Surrogacy is not a gay rights issue – it is a women’s rights issue

submitted by alttrawl from standard.co.uk

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[–]artetolife 38 insightful - 1 fun38 insightful - 0 fun39 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I am a gay man and I'm horrified by the way some guys talk about surrogacy, as if they are absolutely entitled to rent a woman's body like it was an airbnb or something. It is literally impossible for a gay or a lesbian couple to produce children by themselves, so what is so wrong with planned co-parenting or adoption?

[–]WrongToy 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's the fiction that they CAN produce children by themselves. No you can't, you get an egg from one anonymous woman, fertilize it and then stick it into the body of another anonymous woman relegated to being an EZ-bake for you so you won't be bugged or have "competition" for them.

It's not like a lot of kids won't want to know in adulthood, no matter how much WUV you gave them.

[–]Eurowoman24 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

thank you so much. I'm for surrogacy if it's say someone who wants to do a favour for a friend, but some of the things I see online are so disgusting.

[–]GConly 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (12 children)

The number of children in residential care, desperate for a family, keeps growing. Meanwhile, according to Surrogacy UK, since 2010 the numbers of same-sex “intended parents” contacting the organisation has been rising, and currently stands at almost 50 per cent of its customer base.

These kids are mostly non adoptable for various reasons.

Also beware pushing for greater numbers of adoptions. In the UK the govt set a target a few years ago for each local area to hit; for every child removed from birth parents and adopted they get a cash bonus which has lead to some downright illegal removals from parents on very flimsy pretexts.

For example, a friend of mine got taken into hospital because of illness for two weeks, because she was a single parent her 2yo son went into foster care.

We found out as soon as the kid hit the system legal steps were being taken to have him permanently removed and put up for adoption. No history of abuse, just mum got sick for a bit. They made her jump through hoops for months before they backed off. Even made her do an IQ test. I think the fact she got a solid 125 was what made them back off. They thought she was dim and easy to push around.

Also the majority of kids put up for adoption have educational and behaviour issues in school even if adopted at birth.

And people want their own children. Not someone elses.

[–]Doe_aFemaleDeer 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

“And people want their own children. Not someone else’s”. But in a gay male couple situation - one of the partners will still end up with “someone else’s” kid. And even the other partner will end up with a kid that has 50% genes from “someone else” (i.e. the kid’s mother & grandparents, who in such cases are often intentionally excluded from having any relationship with the kid).

And just like some parents might be obsessed with having only biological kids - some kids may want a chance at having a relationship with both her biological parents or e.g. her biological sisters on her mother’s side. Biological interests are not a one-way street, they can go both ways.

It’s unethical to “intentionally” create kids with e.g. no access to their mother & potential siblings. Kids are not puppies that one can “commission like property, sell or give away as gifts”.

If biological parents give up their kids due to extreme or unfortunate events - that’s an unforeseen event and it’s a tragedy that we have no choice but to remedy via adoption. But to intentionally approach women with a “contract” to create kids JUST to give them away as a “sale transaction” or as a “charitable gift” - is very problematic & unethical.

[–]MarkTwainiac 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Your point about how biological interests go both ways are so true. Men (and men & women) who advocate for surrogacy say grownups have the "right" to have, raise and know their own biological children, even if it means using/exploiting/temporarily enslaving a woman (or two women if they use a separate egg donor). But at the same time, these adults so often don't believe the children created through surrogacy and/or gamete donation should have the right to know and have a relationship with their mothers (or mothers if one woman provided the egg and another the womb) or all their grandparents, half-siblings, cousins etc.

Coz advocates/users of surrogacy don't see the children of surrogacy as separate persons with inherent human rights; they see them as property, trophies and show ponies who "belong to" the "commissioning parent(s)." The kids are viewed as custom-made accessories to enhance the commissioning parent's or parents' own lifestyles and to show off to others.

It’s unethical to “intentionally” create kids with e.g. no access to their mother & potential siblings. Kids are not puppies that one can “commission like property, sell or give away as gifts”.

It's also unethical to purposely create babies just so they can be removed from the women who carried, grew and brought them into the world as soon as the babies are born and the umbilical cord is cut. The mother-baby bond in the months after birth is crucially important for the baby's lifelong wellbeing; hence, it's called "the fourth trimester."

In puppy mills, newborn puppies aren't removed from their mothers until after at least 8 weeks; to rupture the bond earlier is physically and emotionally damaging to the pups. But rich men and rich couples who use surrogates have no compunction about sweeping in immediately after the baby is born and spiriting "their" poor child away from the woman whose heartbeat and voice the baby has been listening to for 40 weeks. It's so very fucked up.

[–]GConly 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

And just like some parents might be obsessed with having only biological kids -

That's pretty much the standard for all humans. You're making it sound like a weird fetish.

It’s unethical to “intentionally” create kids with e.g. no access to their mother & potential siblings.

Well that's true of a lot of fertility interventions. So I guess no more sperm donors or egg donors?

[–]MarkTwainiac 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Another poster said

And just like some parents might be obsessed with having only biological kids -

And you said

That's pretty much the standard for all humans. You're making it sound like a weird fetish.

I think there's many miles - many millions of miles - between having a desire/urge for biological children and being obsessed with it to the point of feeling justified to go the surrogacy route - which usually involves exploiting and endangering the health of two different women: the one who provides the eggs, and the one who carries and grows the fetus and gives birth to the child.

So I guess no more sperm donors or egg donors?

I don't think anyone here said that. But the fact is, many ethical, legal and psychological issues for all parties involved - including, perhaps most importantly, the children - can arise, and have arisen, from creating babies with either eggs from selected/chosen donors (as shown in the documentary "Eggsploitation") both known and never personally met, or with donor sperm from never-met strangers via sperm banks and fertility practices.

