Disappointed that Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie is promoting her use of surrogacy as compatible with feminism

[Carla786]

I loved Purple Hibiscus and recently got through the rest of her books from my library. I really like her novels and especially her GC stance, but I was discussing her on a feminist subreddit recently and her use of surrogacy came up. It's disappointing she promotes it here as compatible with feminism,

https://www.premiumtimesng.com/entertainment/naija-fashion/791804-ive-no-regrets-welcoming-my-twins-through-surrogacy-chimamanda-adichie.html

Infertility is of course extremely painful, but I don't think that justifies using another woman's womb.

Which is fine as a personal choice for you. We all get to assume the risks we want to assume. The issue is when you extrapolate your personal feelings and then decide on the capacity of others who might make a different decision. In this case, the surrogate and the prospective parents. Most of which are women.

Ok, but what you are deciding is that surrogacy is never in the best interests of any woman. That's awfully paternalistic. You are deciding that this can never be something a woman freely chooses.

I just caught up on the posts overnight, that really was something.

Ophelia.

I wasn't extrapolating, I very clearly stated that for me it is the other way round. You are the one who talks about "the natives" and the fractured families and are generalizing.

If you use a surrogacy agency in the UK, you hsve counselling where they screen for your suitability on all sides. Not everyone passes. That is why some people do it "informally", purely because they wouldn't meet the approved standards in a developed country. Similar to international adoption. And that was from my research in 2012 so they already had this counselling in place.

My sister is a bit like that. The time and care she gave to our mum after her devastating stroke (she died in January) is astonishing. She would feel under so much pressure to go along if that question were put to her.
I have a friend in the US who was asked by his lesbian sister if he'd donate sperm for her wife to get pregnant with and he thought it through very carefully and then declined. He is very close to her and her wife, they live in ultra-progressive Portland OR, and he really fretted about it but in the end decided he didn't want to do it. He really hated being put into this position and it didn't even involved being pregnant himself.

Yes. I think it is remarkable how much you learn about family dynamics as you get older. What I would have decided at 20-30’s to do for my sister, I would have said no to in my 40s. Because I had only begun to understand the dynamic that would lead to a decision that I would now regret even though I still have the same love and respect for my sister. I have learned what are healthy reactions and what might be based in me needing to give back in a way that would not have been a good decision for me or her.

I hope your friend in the USA didn’t lose his relationship because he said no. But good for him to recognise that he did not want to do that.

I didn't say that. Read my post again.

@GlovedhandsCecilia

You have been presenting your arguments from a sense of personal experience because you were willing to be a surrogate for your SIL. The fact is you have no personal experience because, in the end, it didn’t happen, so it’s actually all pie in the sky. We get it, you think you’re a nice, kind, altruistic woman. You then deciding that the posters on this board who disagree with you must be morally inferior and have lesser family values than you is not ‘kind’ and comes across as “you’re all big meanies because you disagree with me”. Especially your complete insensitivity to @OpheliaWitchoftheWoods

You can’t accept that the wellbeing of newborn babies and women must come from using safeguarding principles to assume that the worse could happen - because at some point it will - and to put measures in place that ensure that doesn’t happen. Lovely cuddly altruistic surrogacy - which is never actually in the best interests of the baby - opens the door to human trafficking.

I would also reiterate that society needs to have some serious discussion around the assumption that everyone has a supreme right to have a child of their own, because the availability of medical technology has pushed the debate aside. Infertility can be utterly heartbreaking and I have every sympathy for those who want a child and can’t have one, but the sad fact is that not everyone should get what they want if the cost is exploitation and abuse.

😂

Ok, I've been delighted long enough.

Low isn't zero. The law has to consider and legislate for the worst possible outcome.

This is an excellent post. If you believe any of this is remotely true. We are all strangers on the internet after all. I may be being terribly cynical but I’ll just leave this here…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7RB9_xq_2gc

Are you ever going to link any of these studies you claim support your position?

In the UK and abroad, there are documented cases of surrogates refusing to surrender babies and commissioners refusing to adopt them. The refusal to adopt is of particular concern to me because who looks after that child?

Surrogacy lawsuits abroad include these gay men who filmed their surrogate mother's birth and broadcast it on TV and this woman who was infected by the commissioner's semen, leaving the baby disabled.

Maternal mortality is thankfully low in the UK, but morbidity is significantly higher. If we consider one of these “rare” negative outcomes of pregnancy and childbirth, pelvic organ prolapse, the lifetime risk of this is 50%. In women who have never given birth the lifetime risk is 20% and the degree of prolapse is considerably less. The risk and average degree of prolapse increases with each subsequent pregnancy. It can develop decades after giving birth. One in ten women will have surgery for this in the UK.

It is far better not to have enormous enmeshed clans. The cost of the enmeshment is always born by women and girls, who are the default peacekeepers and caregivers and often abused by in-laws. The risk of girls being sexually abused by cousins is far greater when the girls and their cousins live under the same roof because of the increased opportunity to offend and the greater crowding from having more than one family in the house.

Some separation between siblings, and by extension their children, is healthy.

Given the enmeshed family relationship dynamics that you consider to be routine and desirable and the strong people-pleasing actions you describe yourself as taking towards your in-laws, I would argue that if anyone on this thread has been groomed successfully to doormat themselves for their relatives, it's you, and your offer to bear your SIL's child is born of that emeshment and desire to people-please.

I remember there was a poster once on MN who discussed their surrogacy decision and experience. If I remember correctly, the woman told us that she had no regrets but that the friend had become very distant with the child as the child got older. Which was not the arrangement. When we heard more and more of the story, the emotional dynamic between the friends seemed to indicate that there was a need in the friend who carried the child to experience pregnancy again.

Often when you start to unpick some of these surrogacy arrangements, there are unexpected unhealthy dynamics on either side of the arrangement. I really could see where these arrangements would become unwanted by one party.

Well it's from the person who thought it was ok for someone to say that women should get raped with splitered baseball bats, so I guess it's just more of the same from them.

How can you do surrogacy "informally"? The baby is legally the child of the woman who birthed it and private adoption is illegal in the UK. You have to go through an agency to make it legal to hand the baby over.

What?
How can anyone think that is OK?

Risks are higher for surrogacy though as the child isn't genetically related.

What do you mean by 'natives' here and destruction of the family?

I've seen the thread and I didn't agree with pp's position, but I also didn't think she was saying it was OK.

Thanks for clarifying. I'm glad that the poster concerned wasn't saying that it was OK.

At the risk of summoning that particular poster again who I have absolutely no desire to interact with, on another post she was defending the use of very unpleasant, graphic language used by a man against a woman. Her position is that a man saying “fuck <insert woman’s name> with a splintery rolling pin” is perfectly normal, colloquial language - and apparently a woman uses exactly the same language in her workplace. She very much thought it was acceptable language. Just like this thread, she spent many pages across multiple days scolding women for being wrong.

On another thread a woman posted about her (very senior) position in a company and described pretty horrendous behaviour from her male boss. This same poster from this thread with a fondness for defending the use of splintery rolling pins appeared, randomly accused the woman of lying, and suggested she brought it all on herself. It was truly bizarre. Thankfully she was a lone voice - yet again.

That’s why I won’t interact with them. They always seem to appear on contentious threads and take a view that’s unpleasant, oppositional, and often misogynistic. I never see them arguing for women’s rights or safety with the same passion - weirdly though, they seem very enthusiastic when supporting positions which are harmful or damaging to women, either as a collective sex class or individually.

I have no issue with others who hold different views - but when someone consistently takes a view that’s anti-women, that’s a very different matter.