‘It’s almost like a heterosexual relationship. I’m the provider. And this other woman that I met on Facebook is staying at home and having my kid for me.’
I think this piece just skimmed the surface of the negatives around surrogacy. There seemed to be a focus on the personal joy of couples, and the agency of a few, chosen surrogates.
What about the babies and their trauma of being taken away from their birth mother? Adoption trauma is well known, it applies the same to the surrogate babies.
What about the immense potential for child abuse? Reduxx just published another story of a convicted pedophile operating a surrogacy empire, under investigation for baby trafficking.
Why is okay for rich women like Paris Hilton to outsource the risk of childbirth to financially poor women?
There will never, ever be a case of a rich woman choosing to be a surrogate for a family that she has no connection to. This alone tells you everything about this horrendous exploitation of poor women.
No one has the right to a biological child. Yes, that is absolutely heart-breaking, but that is the human condition.
“[C]hildbirth and death are the two things that scare me more than anything in the world.” - Paris Hilton
This is the kind of weak person who should forego parenting and why I question some of the merits of surrogacy. The 'lower class' person carrying her child is far stronger.
This article is disturbing on many levels but the biggest tragedy is that children have become commodities instead of the true gifts they really are. Ideally, children are raised by their biological mother and father. That is the best situation for human flourishing. I get it that this misses the mark frequently but it should still be the gold standard. I also understand adoption is difficult but at least the process is in keeping with the dignity of the child!
Kids, to me, come with marriage,” - what a narcissistic statement from a gay man. No one would have said or thought this even 30 years ago.
When people (kids and women) are allowed to be bought and sold, our world is in serious trouble. How easy it is to discard and abuse commodities. There is a declining respect for the dignity of what it means to be human and that can’t end well for society.
We have already lived through slavery and found that it was horrific- are we really going down this path again?
In addition to the ethical issues touched upon here, two pieces of the puzzle are missing from this article, which is, overall, more nuanced than most of what I've seen on the subject.
The first--and most important piece--is how surrogacy affects the children who are born through it. Babies are born to bond with their mothers, and recognize the voices and smells of the person who carried them. We don't let puppies leave their mothers until they are at least eight weeks old, but children born through surrogacy are given to their intended parents almost immediately after their born.
The second piece is the health risk to the gestational surrogate. The evidence (and there isn't much of it because no one will do the research) seems to suggest that surrogate pregnancies are higher risk for the woman carrying the baby than a normal pregnancy would be. The Center for Bioethics and Culture (https://cbc-network.org/) has done a lot of work around this issue, and their documentary (Eggsploitation) and podcast (Venus Rising) are worth checking out for more information on this side of the issue.
It stipulated that the couple she was carrying for would have the final say over “reductions”—which is surrogacy-speak for abortion. “I’m a pro-life surrogate,” Mareko told me. “I was heartbroken, but I had to walk away.”
———————————————————-
LOL ‘reductions’. Modern Democrats are nothing more than Joseph Goebbels with a thesaurus.
At least now we know you can just sign away your basic human right to abortion via DocuSign. So restricting abortion will literally kill people *but also* you can sign a contract with someone you met on Craigslist that gives your sacred right to abortion to them. Talk about unsafe working conditions. Someone call OSHA.
In all these talks about new fertility treatments, surrogacy, etc. a very important person is usually left out of the equation... The baby. Not a commodity, not a right - a baby who will one day grow up and have to grapple with their beginnings. Babies in utero hear their mother's voice (or their surrogate's) - they come into the world seeking that voice, that comfort. Likewise a woman's body is leaking milk, hormonally wrecked as she prepares to care for this infant. Biology demands one reality - we, 'post biology' - demand another.
I write this while nursing my second child, 2 and a half months old. I just wonder how much is being lost, for both mothers and their children, when we pretend the most vital of all things - life - can be turned into an industry. I wonder how many memories will be coming out 20 years from now from children who have to learn just how much money and human capital was exchanged for them to exist at all.
It is not at ALL like a heterosexual relationship. The woman becomes the baby’s mother in that relationship and the husband sees her and loves her in a whole new way after she becomes the mother to his children. Comparing the two is disgusting.
“When you start to grow a human”. Yes these are all people, humans we are talking about. I’m a bit troubled by the class divide here. The wealthy off loading their problems on the poor. Not sure how I feel about this but I can tell you I prefer one man with one woman creating a new family.
It’s baby trafficking and prostitution in one! Children aren’t commercial products to be bought and sold. Viewing women as birthing vessels is the opposite of feminism, and the more our capitalist, consumerist society views women as sexual objects or baby incubators, the worse off we all will be. Children are sacred. Women are sacred. The love that makes a child is sacred.
