California commodifies women and babies for gay men

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

1. Exploitation. 99.9% of surrogacy around the world is rich westerners paying poor women a a relative pittance to carry a baby for them with the knowledge that if it goes wrong they’ll just walk away and try someone or somewhere else. Ukraine has traditionally been the most popular place. Covid and the war has left countless women with babies that were ordered and there are now Romanian style orphanages with hundreds of abandoned babies as a result. The BBC has covered this. You’ll never see a Kardashian offer infertile Olga from Kyiv to carry a baby for her, will you?

2. Women as a commodity. No one should be able to buy or hire the right to use a woman’s body for any reason.

3. babies as a commodity. No one should be able to buy a baby. We have banned the buying of children who are 15 years old, 10, 5 etc. Why can people buy a newborn?

4. Anyone who knows anything about babies and attachment knows that babies should be kept with their mothers whenever possible. Their mother is the woman who gave birth to them. That is why even if a mother is deemed unfit, a judge usually decides a baby is to be removed, because it’s a huge decision that cannot be taken lightly.

5. it is not possible for any legal, moral, or ethical framework to exist that protects all three parties equally. Someone has to give up rights. Should all the rights be with the mother? Then the intended parents get nothing. Should all the rights be with the intended parents? Then you get awful scenarios, like the example of where a woman was told that should she enter a vegetative state, the intended parents would have the final say on withdrawal of life support. How do you prevent this sort of thing? Whose rights do you prioritise? What about the baby’s rights?

6. It is impossible, within such speculative framework to cover all the possibilities of things that can go wrong. Ergo with enough surrogacy cases there will always be legal messes to clean up.

7. Even if it’s “altruistic”, how do you determine free choice? How do you know that a sister isn’t doing it out of immense guilt rather than love? Or someone is being coerced? Or that there isn’t money involved somewhere? When someone donates a kidney to a loved one or relative they have to undergo extensive assessment to make sure they understand the implications of what they’re doing. No such checks exist.

8. I have personally seen the emotional impact of a woman who thought she could give up the baby, but was left sobbing to herself in her own room suppressing her milk with midwives checking on her while the happy couple were all smiles and giggles bottle feeding the baby a few doors down. I saw midwives swear they’d never be involved again after that.

9. Even if you can be sure it’s a true altruistic arrangement, and even if everything during pregnancy goes through without issue (12 week scan normal, 20 week scan normal etc) and even if the mother comes through relatively unscathed (pregnancy has a 100% complication rate) and has no qualms about giving up the baby, and the intended parents go home, it’s still not a successful surrogacy. No one has any idea if the child will grow up wondering, yearning, for their mother and it could take decades for that to manifest. Ask anyone who’s never known a parent, and they’ll all tell you they wonder. There’s a child at my DC’s school who has two dads. She knows her mum is in India and she says she’s going to go and see her “one day”. It’s heartbreaking ❤️‍🩹.

These are just some reasons. It’s banned in many countries for reasons like this. Banning surrogacy for everyone - men, women, gay or straight - should happen worldwide.

Great informative post NotBadConsidering
Thank you* *

It's true pregnancy does have a 100% complication rate. I don't know anyone who didn't have an issue before during or after birth.

I'd never thought about that.

What on earth are 'gender power games'? Pesky women refusing to be walking incubators?

The MRAs are really doing their bit in this thread aren’t they.

At least they’re being totally up front that they think there is nothing wrong with treating human infants as a commodity.

People who want to present selling babies as a good thing.

The thing about trade in infants requiring the renting of women’s bodies to incubate them is that the onus really is on people who want to promote it to demonstrate that it is not harmful and a good thing.

insisting everyone else must demonstrate why it’s - obviously - awful is like framing the task as explaining why murder is bad or rape. And then saying objections are just ‘gender power games’.

Just about anything that can only be done by one half of he population needs to be looked at very carefully as exploitation becomes an immediate risk. When the thing is question is production of a human baby and the sex who can do this is the weaker sex (economically and physically) that exploitation is inevitable.

There are some links to testimonials from the children of surrogates here. https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/telling-it-like-it-is-without-the

The whole article is worth a read.

That is very interesting. I wonder what kind of person would have an interest in all three topics. 🤔

Related: why is there a porn website called motherless?

Just saw this is the OP link! Anyway, there are some children of surrogates speaking up.

I suspect the PR industry is really the thread that ties it together. There’s a playbook of techniques that seem to be adapted to multiple situations.

Accusations of homophobic motivation to any criticism seems to be particularly common.

