R4 Fri 7th Feb 12 noon AntiSocial

[TeenToTwenties]

Caught a bit of this.
Was discussing surrogacy.

I got heavily into genealogy in recent years myself, and that's definitely impacted my own outlook. I was always sceptical about surrogacy, and firmly believe that commercial surrogacy is an evil business.

But going through the history of my own family, and uncovering not just adoption and unexpected paternity, but also child abandonment, bigamy, transportation of orphans to Australia, even one case of an unmarried mother creating a fictional father for her daughter and giving him a whole elaborate biography...

People have a right to know where they come from. Maybe they're not interested, but they have a right to know.

I’m halfway through the programme and it is making me very angry. Infertility is awful but you cannot make policy and laws based on individual cases. Because in people’s minds it is often seen as some altruistic act from a friend or sibling (like the woman featured) doing something magnanimous and “what’s the harm?” if all parties are signed up to it.

But those individual cases hide the reality which is the eventual acceptance of commercial surrogacy- it is a classic Overton Window moment. And as we all know, where commercial surrogacy is lawful, it isn’t some compassionate and selfless woman offering to carry a baby for poor childless couples. It’s like prostitution - for every “happy hooker, sexually empowered women” conceit we all know that 99.9% of women in prostitution are damaged, traumatised and desperate in some shape or form. It is exactly the same for commercial surrogacy- at best it is done by women who have no other means to earn halfway decent money, at worse it is forced labour of the most heartbreaking kind.

It makes me so angry to see surrogacy becoming so accepted as mainstream without people understanding what it actually means for women and our bodies and psychological well-being - and most importantly the impact on babies born this way 😕