This article treated the topic with such a soft touch, it’s revolting. We have drifted further from women’s equality than at any time since we won the right to vote. It’s not surprising that the founders of surrogacy companies tend to be men, and clueless about menstrual cycles at that! That guy is a pimp.
This is sort of off topic, but seeing as many wealthy people use surrogates due to age, I have come to believe that this constant dose of telling women to “wait” has resulted in a massive wave of 40 year old women who want to become moms but realize they can’t. I think feminist messaging ironically has a massive hand in creating and maintaining Big Fertility. Telling 25 year old women they’re too poor, dumb, and unstable doesn’t seem to be working out for women’s long term happiness.
In grad school, I took a class on adoption in literature (I had a vested interest, since I was adopted). The professor's premise was that adoption was "commodifying" (in Marxist-speak) a child. Eventually, I figured out that in Woke-land, adoption *has* to be demonized because it presents a feasible alternative to abortion.
Which makes Woke support for surrogacy all the more ironic. A gay couple who literally *pays* a woman to have a baby is somehow magically not "commodifying" the child the way an adoptive heterosexual couple is. Also, regardless of this article's assertions, surrogacy is still largely a luxury of the wealthy.
All of which goes to show that money is more important than ideology. And--as with Trans Activism--the needs of men are readily placed ahead of any respect for women.
I’d like to hear more about the surrogate kids’ povs and whether it’s healthy for them. Most of these articles focus solely on the desires of grown adults but nothing about the lives of kids who were essentially incubated and taken away from the body that created them. I mean, every single adopted kid I know has grown up with a serious complex about where they really came from. And then there’s the lack of bonding for these mothers and the babies - it’s my understanding that the act of carrying a baby creates a very real attachment bond that simply cannot be emulated. The early round of surrogate kids have to be coming of age soon. It’s why I’m not convinced by these sort of “happy surrogate” articles. There’s a human being whose pov isn’t being considered.
Paris Hilton thinks childbirth is scary? Oh, you poor, pouty selfish girl, just wait till you try child rearing. Unlike your pocket pups,, you can’t tote a tot around in your purse
I feel most for these baubles, I mean children, being created to satisfy their parents’ idea of true happiness and fulfillment. What happens when this little human demonstrates him- or herself to be just that — an autonomous, independent human?
I’d believe in evolution if it weren’t for mankind.
I think this piece just skimmed the surface of the negatives around surrogacy. There seemed to be a focus on the personal joy of couples, and the agency of a few, chosen surrogates.
What about the babies and their trauma of being taken away from their birth mother? Adoption trauma is well known, it applies the same to the surrogate babies.
What about the immense potential for child abuse? Reduxx just published another story of a convicted pedophile operating a surrogacy empire, under investigation for baby trafficking.
Why is okay for rich women like Paris Hilton to outsource the risk of childbirth to financially poor women?
There will never, ever be a case of a rich woman choosing to be a surrogate for a family that she has no connection to. This alone tells you everything about this horrendous exploitation of poor women.
No one has the right to a biological child. Yes, that is absolutely heart-breaking, but that is the human condition.
Interesting piece, Suzy.
“[C]hildbirth and death are the two things that scare me more than anything in the world.” - Paris Hilton
This is the kind of weak person who should forego parenting and why I question some of the merits of surrogacy. The 'lower class' person carrying her child is far stronger.
This article is disturbing on many levels but the biggest tragedy is that children have become commodities instead of the true gifts they really are. Ideally, children are raised by their biological mother and father. That is the best situation for human flourishing. I get it that this misses the mark frequently but it should still be the gold standard. I also understand adoption is difficult but at least the process is in keeping with the dignity of the child!
Kids, to me, come with marriage,” - what a narcissistic statement from a gay man. No one would have said or thought this even 30 years ago.
When people (kids and women) are allowed to be bought and sold, our world is in serious trouble. How easy it is to discard and abuse commodities. There is a declining respect for the dignity of what it means to be human and that can’t end well for society.
We have already lived through slavery and found that it was horrific- are we really going down this path again?
In addition to the ethical issues touched upon here, two pieces of the puzzle are missing from this article, which is, overall, more nuanced than most of what I've seen on the subject.
The first--and most important piece--is how surrogacy affects the children who are born through it. Babies are born to bond with their mothers, and recognize the voices and smells of the person who carried them. We don't let puppies leave their mothers until they are at least eight weeks old, but children born through surrogacy are given to their intended parents almost immediately after their born.
The second piece is the health risk to the gestational surrogate. The evidence (and there isn't much of it because no one will do the research) seems to suggest that surrogate pregnancies are higher risk for the woman carrying the baby than a normal pregnancy would be. The Center for Bioethics and Culture (https://cbc-network.org/) has done a lot of work around this issue, and their documentary (Eggsploitation) and podcast (Venus Rising) are worth checking out for more information on this side of the issue.