There is definitely a playbook. But I think it might be this one.
https://twitter.com/PankhurstEM/status/991712914489962496

Hiding behind the LGB and homophobia accusations is the biggest tactic they have. And it's unfortunately quite clear why this group would have a vested interest in men being allowed to buy babies.

The organisation Surrogacy U.K. now has 50% of the associated birth rate from their surrogates to gay couples.

I‘m not convinced your motivation for disapproval is purely concern over the physical risk to surrogate mothers (akin to the risk posed to all women who choose to give birth).

Who are you to deny surrogates their free will? Don’t tell me they are all poor exploited saps, mere tools of men. I know several.

As a society we ‘deny people their free will’ because we determine some activities are socially harmful.

you don’t get to drive at 100mph down your local high street.
you don’t get to punch your boss if he annoys you

Participating in the baby trade is not a choice anyone should be supporting.

you haven’t yet made a convincing case as to why they shouldn’t though

Because HUMAN INFANTS ARE NOT COMMODITIES.

that on its own is enough.

people should not be bought and traded.

@L3ThirtySeven
"Who cares why? You’re still telling women right, you are capable of caring for baby X, therefore you have no right to give baby x up for adoption as it’s the baby’s human right to be raised by you. You are overriding the mothers rights and agency as a human being herself."

I mean... yes? It's what most of us call "responsibility". A parent should not outsource the raising of their child, give their child away or otherwise leave their child without a strong moral reason why it is for the child's benefit. This is foundational morality of society. And whilst there can be a situation where those she hands the child to are better established materially to raise a child, it is an engineered situation that was arrived at by deliberate intent and therefore the morality of necessity does not apply.

Nor am I remotely convinced that material circumstance is a suitable determiner of who is best to be parent to the child. My parents were not wealthy but I'd never have wanted to be raised by others because they had more money. Unless the mother is actually destitute. And in that case what other word can there be for approaching her and offering inducements to have a child for you than 'exploitation'.

There is no point in trying to argue with someone whose starting point is that adults should be able to buy babies.

If my goal is to convince such a person, perhaps. If my purpose is to illustrate succinctly the appropriate responses to such a person, au contraire.

But your point is well made. It's a terrible foundation for an argument.

This is where I am, though actually I feel pretty much the same way about sperm donation.

There are all kinds of additional issues in surrogacy beyond this but in the end for me it comes down to the rights of the child, which can't be over-ridden because adults would like it if things worked differently.

Yes. It’s ridiculous.

Trying to pretend that the assumption should be buying and selling babies is ok unless people can prove otherwise is ridiculous.

It’s obviously not ok. The burden should be on them to try to demonstrate that it is ok.

Aside from the physical/psychological/practical experience of growing a baby and whatever form the birth takes (including trauma), it's appalling that little thought is given to the aftercare of the mother once the baby's been handed over.

Is any thought given to birth injuries (including prolapse and/or incontinence), hormonal imbalances, PPD, regret and separation trauma, ongoing mental health (you're never going to forget you birthed and gave away a baby, and you likely have physical reminders), surgical recovery if you had to have a CS, episiotomy/tear healing, risk of infection, blocked milk ducts and so on?

The surrogate parents seem to believe it's all sunshine and rainbows once the baby is in their possession. That the surrogate mother has been compensated (probably not enough in many cases of poorer/vulnerable women) and the process ends there.

I've never even been pregnant nor will I ever give birth but these things occur to me?

Presumably it's supposed to be hashed out in the contract 😞 but what happens in the case of disability? Whether identified during the pregnancy or a surprise at birth? I can't imagine many surrogate parents being okay with their much-wanted, expensively procured child not being 'perfect' let alone needing lifelong care. What if the baby has a condition incompatible with life and dies shortly after birth? If the baby dies in the womb and/or a termination is needed (or requested by any of the parties)? I'm sure supporters would say it's okay, it's all included in the contract but that's an entirely different kind of trauma for the birth mother and outside anybody's control. I don't think it's fair to say 'she signed up knowing the risks' when those risks can multiply exponentially in a split second. It's not the parents living with a ticking time bomb inside them 24/7 or even being much inconvenienced by everyday, routine pregnancy complications that require additional monitoring and ongoing discomfort.

What happens in the case of multiples, if the surrogate parents don't want that many children or reject the sex of some/all? It immediately changes in the status of the pregnancy to high risk, with an additional burden on the birth mother's mental and physical health.

The timing of the accusations of homophobia in this thread was almost uncanny, coming shortly after the observations about the nature of the social media commentary on the PS situation.

you haven’t yet made a convincing case as to why they shouldn’t though

I think madeintheshade missed this post even though it was made in response to them! I'm reposting because I'm helpful. It's a very good post, I hope they see it this time but I don't mind reposting again if they don't.