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.

What would have happened if your SIL had conceived naturally AFTER you had become pregnant?

I was interested to see what she had to say but she didn't really address the ethical issues beyond saying it can be done ethically:

I want more women to feel less ashamed of talking about reaching motherhood through non-traditional means. What I said about having my twins through surrogacy is true because there are some things you simply can’t hide. You can’t hide the existence of two perfect human beings. People got carried away with the idea that I’m 47 and have babies. But I don’t lie about things that could have consequences for others.

“I felt many women might be pressured and told, ‘Look, she’s 47 and has twins—what about you? Generally, there’s so much shame around fertility issues, and I think it’s too much of a burden for women. Women feel ashamed when they have fibroids or struggle to get pregnant. I don’t believe in that kind of shame. Some viewers even said I looked fantastic after just having a baby, and I couldn’t say thank you—because it wasn’t true. I said they were born via surrogacy. I heard there was a bit of noise about that.”

many believe ‘it’s wrong to rent a woman’s body.’

“They argued that it’s dehumanising, I think it can be, but I think it matters how it’s done, and I think it can be done ethically and also the same people we say women can do whatever they want with their body, and there’s a contradiction there. I think that’s what the noise is all about, and my boys are so precious to me.

I hope that if anything good comes out of this, more women will be less ashamed of talking about reaching motherhood through non-traditional means. I think other women have babies through surrogacy, or people who adopt babies will go and hide for nine months because our society is judgmental, and I don’t think that that is good for anybody.

Aye, well. I dont think taking babies away from their mothers is good for anyone.

Humans aren't gifts to be given away, or items to be sold to those who can afford one.

The first clause is why, in a nutshell, even altruistic surrogacy is wrong.

Children are not:

• Gifts to be given away.
• Property to be bought and sold.
• Something that would-be parents have a human right to at any cost.

The right to marry and found a family means that the State have no business barring individuals or groups of people (e.g. disabled people, Roma, Jews) from marrying in general (bars on kinship marriage don't constitute a general bar to marriage, before anyone tries that non-argument), nor any business stopping people from having children, although the State may remove any children after they are born to protect them. That right doesn't mean that the State or anyone else is obliged to find you a spouse (glaring at incels here), nor assist you in having a child.

How would it be better for the baby? Is your line of argument that in-family surrogacy is ok because it can be a blended family ongoing approach but not outside family/total separation? Adopted children now adults often share their feelings and self perception based on the history that the adults celebrated and put forward to them as the truth, and how difficult this has been for them. Their feelings that they became lost behind adult desires and then had to grow up with the adult narrative that this was good, it was lovely, when to them it wasn't.

It really is not a case that I don't understand personally what it is like to feel the physical and mental desperation for a child, I found MN through a series of pregnancy losses. As PP says: I don't think intentionally creating children for the purpose of separating them from their mothers is ever a good thing, and should only happen via court when it's the least damaging option left.

You say that as if you don’t believe baby girls are groomed from birth - as if little girls getting dolls and doll prams and pushchairs doesn’t happen. As if there isn’t a huge market in toys that do just that….

Also imagine how it would be for the SIL watching ‘her’ baby bond with its mother. Knowing that bond would always be there…. It wouldn’t surprise me if as soon as the baby is handed over they move house to keep the mother out of the baby’s life. How would OP feel then? No longer seeing her son or daughter, no longer her imagined life of parenting her children together? Would she then be quite so keen to do it again?

Cecilia isn't the OP.

I meant PP

When surrogacy was first introduced, it was presented to society as an altruistic act from one women helping another. No one envisaged where it would end up. Altruistic surrogacy is rare- the market is huge and involves eugenics, people trafficking, exploitation.... Gay and single men are a huge and growing market. Everything is based on the needs of the adults, the child has no rights, not even to know their egg donor or birth mother in many jurisdictions (in the UK children can find out at 18 but most Brits go abroad so it barely matters).

For me it's like buying drugs - you are taking part in a murky international trade, only in people. Ethical issues abound and no one escapes them, even if you are doing it for family.

Adichie too is part of the global surrogacy market and I don't know how she reconciled her feminist views with this.

I couldn't have children and I adopted older, traumatised children from the UK care system. Adoption rates are falling - people want the "blank slate" baby and don't want the unpredictability of adopted children and the inevitable hard work and possible negative outcomes.

But I really disagree that infertility is a reason to exploit another woman's fertility and in particular to create a child specifically to remove him/her at birth and keep the birth mother's (and egg donors if used) identity secret and expect that child to be grateful.

This is a great post and I'll reply more fully to the points tomorrow.

For now I'll add that Adichie was actually able to have a daughter back in 2016. The twins she had via surrogacy came in 2024. I lost more sympathy over this as it then presumably wasn't a case of being unable to have biological children at all, but a desire to 'expand the family' as she put it. I agree it is still really wrong to use surrogacy if you cannot have biological children but I could understand the temptation if not the choice a bit more.

