile’ is nonsensical.

But the language of ‘infertility’ is a way of pretending they have some medical and moral need to use a woman’s body and buy a grown to order baby so it would be somehow exclusionary to not enable that.

Great post.

Why is surrogacy “abhorrent” exactly?

@LoobiJee I agree with you that surrogacy and sex work seem to attract the same kind of astroturfing that we saw with Schofield. Several of the same tactics are even employed.

Because it is the trade in human infants grown to order.

Infants are people. Actual human people. Hugely vulnerable people.

They are not commodities to be bought.

Nor should women’s bodies be used as incubators to rent.

For SO many reasons. Whereas the other arguments are mostly ‘I want a baby; I think having a baby grown to order is something I’m entitled to’.

@IncomingTraffic It is completely homophobic to take an issue that both gay and straight people are doing, and focus just on gay people when criticising it.

I'm not in favour of surrogacy, but I am going to call out the rising trend of so many media sites to find ways to twist narrative against gay and lesbian couples.

The article in the OP focuses on the recent news that California is aiming to pass a bill specifically to provide gay couples with a surrogate to achieve “fertility equality”.

So no, it’s not homophobic at all. Surrogacy is abhorrent in all contexts, it just happens to be that this week, that abhorrent thing is Gilead-style provision of women to men.

It isn’t homophobic to observe that a couple which does not have the type of sexual intercourse which leads to pregnancy is not suffering from infertility. They are not infertile. They do not need “fertility” treatment.

The article is about the financial coats of surrogacy arrangements being paid for from medical insurance, based on a completely false argument that a couple not having the form of sexual intercourse which leads to pregnancy is equivalent to being infertile.

But you failing to recognise the relevant bit is that they are men not that they are gay. The legislation also considers single men as ‘infertile’ and should have rent a woman to grow a baby to order services covered by their medical insurance too.

Lesbians or single women are far less likely to want to rent a woman for baby-growing services because they can (barring actual infertility) grow the baby themselves. They need to acquire some sperm, but that’s a different issue to surrogacy.

The main beneficiaries of this California legislation are men. Gay men are likely to be over represented in the group because most single heterosexual men would probably just choose finding a woman to have a baby with without paying as the best way to solve their problem.

But the problem is men’s sense of entitlement to pay for women’s bodies. The homosexuality is a red herring.

I'm not wasting my time arguing with the mental gymnastics you're doing to claim you're not homophobic by just focusing on gay men and not on straight couples. There are countless articles out there focusing on female celebrities etc. who have had babies via surrogacy, but you're not commenting on these.

I don't even really care if you have something against gay men - I'm just commenting here to show that some people will call you out on it, both online and in real life, and also to show any gay parents who do happen to be reading this that lots of people support them.

There are copious threads on surrogacy, including straight celebrities, all the time.

They can all be found through the search function.

This thread is about California’s new law proposed this week.

Do you think criticism of surrogacy should only focus on surrogacy done by straight couples?

But is wrong with that, and I’d every single scenario in which surrogacy occurs equally bad?

If the core of the issue for you is “men’s sense of entitlement”, this sounds like a pretty nebulous foundation, to me, for judging policy. What is this sense? How does it manifest itself? How can you prove your answers? It sound like you just don’t like it, “cos men” vs you have any meaty argument.

We never hear from the grown up surrogacy babies. We'll probably have to wait a few more years. I'd be very interested to know their thoughts.

A baby absolutely knows who it's mother is at birth.

What’s wrong with trading human beings to order? Really? Can I order a baby via surrogacy but not pick it up till it’s 10 years old?

No not all surrogacy is equally bad, but it’s all bad.

Also secondly, looking at examples throughout history, any movement where babies are removed at birth from their mothers never ends well.

Why, was I not vehement enough.

What a bizarre response.

You haven’t answered the questions. Surrogacy exists, it’s not self inflicted vide my to everyone is it bad, me included. I’d be happy to considered your argument as to why it’s bad, and for whom, however.

Not self evident it’s bad to everyone

The mother baby bond is one of the strongest in nature.

Surrogacy purposefully breaks that bond.

Probably because there aren’t all the issues you scare monger around to support your ideological stance on this issue. It’s not bugger all to do with the well-being of children and everything to do with gender power games.

I think the core issue is the fallacy of deeming men INFERTILE when they are not having sex with women.

If a man decides he wants to have a baby he cannot himself become pregnant. He does not have a womb, for starters.
So he needs to rent a human with a womb - a woman.

She needs to have a lot done to her, over at least 9 months, to grow a baby for this man.
Growing babies can be a dangerous activity. And right at the end comes the really dangerous part when the woman needs to expel the baby she has grown - usually via the vaginal canal.
She may need an operation to take the baby out safely, which requires cutting through 7 layers of different tissue, pulling the baby and the placenta out and then stitching all the layers up again. It is quite the operation.

No man can become pregnant, grow one or more foetuses, and then give birth. They need women to do so.

When heterosexual couples use surrogates I find it equally reprehensible, if that helps.

In countries where giving birth is less medicalised, the rates of mortality are rather a lot higher.

On the contrary - there's considerable evidence from the children born via donor assisted conception that stepping outside the "norm" of conception and birth is not always as problem free for the child as we might assume. Some of it makes uncomfortable reading .
Adults buying babies via surrogacy is relatively new. People who dismiss concerns as "gender power games" are rarely women or those who have experience of pregnancy and birth - which presumably is why they're such a powerful lobby.