Adelaide couple Mark and Matt, both 29, have acquired Thai-designed newborns Tate and Estelle through commercialised surrogacy overseas. According to Adelaide’s Sunday Mail, the dual boy-girl delivery an hour apart by caesarean section to separate surrogate women for gay parents is believed to be an Australian first.
These babies have a complex genealogical history.
They were conceived from eggs extracted from a single Caucasian donor woman (country not identified), separately fertilised with the men’s sperm, then implanted into two Thai women who acted as surrogate mothers.
Commercial surrogacy is illegal in Australia, and adoption by gay people not allowed in South Australia. The men spent $80,000 to obtain the children.
I’m not about to make a case that Mark and Matt won’t love the children or provide good homes for them. And it’s not just gay men engaging in reproductive tourism in developing countries – an estimated 500 couples a year are doing it, with figures showing a tripling in three years.
What most concerns me is the complete erasure of the mother in these acts of global womb renting by wealthy Westerners. This latest case highlights this mother disappearance.
There is no mother in the story. A graph shows the men as ”Biological Fathers”, the women as ”Surrogate 1” and ”Surrogate 2”. Elsewhere they are ”women”, not ”mothers”.
The birth mothers won’t ever be contacted or shared in photos, even though it was their voices the babies heard and responded to in-utero, their bodies who nourished and sustained them and prepared for their arrival. Read more.
Published in The Sun-Herald Feb 16 2014
26 Responses
Message:
Thanks Melinda for speaking up about this most important issue. I work in adoptions, and constantly meet with people who still suffer the consequences of the forced separation and secrecy that were part of old adoption practice. People who are damaged by issues related to their sense of identity. To see a new generation of women and children being subjected to similar practices through surrogacy (and also some IVF practices) is so sad. How can we apologise to one generation for the mistakes of the past, and then allow the same damage to be perpetrated on the current generation?
Melinda Tankard Reist,
Surrogacy industry a return to the dark ages??
No one is going back to the dark ages!
You are painting a surrogacy journey in so many different colors and forgetting to be truthful and factual.
I understand that there are dodgy clinics OS and they mistreat the surrogates, that is really unfortunate. But a Westerner must be extremely vulnerable and going in there with no help and their eyes closed to fall for these dodgy services. There a hundreds of people in the surrogacy community that have done surrogacy and only visit the clinics with the best reputation that have been involved within the community for years.
You said: “What most concerns me is the complete erasure of the mother in act of global womb renting by wealthy Westerners.”
The truth is, these poor intending parents are having to refinance their homes, sell their homes, apply for large loans from banks, borrow money from their families, save for years or work a few jobs in order to have their dreams come true and sometimes it ends in total devastation because of lose.
Surrogacy is about all parties agreeing, it’s about a lovely angel willing to give the gift of life, and it’s about unfortunate couples becoming fortunate families, thanks to a generous act, it’s not about taking advantaging or exploiting a surrogate or treating them as “breeding machine”!
Your articles left me in shock, considering I’ve had a personal experience with surrogacy.
I’m puzzled to know as to who you think you are writing about surrogacy when you haven’t experienced a surrogacy journey first hand. What makes you think you can write a piece about something you have no knowledge about. You are extremely ignorant, prejudice, insensitive and you are insulting everybody that is going through this surrogacy path.
You do not need to voice your opinion on this matter as
you clearly have no understanding as to what surrogacy entails; the pain, hardship, strength and courage that comes along with it, would only be found within a person who is on this difficult path.
Legislation’s vary from country to country, but in Australia a surrogacy arrangement is followed by a Patient Review Panel, Lawyers, police checks children’s check, endless hours of individual/group psychological evaluations and counselling sessions. The surrogate would be asked if she has any doubts and if she’s thinking about not being able to relinquish the baby from the very beginning, they will obviously be told that being a surrogate isn’t a good idea for that person. The professionals will decline the arrangement if those involved aren’t a mentally a fit match.
A surrogate offers to carry the child for the intended parents; a contract is then drawn up and signed by all parties.
There is no exploitation, just consenting adults! The surrogate mother acts as a vessel, she is NOT the mother/genetic parent, she has promised to carry the intending parents baby and give them the gift of life 9 months later.
You are trying to rock a boat that is already being heavily rocked from every angle. Try to be sensitive to those that a struggling and try to get your facts right before giving us all a bad name.
You left out why people turn to surrogacy and why they can’t conceive themselves and need help.
Did you try to conceive and have many failed attempts?
