Surrogacy-help me explain to my daughter why this is exploiting women

[happydappy2]

Teen daughter thinks surrogacy is fine, as an opportunity for the woman to earn money.
I've explained that only impoverished women do it, not wealthy ones.
It's not fair on the child to be removed from it's natural Mother/protector.
It will be a high risk pregnancy for the surrogate.
Ultimately benefits mens, not women or children.
There have been cases of paedophiles commissioning surrogates
She just doesn't get it though-what else can I ask her to think about to get her to understand how exploitative this is?
I asked her, would it be ok for me to buy a 10 yr old child? No of course not, so why is it ok for wealthy people to buy babies?

She's nearly 18, I really need to help her critical thinking on this....thanks

@Helleofabore

I think you just like an argument because on almost every post I've said I don't agree with surrogacy if it's born out of exploitation.

As a feminist I would expect women like you to allow another woman to make that decision without judgement.

No. I don’t ’just like an argument’.

I am pointing out that your beliefs, that you believe is being ‘kind’ is still going to harm women and children. And that you are trying to justify this by denying the reality around this issue.

You have even admitted you didn’t even know that those pregnancies have higher risk. And then when you were told, you pivoted to ‘but parents make this decision all the time to have more children, this is just this same. When it is not.

Do you think it is a feminist issue to allow women to be exploited even willingly? And for children to be commoditised in any way? All in the name of getting children on demand?

I have infertility to the point where I can't have children at all despite desperately wanting them and I still agree with @Helleofabore

And I actually come at disagreeing with surrogacy from the childless woman's point of view as well. there is incredible pressure socially for women with fertility issues to go through all sorts of medical interventions etc to have a baby. I've been told by multiple people that I haven't tried hard enough or I can't want a baby enough because I haven't "tried everything".

There is just this assumption now that medicine can fix everyone's infertility and it can't. And in some ways the pressure of that expectation makes it harder to be one of the people it doesn't work for.

So I would prefer it be illegal mainly because its exploiting women and putting them in a potentially dangerous situation and its going to be traumatic for the child. But also a little bit so that childless women don't have to deal with the mindless "have you considered surrogacy" questions that pop up more and more frequently nowadays alongside the "ooh you could adopt" nonsense.

As for feminists supporting even altruistic surrogacy, maybe the words of Julie Bindel will help. She has written about this as well, but this is her speech.

https://juliebindel.substack.com/p/the-pimping-of-pregnancy

And Janice Turner, on womb transplants, but the same altruism.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a-womb-must-not-become-a-spare-part-for-sale-dr7d9kvgm

go and plug the link into the usual archive site.

I would expect women like you to allow another woman to make that decision without judgement.

When a decision involves harm and exploitation of women, and harm to children, yes I judge.

One person's desire does not ever excuse harm to another person in their use. That should be judged. And the harmed people with less power, should be protected.

@Froodwithatowel

Who would be harmed in this example which was about me wanting to do it?

Not trying to be devil’s advocate, but how do you know she’s not thinking critically about it? It sounds like your mind is very made up.

I’ve actually spoken to a couple of women who’ve been surrogates so I have a very different view of it now.

so far you've been presented with harms to the baby, risks which long term are completely unknown but would include potential fertility troubles of her own and short term include a risk of death for the woman from whom the eggs are collected, and the risk of unwelcome pressure on the woman from the couple for whom you would hypothetically be carrying.

I believe your feelings to be sincere and thank you for sharing them but it might be time to pause and reflect.

@stillplentyofjunkinthetrunk

So far I've been presented with anecdotal assumptions. No actual research cited.

Guess it's lucky for the 100's of happy healthy babies born out of surrogacy in the UK each year that the women in this thead don't make the rules.

Have a read of the Oxford research into the impact of surrogacy in later life, then you reflect.

So far you've done zero looking into the impact on children who are not ok because let's face it, you don't want to know or acknowledge them because they'd get in the way of what you're happy thinking.

Hang on? Feminists now need to provide peer reviewed studies for ethics of situations to be considered?