Exactly. This isnt the case with surrogacy. The children arent typically predisposed to things that will ultimately lead their parents to lose custody of them. Like.drugs and mental health issues.

Research says that everyone does better when there is an ongoing positive relationship between the surrogate, the prospective parents and the baby. Research. Not guesses and wishes. Actual studies.

It would be better for the baby because they wouldnt go from one caregiver to the other suddenly. They would transition slowly from 2 people doing their care, to 1 main carer and a loving Aunt. In my culture, women help each other this way anyway.

Court is not the least damaging way to separate a child

Look, I know that a lot of you do not have women in your life that you would help become a mother if you could. A lot of women do not have these types of positive loving relationships with other women. Your own mothers wont even look after your children on occasion. Not all cultures are like that. Many of us still live in close extended families. We know our cousins.

One of my kids is my cousin's kid who I raised from a few months old and eventually adopted to ensure she would not go back into care. She still sees her mother but she is legally my child. That's why you'll see me talking about raising 4 kids but not birthing 4.

I get that in your fractured, distant families, this might mess kids up because you hardly see each other and go NC at the drop of a hat. We have greater bonds than that. We are family.

None of those things happen. The prospective parents cant sue the surrogate for a disabled child and the chances of them refusing the baby is very rare. Especially where the surrogate and parents are known to each other.

The surrogate can keep the child but that is ethically right for that to be intact. Very, very few people will.change their mind and keeo the baby. Especially when it is of no genetic relation to them.

This is all silly fearmongering and is in no way relevant to surrogacy here.

Considering the negative feedback from adults who have felt they have been commoditised and report about the trauma is growing, I don’t believe there is any ethical surrogacy. I don’t believe that surrogacy within families is ethical either.

The end result is that the person produced has been commoditised. It doesn’t matter how many people love them, they were produced on order and even if it is a slow transaction, the transaction is there.

We know there are instances of families splitting because of it, where a child ends up being completely detached from their mother who carried them because the parents ended up rejecting that family connection. We also know about the sisters who ended up with profound disabilities or injuries because of their pregnancy.

I think many women like to ignore the research about the increased risks in the pregnancy to the mother or the child because they believe it will never happen to them. But the pregnancies are higher risk. Just because a sister had an easy pregnancy before doesn’t mean she will when she is not the child’s genetic mother.

No matter what language is used, the child is being transacted in surrogacy. They are exploited and so to is the woman who carries the pregnancy.

Surrogacy is wrong, simply abuse of women's bodies. I'm horrified that any woman claiming to be a feminist would use another woman's body this way.

Can you provide evidence of these cases you speak of?

Look, I know that a lot of you do not have women in your life that you would help become a mother if you could. A lot of women do not have these types of positive loving relationships with other women. Your own mothers wont even look after your children on occasion. Not all cultures are like that. Many of us still live in close extended families. We know our cousins.

It's the other way round for me. I love my sister and I'm close to her (as I am to my brothers), I would never put her into the situation that she would have to decide to risk her health, and in extremis life, to gestate a child for me, and I know she wouldn't put this question to me either.

You know the vast majority of women, even in war and famine, have healthy babies, right? Maternal mortality, especially for moddle classed white women, is very low in the UK. I would take that tiny risk to make a woman very close to me a mother, even though my risk of death is slightly higher due to.my demographic.

Again, I think it depends on your family values. We know that the natives here have been dealing with the destruction of the family for about 2 generations now.

I agree. I am very close to my sister and cousin, there is no way either of them would ask this of me or I them. Because of that closeness. And that is just them considering the impact on each other and not the child.

Yeah, the majority of women is fine but what if it is my sister carrying my baby who isn't? Not a risk I'm prepared to ask my sister to take on my behalf because you know what: she is important to me.
My family values are fine, thanks, and I'm not sure who you are talking about when you talk about "natives here" but I'm probably not one of them.

Traditional family values have tended to place obligations on women which have not always been in the best interests of those women.

One aspect of feminism is about allowing those women to escape these traditional expectations and give them autonomy to make their own decisions which are best for them, and not make them feel they should always put themselves last for the sake of the wider family.

Bloody hell, that is one of the cruellest and most insensitive responses to a post I've read yet.

Opheliawitchofthewoods

There is also a risk that the sister who offers to do this for the other family member is doing it because of saviour complex or something similar means they are more likely to act in a way that is not in there best interest, that they may have. Even one which may not be readily understood by either party. It could also come from a feeling of gratitude.

My older sister was hugely involved in caring for me even though I had a very close relationship with my mother also. I can imagine feeling that I would do anything for her in return.

They absolutely do and have done. You’re cruel and shockingly ignorant to boot. Do some research