Did you finally get pregnant to only have miscarriages because you had severe endometriosis, then to have it corrected but find out you have hormone sensitive breast cancer at the age of 26, to then get told you will never ever carry a child because you are at high risk of recurrence due to too much estrogen being pumped in your body.
Did you have a bilateral hysterectomy, which left you childless?
Do you know what it feels like to pay $70k for all your altruistic surrogacy medical expenses after you’ve paid thousands for cancer treatment and not receive one medical rebate?
Do you know what it means to finally be told that your surrogate is pregnant, after you’ve been wondering if you would ever be so lucky?
Do you know what it feels like to be so grateful but so sad and depressed at the same time because you can’t carry your child or haven’t had the privilege of rubbing your pregnant belly when that’s all you’ve ever dreamed your entire life?
Do you know what it feels like to have to fly all the time to see your baby’s scan and feel it kick from the outside, then to only have to fly back home in tears and ONLY be able to think about your child from a far distance.
Do you know how painful it is to know that your “genetic child” can’t hear “mummy’s” voice every day because she’s not the one carrying the child?
Do you know what it feels like to desperately wait anxiously for hours in the hospital corridor for your baby to be born?
Do you know what it feels like to see the Dr raise your baby up in the air for the first time as you are standing across the theater doors? I do, It’s the best feeling in the world!!
Do you know what it feels like to see your your surrogate smile and cry tears of joy because she is so glad she was able to give you everything you wanted. I do, It’s the best feeling in the world, we are in contact with her, we love and are forever grateful to our surrogate.
But what makes you think that all surrogate wants to, needs to or should be in the baby’s life or act as a mother, when baby generally has 2 genetic parents that will love them and care for them always.
The surrogate mother is doing this because she wants to, not because she wants to be a mother, she has her own children. In some countries they do this generous act in order to simply set their families up for life. Why should intending parents feel guilty for helping someone that has helped them?
I’ve noticed the comments on your public Facebook page are similar in their ‘outrage’ that surrogacy would be criticised. The online surrogacy networks in Australia must be nice and strong, for so many people to have been mobilised to comment in similar ways (what about women with cancer of the uterus!). I think their strong online presence makes sense–people need big networks to arrange all the lawyers, doctors, victims, procurers, migration agents that are needed to organise surrogacy from Australia, it must be a massive task. They would have spent a lot of time and money trying to get around all the adoption laws here. Plus I reckon a good number of these people would be currently trying to make businesses out of their ‘expertise’ in organising surrogacy, to make up the money they spent on the experience in the first place. There must be a lot of people running scared that Australia will put in place stricter laws before they have a chance to make money out of the business. Articles like yours pose a big risk to their future incomes–policymakers might be influenced to crack down on the international baby trading market. Unfortunately, the financial interests that probably motivated many of the Facebook comments make a bunch of people sound like pimps–aggressively trying to defend their ‘right’ to procure women for their reproductive purposes. It’s an embarrassing sight, but illustrates well the complexion of the developing surrogacy business in Australia and its rabid profit-seeking.
I know some of the Facebook comments would have been from women lashing out in guilt at what they know they’ve done to another woman (how could they not feel bad for having taken a baby away from its birth mother?), but I suspect some of the other comments are from men worried about their future business prospects.
The surrogacy industry is a global scourge, and it’s awful to realise so many people in Australia obviously now have grubby connections to it. I really hope your article prompts policymakers to good, strong action against the baby market, and against people in Australia who are shamelessly trying to dodge our adoption laws.
Caroline Norma,
First of all. What are you blabbing about? You are jumping around topics like a mad women, think about what you are writing, you are making no sense at all! How are you connected to surrogacy and where did you get your information from? It appears to me that you have no idea, and you should probably go on and do some real research. Perhaps you should speak to a group of surrogates and intending parents and gather real life experiences from both sides. You will then soon be aware that what you were thinking and writing wasn’t factual and was quite silly. How dare you mock people with cancer!
I did surrogacy here in Australia, my daughter is biologically mine and my husbands. How does she belong to the surrogate? She is genetically ours, therefore that means we are her parents!
Caroline – how dare you presume that the commenters are making any money from this or fear that somehow they will be financially disadvantaged by stricter laws. How dare you. I happen to k ow this is certainly not the case. And why only the men making the money? What total bigotism and prejudice? Why would a woman (or man) feel guilty for having their biological child handed back to them by a willing woman who has cared for it but is not its mother? The online community is a string one you are right, but for totally different reasons to those you fabricated.