This really does seem to be the ‘happy sex worker’ argument now in play. That due to the possible existence of an idyllic career choice of a woman who chooses sex work or to give those male people altruistic sex services, sex work should be considered female bodily autonomy. Because absolutely no woman voluntarily providing such services could be coerced in any way, even when they are desperate to please the people they love the most in the world.

Instead, we now need to provide studies to prove the harm?

Article

www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2023/9/8/surrogacy-human-right-or-just-wrong

Book - Renate Klein
Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation

Dr Renate Klein is a long-term women's health researcher and has written extensively on reproductive technologies and feminist theory over the last thirty years. A biologist and social scientist, she was Associate Professor on Women's Studies at Deakin University in Melbourne. She is the author of Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation (2017)

'Surrogacy is heavily promoted by the stagnating IVF industry which seeks new markets for women over 40, and gay men who believe they have a 'right' to their own children and 'family foundation'. Pro-surrogacy groups in rich countries such as Australia and Western Europe lobby for the shift to commercial surrogacy. Their capitalist neo-liberal argument is that a well-regulated fertility industry would avoid the exploitative practices of poor countries. In Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation Renate Klein details her objections to surrogacy by examining the short- and long-term harms done to the so-called surrogate mothers, egg providers and the female partner in a heterosexual commissioning couple. The author also looks at the rights of children and compares surrogacy to (forced) adoption practices. She concludes that surrogacy, whether so-called altruistic or commercial, can never be ethical and outlines forms of resistance to Stop Surrogacy Now.'

stopsurrogacynowuk.org/2022/08/25/commercial-vs-altruistic-old-vs-new-uk-vs-america-a-comparison-in-research-long-read/

Commercial vs Altruistic, Old vs New, UK vs America – A comparison in research.

Maybe this article will provide links too. I mean this is just the first few paragraphs.

”Published in Dignity last month, findings from a survey and in-depth interviews of 96 surrogate mothers between 24-50yrs were analysed.
These are my top 3 key findings in this study:”

“The women were 3 times more likely to have a caesarean section”

“They were 5 times more likely to go into early labour”

“Surrogate mothers are “more likely to experience postpartum depression following the delivery of surrogate children than after delivering their non-surrogate children.””

”We found that surrogate pregnancies are more often labelled as high-risk pregnancies independent of maternal age or gravidity. This research supports the findings of Woo et al. (2017) in that surrogate pregnancies had a higher rate of delivery via Csection. Women were more likely to deliver at an earlier gestational age compared to their genetically related or spontaneous pregnancies.”

“Of 141 pregnancies recorded in this survey, 157 babies were born, so ‘multiples’ of twins (or more) were present in this cohort and the highest number of complications, (such as pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, haemorrhage, infection related to pregnancy, pre-term labour, hyperemesis gravidarum, anaemia, placenta previa, placental abruption etc) in one pregnancy was 7.”

“To support their findings researchers reference existing studies:”
“In their study, Duffy et al. (2005) documented significant obstetrical complications of ten gestational surrogate mothers. Almost a decade later, Merritt et al. (2014) sought to determine the impact of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) on pregnancy-related outcomes, including surrogate pregnancies. Their research found a fourfold increase in stillbirths, a fourfold increase in cesarean sections for mothers who used ART and a nearly fourfold increase in preterm birth (Merritt et al., 2014). Another study by Woo et al. (2017) looked at pregnancy outcomes of gestational surrogate pregnancies alone. It examined the records of 124 surrogates and found a significant difference in physical outcomes between their own spontaneous pregnancies and their gestational surrogate pregnancies.”
As well as pregnancy, birth and post-birth issues, such as post natal depression (which is 37.5% more likely in surrogacy pregnancies vs 4% in non-surrogacy pregnancies)

This is an interesting statement from Janice Raymond ;

There appear to be some trends in both the situations and circumstance of the women who engage in surrogacy as well as the motivating factors involved in their choices. We aim to return to explore this further but no-one says it better than Janice Raymond. She argues that altruism, though mistaken for agency, “has been one of the most effective blocks to women’s self-awareness and demand for self-determination”.