I've followed this area closely in real time since the case of the first "test tube baby" Louis Brown in 1978 and the case of Baby M and Mary Beth Whitehead in the mid-80s. I also know at least half a dozen women - both lesbian and straight - who conceived using donor sperm from sperm banks/medical practices and who over the long run have found they and their children have been faced with all sorts of thorny, unforeseen issues and complications as a result.

Finally "fertility interventions" that involve only the bodies and genetic material of the two people in a couple hoping and planning to become parents are one thing. Fertility interventions that involve using the bodies and genetic material of other people - ranging from male strangers who merely wank into a cup to women hired to risk their own health and fertility to provide eggs and women hired to put their very lives at risk to gestate and give birth to a child - are a whole different kettle of fish.

[–]WrongToy 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Not unless the kids get access to their true IDs at age 18 so they can look them up if they want.

It's not about you. It's about them and their conditions they might be at risk for, for one, that only the bio parent can provide.

[–]Doe_aFemaleDeer 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

That's pretty much the standard for all humans. You're making it sound like a weird fetish.

The standard for humans is also the common widespread interest in knowing and interacting with one’s mother, grandmother, biological siblings/sisters, etc. This is important not just to avoid accidental incest, but also as a basic common human condition. But gay male surrogacy advocates make it sound like THAT human standard is a “weird fetish”. As I said, biological interests go both ways. It’s not a one-way street.

The irony is that many gay men are often very close to their own mothers - but at the same time seem to think that their “commissioned” daughters should not be afforded the same rights of interaction with one’s mother as they had.

So I guess no more sperm donors or egg donors?

That’s an ethical minefield as well. “Purchasing” human sperm and human eggs, like from a restaurant menu, as part of a commercial business scheme or “gift” scheme, where the child is “pre-designed” on the controversial condition of not getting automatic rights to information & access to the other side of her biological family is unethical.

The world is still in the process of developing recognition for human child rights, especially since the world actually only comparatively recently entered the controversial stage of intentionally creating human children (& human-making material) to be automatically sold or gifted “as an industry”. The current low level of recognition for human child rights is illustrated by the fact that the U.S. won’t even ratify The Convention on the Rights of the Child (a failure which Obama called the most disappointing & embarrassing failure that he has seen during his time in office).

[–]GConly 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

So basically FU if you have fertility problems.

This argument (about genetic relationships being critical) rather suggests to the argument the woman that carries the baby is not relevant as a parent.

[–]our_team_is_winning 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

We found out as soon as the kid hit the system legal steps were being taken to have him permanently removed and put up for adoption.

My jaw hit the floor. That is dystopian sci-fi nightmare stuff. We have kids whose "look at me, genderspecial" mothers are transing them and those kids aren't taken away, yet a loving normal mom gets sick and they try to take hers??? This is messed up.

[–]GConly 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It was pretty horrific. Basically the UK gov had decided to try to increase the number of kids with the intent to clear out the foster system a bit... But people want little kids and babies, not challenged tweens and up.

So in an effort to hit targets and pick up the extra gov funding that came from reaching targets, social services got overzealous.

[–]MarkTwainiac 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

For example, a friend of mine got taken into hospital because of illness for two weeks, because she was a single parent her 2yo son went into foster care.

We found out as soon as the kid hit the system legal steps were being taken to have him permanently removed and put up for adoption. No history of abuse, just mum got sick for a bit. They made her jump through hoops for months before they backed off. Even made her do an IQ test. I think the fact she got a solid 125 was what made them back off. They thought she was dim and easy to push around.

That's appalling. What country and province/state did this happen in? And how recently? Hope she and the child are okay now.

Their story reminds me of what happened to the 130,000+ young kids in the UK from poor families in the 1940s, 50s and 60s who were taken into state care for similar reasons - their mothers were never married or divorced, widowed or abandoned by their male partners; their poor fathers were widowed and couldn't cope with the kids on their own; their mothers had a temporary physical or mental illness; parents too poor or troubled to care for their kids, etc. Once in the clutches of the government, the kids were told their mothers or parents had died, then they were placed on big ships and sent to Australia.

In OZ, they were told, they'd live happily ever after in paradise full of "oranges and sunshine." But the reality was, they were instead all made into slave laborers by the institutions who were supposed to care for them. Many/most were habitually raped and abused by their adult overseers, such as the Roman Catholic Christian Brothers at the monastery cum child slave camp known as Bindoon Boys Town.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/movies/oranges-and-sunshine-starring-emily-watson-review.html

The 2010 movie about the case "Oranges and Sunshine" is very well done, albeit harrowing and haunting. Emily Watson plays Margaret Humphreys, the RL social worker who investigated the scandal and brought it to light in the 1980s and helped many of the individuals affected. Watson is excellent in the movie, as are David Wenham and Hugo Weaving, who play adult versions of two of the little boys badly abused in the scheme. Merv Dillane is good too as the supportive husband of Watson's Humphreys; a subplot is the impact of Humphreys' time-consuming, energy-demanding investigation and involvement in the case on her marriage and her own young kids. But be forewarned, it's a very distressing move. I am crying now just thinking of it.

Again, hope your friend and her child are okay.

[–]GConly 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

That's appalling. What country and province/state did this happen in?

UK... again.

Yeah she's fine, it was 13 years ago.

[–]MarkTwainiac 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Glad to hear! Still, it's appalling that in the UK in 2007 such a thing could happen. I admire the UK so much for its philosophy and practice of safeguarding. Sounds like what happened with your friend and her child was a major fail.

[–]Shesstealthy 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

What is wrong with the old-fashioned way of co-parenting with a woman to whom you've supplied a.loaded turkey baster?