Thank you for articulating this. I’ve felt increasing sorrow after meeting a LOT of twins lately from surrogates in India and Thailand. Some are even the biological children of the surrogates (i.e. from her egg, not a stranger’s) and will never see their mothers again.
This is not about anyone’s ability to parent. It’s about the creation of another stolen generation – children taken from their mothers in the Third World and paid for by wealthier westerners.
I’m sick of hearing people justify the exploitation of these surrogates by saying the money pulls them out of poverty. They’re being paid, on average, far less than the annual minimum Australian wage and the psychological/emotional damage to both mother and children will be immeasurable for the rest of their lives.
Shona Ryan’s quote really resonates with me. Thank you.
Sam – you are wrong. In India and Thailand it is not allowed to use the egg from the surrogate herself. Get your facts straight.
QUOTE FROM CAROLINE-people in Australia who are shamelessly trying to dodge our adoption laws.<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Tell me Caroline how to Adopt a baby in Australia without waiting 8 years and ill give up my O/S journey this year.By the way……cut off age is 40,im 37 so please tell me how to do this within 3 years??
Sam,Surrogates don’t use their own eggs.stop making up untrue facts just to be seen on this site.go away and do some research you twit.take Caroline with you because between the pair of you iv never seen such fools.
Sam, I’m curious, have you ever had an original thought of your own? I ask, since your comment reads like a big fat lie (biological children of Thai and Indian surrogates) followed by a summary of Melinda’s misguided assertions (rich westerners, children taken from mothers etc). I think I’ve read enough fiction for one night!
2 years ago I was a surrogate in Australia using my eggs and a known sperm donor. We were not paid for our expenses or for loss of income. Although helping others was a very expensive experience to me and my family nothing will compare to the joy it has given me to be able to birth a baby for someone who could not after trying for over a decade. To relieve a couple’s pain from over a decade of pain and failure is immeasurable. Your article is offering no real solutions just paranoid, ill informed judgements of others whom you make no real effort to relate to. Please contact me privately to discuss this topic from the perspective of a person with experience rather that publishing closed minded opinions that some may consider fact or real news.
Tell me Dr Caroline Norma how am I with a previous medical condition (and as a result cannot carry a child) am immediately excluded from adoption in this country or any other am ever supposed to have a child. Your complete ignorance, along with Melinda’s is astounding. Are you mocking women who have had cancer, other medical conditions etc. Are your lectures as disjointed as your comment above and based on absolutely no knowledge of the subject you are speaking on? Because you CLEARLY KNOW NOTHING about what you are talking about.
It is also interesting that Melinda cannot defend herself but gets others clearly linked to her to do for her what she can’t do herself, and they don’t even make a valid point or any sense!
The comments in defense of surrogacy, while not addressing the exploitation of third world/poor women, use the same words that sex-industry advocates use to justify/defend prostitution – consent, choice, focus on the privilege/entitlement of the buyer, claims that one can’t speak on the subject if they haven’t directly experienced it,.. Do I miss something? Carrying a baby for 9 months in your body, then going through labor, a giving life act that can be life-threatening for the mother, an emotional and physical experience, can’t be reduced to a commodity. Choice? Under what circumstances please? People who accuse of misinformatin, have they read account of pregnant women packed in houses in India for example? A path to exploitation of disadvantaged women, another commodification of women’s bodies turned as objects for other’s use. Having a biological baby (like a man’s orgasm) is not a right.
Surrogacy takes the most natural thing – the bonding of mother/child in the womb and fractures it. Surrogacy demands the mother not bond and attach with the child in order for her to be able to surrender that child at the end of the pregnancy. A woman is meant (for the good of her and the baby) to bond with her child. And her body naturally/hormonally sends all the signals to do that whether she supplies her eggs and her womb or just her womb – e.g. her breasts will produce milk to feed the baby unless artificially stopped. And for all the comments about surrogates and intended parents, their wants, needs and desires, is anyone asking about the best interest of the child born via surrogacy and other children in the home who witness first hand, their mothers keeping some of their babies and giving others away? The baby born, is often immediately separated from the only other human they have ever known, and we don’t stop and wonder if this might be harmful? And what of other small children in the home who watch mommy ‘helping others’ by having babies and giving them away. What are they to make of this? Of course, in places like India, Thailand, Mexico we truly are seeing women used/treated as Breeders, and wrongly justify this as helping to lift them out of poverty? When I read the basis for many laws which prohibit surrogacy, I’m struck by the profound language of the dignity of women and children and how commercial efforts undermine women and children and that surrogacy is hard to distinguish from the literal buying and selling of children.