The problem with exploitation is just how hard it is pick it up from not exploitation.

You have a choice - to enable exploitation by allowing the practice or to ban it which reduces the risk as far as is possible and draws clear lines that surrogacy is exploitative.

Ultimately you should aim to 'do no harm'. And thats not possible with surrogacy being legal because you always leave the door open to enabling it.

I tend to prefer to link materials aiming at communicating the findings to the public rather than original research but I think it unreasonable and untrue to assert you've been presented with nothing but anecdote and opinion, nevertheless here you go...

From the link in my original post:
"This is a plain English summary of an original research article"

"Assisted reproduction with donated eggs carries about double the chance of some risks for mothers and babies when compared to pregnancies from natural conceptions or assisted reproduction using the woman’s own eggs. "

On the long term risks of egg collection you're complaining that no-one has provided you with research where the point was no research has ever been done. From the link in my original post.

'When Catherine Fonseca volunteered as an egg donor, the intake form asked for her SAT scores. It did not ask if she understood the long-term health implications of stimulating her ovaries to produce a bumper crop of eggs to be extracted and turned over to an infertile couple. That wasn’t an oversight by the clinic. No one knows the long-term risks to egg donors — if, in fact, there are any. Anecdotally, some women — Fonseca among them — said they experienced an array of health problems after donations, including ovarian cysts and endometriosis, a painful inflammatory disease that can cause infertility.
But there has been little research on the long-term outcomes for egg donors, ...
“The bottom line is that we simply don’t know anything for sure, because nobody has followed these women systematically,” said Linda Kahn, a postdoctoral fellow at New York University School of Medicine. '

but short term we do know there is a risk of OHSS
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5993897/

and it is not a trivial risk "Hospital admission was needed for 49 (14.5%) women" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17786651/#:~:text=If%20an%20egg%20donor%20develops,eliminate%20the%20risk%20of%20OHSS.

"There are many well-known and clearly-documented risk factors for the development of OHSS including:

young age,
low body mass index (BMI),
large numbers of large and medium-sized follicles,
large numbers of eggs retrieved "

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2868304/

I think what you need to remember is that it’s how you felt as a new mum, knowing it was your child. I felt the same. Not everyone does (the women I have spoken to who were surrogates said it was emotional and wonderful and they immediately wanted to give the baby to its parents- that baby snuggled onto its parents, not the surrogate. And it worked).

The posts on here saying women shouldn’t be allowed to go through ivf or give birth because it’s too dangerous are being offensive. Seriously? If they do it with their own biological child it’s ok but not if it’s not?

Have you actual been through fertility treatment? I would do it again in a heartbeat. I know all the risks and I know all the pros and cons of different kinds of births thanks. It’s also really not that bad. And it’s my choice - whether or not the child ends up living with me or someone else as their parent. It’s what you do when you want to make a child.

And as for those women who have already had their eggs harvested for their own IVF services, in the past and in other countries even now, those women were exploited to get their eggs through discounted IVF services.

What's it called? Thanks

@Helleofabore did you read the Divine research or just what stopsurrogacynowuk.org cherry picked from it? From what I read the probability of issues were only marginally higher and it even states this is somewhat due to surrogate mum's being older. 82% were born after 37 weeks..the rest early but live births. Higher c section figures but not mentioned whether these were elected. I'd take a punt they were.

@stillplentyofjunkinthetrunk Is it that you're against egg retrieval as well?
Anyone having IVF would have to do that so highly likely the mum of the surrogate would be happy to..

I'm still so shocked so many women are against other women in this country being able to make these choices themselves.

I'm still so shocked so many women are against other women in this country being able to make these choices themselves.

Can you outline what framework you would have in place, checks, balances and so forth, to make sure a woman is making her own choice and not being coerced in anyway and is psychologically prepared for it, like with kidney donation for example?