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.

Anyway, you didn't answer my question regarding your thoughts about your offer. What drove you to do that?

Well if death isnt the worst thing that can happen to someone, and most organ donations occur when the donor is effectively dead, how are they not kind of in the same state as a fetus? In that their body parts/life is sort of in a limbo of alive but not independently so (even a viable fetus relies on continual oxygen supply from the mother until it is born).

Ok, you did.

I find your statement;

'I wanted to be parents alongside them'

Troublesome.

What do you even mean by that?

And the thought you may have to have cesarians in future?

That's not a casual choice.

Pretty sure I did

See above, we crossed posts.

The same way you might want to share this rite of passage with many people you are close to and in a similar stage of life. Do you have long time friends or relatives where you had children at a similar time? It's a bonding experience.

I didn't consider having to have a caesarean the worst thing in the world. It was a considered risk. Especially when it was cited as the most likely undesired outcome from a medical perspective. There was of course the mental health side to deal with, too.

I didn't actually do it so that side could have been much worse than I expected. Though at the time when I looked into it and found people similar to me who were surrogate, they seemed to have this issue much more where they knew they'd be a very small and infrequent part of the child's life. Definitely less so when it was a family member.

That's mangled. What do you mean by that?

I was quite clear that I find any kind of human donation (excepting blood), bothersome, philosophically.

So your position is dead people have given their personhood up in the same way a feotus isn't independent, neither are dead people?

Ok.

It's got a kind of skewed logic, I guess.

No I'm asking if you believe that. I'm fine with all organ donation and abortion. And im also okay with surrogacy for people who have the same autonomy as I do.

The problem with having a baby for someone else is that doing so is predicated on the assumption that the pregnancy will go well. One of my cousins had preeclampsia and early rupture of membranes. She had to spend weeks as a hospital in-patient, having her blood pressure monitored 12 times per day.

Because the baby was hers, the decisions as to when to induce, how often to monitor, whether to nip out to Mamas and Papas between blood pressure checks, etc were between her and the medical team because it was her baby and her body and she owned all the proxy decision making for the baby morally and legally with no social pressure from a commissioning egg provider. It was up to her how much risk she was prepared to take when balancing the benefits to her baby against the risks to herself, and it was her risk to take with her own body to benefit her own baby.

If she had been a surrogate mother, the commissioning egg provider would have had opinions and, no matter what the law said, there would have been social pressure from the egg provider for my cousin to put her body on the line. There'd also be some people who would try to make a moral argument that the egg donor should have a right to interfere in the surrogate mother's medical decisions, dictating or influencing the level of risk, inconvenience, and suffering a surrogate mother should endure to save what is genetically not her baby. And it's easy for the egg donor to insist on that because the egg donor isn't the one taking the physical risk.

Altruistic surrogacy lends itself to destroying relationships between family members if it all goes wrong. The picture in my head is of one of those "women's gossip" magazines with "My sister ABORTED my baby" on the front cover because the sister couldn't, or didn't want to, endure the pregnancy complications.

Of course I don't believe ridiculous arguments, I do understand your reasons for your decisions more clearly though.

We have very different ideas about what it means to be human, and that's ok. We'll probably have to agree to differ here.

And @GlovedhandsCecilia, maybe think about what @selffellatingouroborosofhate just said, just think about it for, I dunno, five minutes.

Great name BTW @selffellatingouroborosofhate!!

I can only speak of this country, but it is made quite clear from a lot of different angles that the surrogate ultimately makes all the choices around the pregnancy and birth legally, and that is best from a medical/maternal perspective, too. As in, the pregnancy and birth is likely to go better if the woman carrying the baby is able to freely make decisions based on her own feelings.

If you want to confer with your support network to make decisions, that is also fine. Like it is fine for anyone with capacity to decide to defer to the judgement of someone else about their care.

I was actually surprised to learn that some surrogates and prospective parents don't have the contact we wanted to have throughout the pregnancy. They dont attend every appointment etc. That is sometimes to offer space for the surrogate to have a more private relationship with their birth providers.

And yes I was aware that I was essentially undertaking all the risks of any pregnancy I decided to continue. The research was patchy about whether i was at increased risk due to the fertility treatment I'd undergo. Partly because it usually focuses on FTMs.

That's very easy to say.

But 'altruistic' surrogacy comes with expectations, and those expectations obviously don't really care about your health as no sane person would ask that of a family member.

Why is that difficult for you to understand? It's not a normal request, or indeed a normal thing to do for someone.

No i don't believe that. I believe in abortion, donation and surrogacy because I believe in bodily autonomy. That is why i think women have the right to choose to end a pregnancy, I can give you my kidney (while dead or alive) or have a baby for you.

So do you think a husband who willingly conceives with his wife knowing the risks of pregnancy is exploitative and abusive?

You husband's brother wanted you to carry a child for them?

Ask yourself is that a normal request?

Really?

Let's push to one side all the philosophical arguments regarding selfhood.

Your husband was happy for you to put yourself at risk so his brother could have a child?

That is beyond bonkers to me, I ask this honestly, are you a people pleaser?

That's generally a conversation, and the wife has to be fully consensual and enthusiastic regarding the idea of childen.

Otherwise, we've got a problem...

It is my husband's sister. My BIL would have gone ahead, yes. They would do it for us, too.

Have I pleased you, much?

So why would you assume that in the case of someone like me and SIL, full conversations and enthusiasm would be absent? I was very enthusiastic about them having children, obviously!

It's your womb, and life, I don't think you give it the respect it deserves though.

And that's fine. But it being my womb and my life is what matters.

It's a bit like the idea of the 'happy hooker', everyone shrugs and says,

It's her choice, she's not harming anyone.

Of course she is, because the very idea that sex and bodies should be bought and traded is antithetical to the idea that we actually own ourselves and that all choices are made in a vacuum, which they aren't. And that is one of the fundamental ideas of what makes us human, what do you actually own? Nothing but yourself, and you should not be careless with it, especially as a woman.