Thank you for your presumptuous and one dimensional conniption of disenchanting commentary Dr Caroline Norma. I’ll be sure to not take that one to the academics! How embarrassing for you that as a educated individual who holds a doctorate, you still feel compelled to leap to unfounded fabricated conclusions to manipulate a view to suit your sad agenda. Clearly all the academia in the world does no difference to ones ability to think, operate and comment with facts.
Thank you Melinda for your piece. You have asked some difficult questions about an industry that exploits impoverished foreign women for the benefit of westerners. It’s disappointing (and somewhat telling) that so many people have responded with anger and hatred.
Please keep asking the hard questions. As I recall, feminism is not just for wealthy white women, but is a political movement to end the oppression of all women, especially those who are exploited- and more than that, those women whose exploitation is uncomfortable for us to acknowledge.
I’m hearing a lot of things in response to this piece. I’m hearing distortions of the arguments made in the article and personal attacks on the writer. I’m hearing loud & clear the voices of people who benefit from commercial surrogacy – people whose pain and struggle has at no point been denied or trivialised. I’m hearing a total diversion of the discussion from the ethics of travelling overseas to countries with more relaxed laws than our own to pay poor women (or really, to pay clinics or agents who take a big cut when hiring poor women) to carry and birth a child for somebody else. But you know what I’m not hearing? The voices of the women, *their* stories of life as a commercial surrogate. The injustices and pain they may have suffered, the difficult situations which may have led them to make the choices they have, if they were real choices at all. These are the women Melinda is drawing our attention to, our own experiences however difficult don’t give us the right to pretend they don’t exist – please stop disappearing them.
Caroline, such a misguided and ill informed response to an issue that you clearly have virtually no factual knowledge of, let alone personal experience. A gestational surrogate gestates someone else’s embryo. It ISN’T her DNA.
No one is wrenching a baby away from its birth mother. Because it isn’t a gestational surrogate’s biological baby to begin with. Therefore, rendering your argument of a future ‘stolen generation’ as ludicrous .
In countries where commercial surrogacy is legal, India, Thailand, USA, there are agencies that recruit surrogates. Women are screened and vetted to ensure that they are mentally, emotionally, and physically able to fulfil this role. Also, reputable agencies ensure that surrogates aren’t duped, or coerced into undertaking the role.
In order for Australian parents to obtain citizenship for their babies born overseas via this process, stringent guidelines need to be followed. A DNA test is conducted on the baby. Once citizenship via descent is granted, then a baby is issued an emergency Australian passport. So, in order to lawfully return a baby to Australia you NEED to ensure that you have entered into a legal surrogacy agreement with bona fide, established and reputable clinic’s.
The Australian government demands this. And this is enforced via Australian High Commission’s overseas. So, there is no sordid underground network of amoral ‘pimps’ as you describe. An emotive and truly offensive term for people seeking to become parents via legitimate and transparent means.
Surrogacy is an option of last resort. When IVF, multiple miscarriages, infertility misery, cancer and years of failure have robbed you of ever carrying a baby yourself, this is the final choice. By this stage, the vast majority don’t qualify for os adoption due to a variety of factors. And for gay couples who are unable to adopt, surrogacy allows loving, committed couples to fulfil their dreams of having a family.
In essence, you are wanting stable, responsible, mature, caring, loving people who pay taxes, to never become parents at all. Who are you Caroline to judge who should and shouldn’t be a parent? So sad that you hold such bigoted, uneducated and strident opinions about an issue involving the formation of families. Whilst this may not be the option you would pursue, who on earth are you to demonise and slander those who do?
Surrogacy doesn’t commodify, sully, or diminish motherhood. Very sad that some mistakenly believe that it does.
Gestational surrogacy provides an avenue for people to have children. People who have suffered with years of medical and infertility issues. Issues that render them unable of carrying a healthy baby to term. Hence turning to a surrogate who is able to carry a pregnancy normally.
At the forefront of every intending parent who goes through this process is the needs and rights of their potential future child and the needs and health of their surrogate. To claim that those undergoing surrogacy are selfish, egocentric non-breeders who prey and exploit women in the third world, is a total fallacy and an absolute insult.