It stipulated that the couple she was carrying for would have the final say over “reductions”—which is surrogacy-speak for abortion. “I’m a pro-life surrogate,” Mareko told me. “I was heartbroken, but I had to walk away.”
———————————————————-
LOL ‘reductions’. Modern Democrats are nothing more than Joseph Goebbels with a thesaurus.
At least now we know you can just sign away your basic human right to abortion via DocuSign. So restricting abortion will literally kill people *but also* you can sign a contract with someone you met on Craigslist that gives your sacred right to abortion to them. Talk about unsafe working conditions. Someone call OSHA.
In all these talks about new fertility treatments, surrogacy, etc. a very important person is usually left out of the equation... The baby. Not a commodity, not a right - a baby who will one day grow up and have to grapple with their beginnings. Babies in utero hear their mother's voice (or their surrogate's) - they come into the world seeking that voice, that comfort. Likewise a woman's body is leaking milk, hormonally wrecked as she prepares to care for this infant. Biology demands one reality - we, 'post biology' - demand another.
I write this while nursing my second child, 2 and a half months old. I just wonder how much is being lost, for both mothers and their children, when we pretend the most vital of all things - life - can be turned into an industry. I wonder how many memories will be coming out 20 years from now from children who have to learn just how much money and human capital was exchanged for them to exist at all.
It is not at ALL like a heterosexual relationship. The woman becomes the baby’s mother in that relationship and the husband sees her and loves her in a whole new way after she becomes the mother to his children. Comparing the two is disgusting.
“When you start to grow a human”. Yes these are all people, humans we are talking about. I’m a bit troubled by the class divide here. The wealthy off loading their problems on the poor. Not sure how I feel about this but I can tell you I prefer one man with one woman creating a new family.
It’s baby trafficking and prostitution in one! Children aren’t commercial products to be bought and sold. Viewing women as birthing vessels is the opposite of feminism, and the more our capitalist, consumerist society views women as sexual objects or baby incubators, the worse off we all will be. Children are sacred. Women are sacred. The love that makes a child is sacred.
This article treated the topic with such a soft touch, it’s revolting. We have drifted further from women’s equality than at any time since we won the right to vote. It’s not surprising that the founders of surrogacy companies tend to be men, and clueless about menstrual cycles at that! That guy is a pimp.
“For $4,000, through Marin, you can choose your baby’s sex. For $10,000, you can have twins.
“Everyone asks to pick out the eye color, but it’s not possible,” he said.”
This turns my stomach! Children are not a commodity to pick off a shelf like Cheerios at Walmart. 🤬
This is sort of off topic, but seeing as many wealthy people use surrogates due to age, I have come to believe that this constant dose of telling women to “wait” has resulted in a massive wave of 40 year old women who want to become moms but realize they can’t. I think feminist messaging ironically has a massive hand in creating and maintaining Big Fertility. Telling 25 year old women they’re too poor, dumb, and unstable doesn’t seem to be working out for women’s long term happiness.
In grad school, I took a class on adoption in literature (I had a vested interest, since I was adopted). The professor's premise was that adoption was "commodifying" (in Marxist-speak) a child. Eventually, I figured out that in Woke-land, adoption *has* to be demonized because it presents a feasible alternative to abortion.
Which makes Woke support for surrogacy all the more ironic. A gay couple who literally *pays* a woman to have a baby is somehow magically not "commodifying" the child the way an adoptive heterosexual couple is. Also, regardless of this article's assertions, surrogacy is still largely a luxury of the wealthy.
All of which goes to show that money is more important than ideology. And--as with Trans Activism--the needs of men are readily placed ahead of any respect for women.
I’d like to hear more about the surrogate kids’ povs and whether it’s healthy for them. Most of these articles focus solely on the desires of grown adults but nothing about the lives of kids who were essentially incubated and taken away from the body that created them. I mean, every single adopted kid I know has grown up with a serious complex about where they really came from. And then there’s the lack of bonding for these mothers and the babies - it’s my understanding that the act of carrying a baby creates a very real attachment bond that simply cannot be emulated. The early round of surrogate kids have to be coming of age soon. It’s why I’m not convinced by these sort of “happy surrogate” articles. There’s a human being whose pov isn’t being considered.
Paris Hilton thinks childbirth is scary? Oh, you poor, pouty selfish girl, just wait till you try child rearing. Unlike your pocket pups,, you can’t tote a tot around in your purse
I feel most for these baubles, I mean children, being created to satisfy their parents’ idea of true happiness and fulfillment. What happens when this little human demonstrates him- or herself to be just that — an autonomous, independent human?
I’d believe in evolution if it weren’t for mankind.
If you think this has some serious ethical implications, just wait until we start to use artificial wombs. Brave new world, man
Misery. Disgust. Maybe there is no hope for the human race.