Exploitation is women working in shocking sweat shops in developing countries, earning a bare pittance an hour. Garments that Australians buy at discount shops for $3 odd dollars. Exploitation is a woman in the same country having to sell her body for the gratification of men, so she can feed her children. And/or have to sell off her own child to a predator.
Gestational surrogacy allows some women from marginalised circumstances, the opportunity to earn a very good income. often the equivalent of 10 plus years wage for 9 months. To receive top medical care and attention and to be duly compensated for carrying an infertile western couple’s baby.
In many cases, the surrogate’s children get to meet the baby and the biological parents. Clinics in India mandate that surrogates must provide their current address and have contact with the clinic for the next 18 years. This is to ensure that a baby born of this process is given the opportunity to meet their surrogate in the future. Parents are able to contact their Indian clinic during this time and request a meeting with their surrogate.
Most parents who have babies born via surrogacy in India and Thailand, intend to return in the forthcoming years with their children. Kids know where they were born and they know about their ‘Tummy Mummy’s’. They are taught how special and incredible these ladies are. Families have albums and books devoted to their unique surrogacy story.
As someone who has been blessed to have twins via a gestational surrogate in India, all I can say is that it is bitterly disappointing and upsetting to read some of the ignorant comments posted here. After years of fertility failure and not being able to carry our own child, we did an IVF cycle over in Delhi. The result was 2 embryos that produced 2 incredible, beautiful and adored babies who wouldn’t exist without surrogacy.
We are forever indebted to our surrogate. Our earth angel. We are now parents. We are now a family. For women and couples who have embryo’s that can’t be carried successfully by their biological mother, surrogacy is our last hope. The hope that those precious embryo’s can grow into a much wanted and loved baby.
What many misguided posters are advocating with their zealous opposition to surrogacy, in all its forms, is the destruction of human tissue. The very cells that help create and form life in the first place. Perplexing and stupefying that those claiming to have the interest of the ‘child’ at the forefront of their objections to surrogacy, are the same very people happy to extinguish the creation of a potential, priceless child in the first place.
Yes yes yes. Thanks so much. More and more people are realizing that we need to protect women and mothers in poor countries from these human rights violations. Excellent piece. So glad to read this. Surrogacy has to be exposed for the human rights violation that it is. Baby selling is big bucks. And surrogacy is a business of humans for sale called reproductive slavery. Surrogacy, when it involves on one side white wealth and power (held by people who are seeped in entitlement and without a moral compass) and on the other desperate impoverished women, becomes a life threatening human rights violation. And should be called by name.
Some serious cognitive dissonance.
Because rich people get what they want and because they paid for it does not make it any less human trafficking. Cringe: “Gestational surrogacy allows some women from marginalized circumstances, the opportunity to earn a very good income. Often the equivalent of 10 plus years wage for 9 months.” Sure poor women just think rich and white is so great they want to risk their lives so some other woman half way around the world can play mummy. Right—nice to “allow” them to risk their lives for you.
Paying for a human life does not make it moral and does not make the buyers “parents”. Wake up—Women in India are dying. That C section so the parents did not have to hang out at the hotel pool and bar for too long puts them in danger when they have their own baby in some squalid hit back in the village. Excuse and forgive human rights activists if they don’t pay homage to rich white embryo because real women that are alive are being held in compounds and used as breeding stock and then dying. You are not perplexed you are just trying to defend your right to buy a human life. Sorry you do not have that right. No one has that right. No matter how much you want or how much you paid—parenthood is not a right and babies that are bought are slaves not sons or daughters.
Anyone that has used a surrogate (unless they used a friend or relative that was educationally and economicaly equal) has been complicit in some of the worst oppression since the slave auctions. Money, infertility whatever does not embue with any rights over others. And the plays for pity are repugnant when held up against the horrible inhumane oppression that poor women go through. Guees what we don’t always get what we want—live with that and do so without destroying another woman’s life just because she is poor and you can. Oh yeah and mothers matter and we do not buy our children and forcing another woman to sell hers has nothing to do with parenthood.
“the distruction of human tissue” wow that’s a real moral argument when compared to selling of human life and caging other women to be breed animals–
Thanks for the hysteria ridden, emotive, irrational response A. Mother. You do realise that women who become surrogates through this process have already completed their families/ And they have had complication free births. That’s one of the major criteria’s for a lady being selected.
A clinic is NOT going to stake its reputation on women who have medical issues. A woman who becomes a surrogate is looked after by highly trained, skilled and educated health professional’s, IVF specialist’s and OB/GYN’s. And this happens in a state of the art private hospital. Such as you would find here in Australia. Most specialists in India and Thailand have tertiary and formal qualifications from universities in the UK, the US and here. And many have practised in these countries, in the formative parts of their careers.
Be it Bangkok, or Delhi, or Mumbai, These clinics are also providing ART services to local patients who can afford t. These are not third rate back yard operations that recruit women from slums, so that they can ‘risk their lives’. To claim that they do is absurd.
Many of the surrogates in India come from areas where sanitary and hygiene standards are poor. And there are no first world medical facilities nearby. Hence the need for apartments in the larger cities. So no, surrogates are NOT caged breeding stocks. They are being looked after by the clinic’s. To claim that westerners are exploiting these incredible ladies is beyond offensive. NOT paying them is exploitation.
Clients pay to house their surrogate in an apartment that has proper clean running water, a functioning bathroom and kitchen and that has air conditioning. A cook is provided to ensure that the surrogates are eating nutritious meals and a cleaner ensures that the apartments are kept spotless. Surrogates are allowed to have their children stay with them, if the child is not of primary school age. And family are allowed to visit on weekends, should they wish to do so. Surrogates are free to leave and shop, go to a movie.
Our surrogate was a widow and had 2 children in their early teens. The money that we paid for her carrying our twins has enabled her to buy a house, with land back in her home town. And ensure that she is able to pay for her children’s education. My and my wife’s conscience is VERY clear.
An amazing lady has helped us become a family. And we have enabled her and her children to have a better quality of life and future. How is that ‘destroying another woman’s life’, as you so inanely claimed?
How was her experience an example of “Inhumane oppression’? Receiving top quality medical care. Having all of her expenses paid for nearly 11 months. Being looked after and not have to toil in a back breaking, poorly paid job for nearly a year. Yes, the very definition of repression.
We didn’t BUY our surrogates babies. We paid her to carry OUR DNA, our embryo’s. Because my wife couldn’t. A gestational surrogate isn’t biologically related to the baby that she is carrying. It’s called science and genetics. I’m sorry that you are unable and/or unwilling, to see the clear distinction.
And my wife is no less a Mother, or Mum for not having gestated our twins. Mother is NOT just a damn noun, it’s also a verb. A woman is no less a Mother, just because she hasn’t given birth to a child. That is offensive to anyone who has become a Mum through surrogacy, marriage, or adoption.
The reason why many couples seek assistance from surrogates overseas is because of several factors. One being that there are simply not enough altruistic surrogates. Just because you want to become one, doesn’t mean you qualify to be one. Two, In this process in Australia, every person in the chain gets paid, EXCEPT the woman doing the bulk of the work. Lawyers. Counsellors. Psychologists. IVF Clinic’s. Everyone gets paid. The surrogate receives zero compensation. To give a ‘gift’ to her can be viewed as a ‘crime’. Thirdly, altruistic surrogacy contracts in Australia are NOT enforceable. By law, a birth mother is seen as THE mother in this country. Her name goes on the birth certificate. And it is she who is technically considered the parent of the baby until 28 days after the birth. It is at this point that the biological parents can apply for a parental order to effectively ‘adopt’ their own child.
Fourth point -, there have been cases where local altruistic surrogates have decided that they want to keep the baby they have given birth to. Leaving shattered biological parents with zero legal recourse. The law as it currently stands does not protect parents in this arrangement, should an altruistic surrogate decide to change her mind. And lastly, if you choose to apply in Australia to inter-country adopt, you are not allowed to undertake IVF. It is either one, or the other. Given that most couples in their journey have already spent years, sometimes 10 – 15 plus, on trying to conceive, they don’t qualify for age cut off requirements. It can take 7 plus years to adopt.
Hence why people seek surrogacy and clinics overseas as options. You don’t choose infertility. To deal with years of costly, invasive, exhausting procedures and losses, it’s totally heart breaking and devastating. It either destroys you and your relationship, or it unites and solidifies your partnership.
No one has the right to say you ‘don’t always get what we want’. Thanks for the compassion, understanding, empathy and insight. A. Mother and those of your ilk, given that 1 in 6 couples will face infertility in their lifetime, it is in the realms of possibility that you’ll have a child who faces the same challenges and years of anguish that my wife and I have. I then hope that you get to walk a mile in his, or her shoes. And I would hope that you would never ever show the same contemptuous, disrespectful and callous attitude to them, as you have here, by deeply insulting those who are parentless, but not by choice.
Wow. How sad are you to copy and paste from another writters story and twist it to a negative an illinformed unresearched load of root!
Rich people where? If you actually investigated (even if you used that screen infront of you and google, wich by the way my 5 year old nephew can do easily) you would see the truth.
Majority of people doing surrogacy are mid income families that have suffered imense medical issues and clinging to a dream that costs them almost everything.
The only people making money off surrogacy are the journalists, lawyers, fettility clinics, councelors and courts.
To all the holier than though people trying to make those forced to go overseas because their own country make it hard for surrogates to help here think about this.Would it not be better to have clearer transparent legislation.
Allow and regulate all forms of surrogacy then there would be no need to go overseas. What would you do to have a child? What would you sacrifice and give up to hold your baby in your arms? As for overseas surrogates, if they chose to help another family out to provide for their own family who are you to question and demorilise that love and commitment they have.
As for adoption, many have tried but thanks to the bleeding hearts that beleive it is best for a bub to be raised in foster care till they are pre pubity then be handed over to people they have never known usually drug addicts alcoholic abusive so called parents adoption rarely exists. These monsters should get one chance then loss any right to the child they have neglected or abused whilst being sterilised so not to inflict that life and pain onto another inocent baby.
For the religious people preaching and hidding behind God and the Bible, you might want to read it again.
Joseph was NOT Jesuses father.
He did not lay with Mary.
Mary was NOT married to God yet concevied a child by artifical means.
Jesus was born for God.
This is the bible and your bases for religion.
There for by your own Bibles account Mary was a surrogate for God.
God invented surrogacy and Mary was his and the first surrogate.
NO not blasphemy, its the Bible!
As for the person who put this orginial writting together, journalist I would not call her.
Vulture perhaps as she is one of the people making money off the suffering and misfortune of others all be it without confirming one fact.
Yes surrogacy networks are strong.
They are all free, free to join, free advice, free support (which is all more than the so called professional normally have or know).
So I would love to even see one person or group that makes all this so called money becaude everyone I have spoken to or met actually spend their own time and money to assist others. It is the sorrow, devistaion, loss and struggle that bring us all together, unites us and empowers us to struggle together feel eachothers pain and rejoice in each others joy and success.
Everyone has a story of heart ache, pain, sorrow and loss. If this person had bothered to ask one question she would have found the truth which is no where to be seen in this article but we all know sensationalism sells NOT the truth.
Not hysteria, more contempt for arrogance and the lack of humanity that you dare ask for pity—oh woe is you poor poor you. Children are not a right. Again you have no rights to any other humans. What next you need a kidney just tear it out of some poor brown women. Breeding and harvesting humans for sale in the market place is called the slave trade. Listen to yourself, how god like you are—“Have already completed their families” and nobody is allowed to change their mind because you dictate the future? Or maybe you had her sterilized? Which would not surprise me.
All the derails and the gaslights don’t work. Surrogacy is reproductive slavery—not pretty. A nice clean clinic—you mean a breeding center. And how to do you assume in all that arrogance that I have not faced infertility and that I did not destroy another women’s life because of it and then pretend I was somehow humane?
Some people make ethical choices because they really believe that brown women are human and not animals to be used. No you can’t buy a baby and expect them to never realize what that means. The BS has a hole so big you could drive a truck through it. And these kids will know. Pro-tip these children are starting to speak out against surrogacy and they are just as horrified that Tummy Mummy was used as breeding stock. It is fascinating that you assume I do not have the right to voice an opinion— (you don’t always get what you want), but you have the right to use and exploit women in poverty. Call me when you your regime organized. What you don’t want is that the child will know. And they will know and there is no money on the planet that will change that. And that is where I do indeed pity you.
A. Mother, you’re obviously a troll. And/or have zero desire to objectively view an alternate viewpoint hat is based in science and facts and actual personal experience.
It’s a shame that you hold ridiculous, strident and ignorant opinions about an issue that you know nothing about. Overseas clinic’s you have never visited. Women you have never met. A situation that you have never personally experienced. Medics that you know nothing about. Independent research that you have never conducted.
You choose to see something inhumane, sordid and depraved. That’s your choice. For those of us who have ACTUALLY been through this process and have undertaken surrogacy via legitimate, accredited, internationally recognised, professional and ethical clinic’s, your opinion holds zero credence, credibility, or has any basis in reality.
You do realise that commercial surrogacy also exists in the US. Are these women also ‘breeding stock’? Are women who are using altruistic surrogates, here or overseas the same? Given that you have never ever stepped foot inside one of these clinic’s, you wouldn’t know that there are also clients from other countries. Spain, Israel, Japan, the middle East, Chile, and a multitude of other nationalities that use these same clinic’s.
Obviously they too, by your warped judgement are buying their own babies. Anybody who has ever had to adopt has also bought someone else’s baby. And if you use a surrogate in a developing country, then you are endorsing a slave trade and are racist. And your child will grow up with serious emotional and psychological issues.
Thanks for the education and insight and analysis of surrogacy. And for the laughs A. Mother. Feel free to go back to thumping your religious text, bering a sanctimonious, pious keyboard warrior judging a subject, people and families that you know nothing about. Nor ever will.
For anyone interested in further exploration of the ethical questions raised by Melinda’s article, I highly recommend Kajsa Ekis Ekman’s Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy and the Split Self, which exposes with devastating clarity the vast human rights abuse that is the commercial surrogacy industry, as well as the ideological sophistry used to justify it.
It includes excellent research on the actual conditions of the ‘industry’ and the physical, mental and emotional states of the women inside it – including those who were unable to ‘split’ their bodies and minds sufficiently to disconnect themselves from the child that was growing inside them and changed their minds. (See the chapter: ‘I am not a surrogate – I am a mother’)
As others in this thread have pointed out, just because wealthy Westerners want something (in this case, a child that shares their DNA) does not mean they have a right to it, especially when that comes at the cost of a cruel and inhumane industry that exploits some of the poorest women in the world. Commercial surrogacy is the ultimate capitalist exploitation of women’s reproductive biology and an industry that turns the creation of life itself into a market.
The comparison with organ transplantation that some have made is also apt. Many people in the developed world suffer from debilitating and life-threatening kidney conditions. Would this justify the creation of a market whereby they could purchase the kidneys of people in the developing worlds? After all, I’m sure they would pay what seems like a handsome price for the organs of destitute people, and perhaps even ensure that they received adequate medical care during the procedure and recovery. So what’s wrong with this picture? Could it be that we recognise it as a horrific violation of poor people’s bodily integrity, for the benefit of the powerful? Why can we not see the renting of women’s wombs and the purchase of the children that grow inside them in the same way?
Proud Parent–you obviously bought a human and contributed to oppression and human suffering. Touche–you want me to wash your feet? Massa.
Your predictable missives ring rather hollow and practiced. But real abuses of the basic human rights of women and children has not historically been a font of originality. Let me see if I understand. Everyone who dares to dispute your right to purchase humans and to use impoverished women as your brood mare is de facto narrow-minded, ignorant and bigoted—Sure, you just stick to that. Of course if is good for you it is okay to destroy women’s lives, exploited them and buy a baby . Because how you feel and what you want is really really really important.
My opinion may not matter a wit to you, why should it? But it matters to feminists, it matters to academics and to government officials in India who are getting close to putting the brakes on this. The former Soviet Union already sent your kind packing, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Although maybe some junkie in Kiev might be willing to enslave themselves and then sell you a human.
I don’t need to thump a Bible to know. And if it makes you feel less repugant to imagine that I am a holy roller–fine go ahead (which is a real laugh). The fact is I am an academic. And surprise women will protect the oppressed from people like you who will oppress them because you feel entitled to buy a human. The truth is you do not have a coherent argument–the sadz worked so well for so long. Now people are seeing the other side. You may have money to pay but do not mistake human trafficking for parenthood. Just a glance at the derails you use confirms that you have neither the analytical nor the moral competence needed for an argument never mind for parenthood.
So what, some poor drug soaked girl, with a sixth grade education who lives on Pepsi and Marlboro Lights, in Oklahoma is a surrogate. Yes she is also horrifically exploited. Does not matter where she is. That does not make it right. Your argument is gibberish because you don’t have an argument. Five hundred poor exploited reproductive slaves could be roaming the White House lawn– and, I will say this real slow so you get it –it is still Slavery. Which is not parenthood, not by a long shot.
You are correct I have not visited the breeding farms, what was it you called them? Clinics? I like that. Sounds like “the final solution” must have sounded back in the day. Did you hear about breeding programs–ground breaking. You would have love them. They were very social advanced—just like you.
My child is splendid. Works in Africa for an organization devoted to protecting women and children from predators—who try to exploit, poverty and hunger. Surrogacy does not need an analysis it needs to be called by name–reproductive slavery.