Read Abigail Tucker's _Mom Genes_ for more information about the ways in which the nuclear family is written into our bodies and lives through pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing. A fetus's cells--even if aborted or miscarried--remain in the mother's body for the rest of her life. The father's interests are represented by the placenta. The babies that grow inside us know only their mother's heartbeats and the tone and cadence of our voices when the meet the cold world outside.
I'm a feminist with lots of gay & lesbian friends. I was happy for them that they could conceive using donor sperm, donor eggs, and a surrogate--until I read Tucker's book, and started thinking more critically about the surrogacy industry. I have real questions about this movement, which is so clearly driven by adult interests and not the babies'/childrens' interests.
There's plenty of anecdotal evidence too about the prevalence of adopted Chinese and Russian daughters in the ROGD/trans population of teens and young adults. We've known for years that rich women don't volunteer to carry the babies of poor women, and that rich American adoptive parents effectively collaborated in creating the international adoption industry, which duped natural parents into selling their babies away. Again--I have friends who adopted children from Central America and Ethiopia and China and Russia in the early 2000s. The children are well cared for and seem to be thriving--but I can't help wonder about the weird fairy tales these parents accepted as their children's origin story, versus the manipulative reality of international adoption.
One family literally told the story that their eldest son was found next to a well, abandoned, and the adoption agency just happened to see the baby and take him in. Wow! What a great story, right? It's so much easier to believe than the notion that a poor woman in the developing world was coerced or paid to give up her baby, but that's a much likelier story.
A lovely couple I know, chose surrogacy after years of trying to conceive. They used their egg and sperm, and their twins are wonderful and absolutely adored by them. I thought that’s where surrogacy began and ended- a last resort for couples struggling. But it’s become something monstrous now.
It is also just another way that women can be less than to justify patriarchy. Women aren't special, it's just a mechanistic process to have a baby. Anyone can do it. It's anti-life.
Read Abigail Tucker's _Mom Genes_ for more information about the ways in which the nuclear family is written into our bodies and lives through pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing. A fetus's cells--even if aborted or miscarried--remain in the mother's body for the rest of her life. The father's interests are represented by the placenta. The babies that grow inside us know only their mother's heartbeats and the tone and cadence of our voices when the meet the cold world outside.
I'm a feminist with lots of gay & lesbian friends. I was happy for them that they could conceive using donor sperm, donor eggs, and a surrogate--until I read Tucker's book, and started thinking more critically about the surrogacy industry. I have real questions about this movement, which is so clearly driven by adult interests and not the babies'/childrens' interests.
There's plenty of anecdotal evidence too about the prevalence of adopted Chinese and Russian daughters in the ROGD/trans population of teens and young adults. We've known for years that rich women don't volunteer to carry the babies of poor women, and that rich American adoptive parents effectively collaborated in creating the international adoption industry, which duped natural parents into selling their babies away. Again--I have friends who adopted children from Central America and Ethiopia and China and Russia in the early 2000s. The children are well cared for and seem to be thriving--but I can't help wonder about the weird fairy tales these parents accepted as their children's origin story, versus the manipulative reality of international adoption.
One family literally told the story that their eldest son was found next to a well, abandoned, and the adoption agency just happened to see the baby and take him in. Wow! What a great story, right? It's so much easier to believe than the notion that a poor woman in the developing world was coerced or paid to give up her baby, but that's a much likelier story.
Great article and so tragic.
I know someone trying to have a baby for someone else and I am against the whole idea.
These things will never be ‘progress’ to me. They create both detachment and entitlement in equal measure.
A lovely couple I know, chose surrogacy after years of trying to conceive. They used their egg and sperm, and their twins are wonderful and absolutely adored by them. I thought that’s where surrogacy began and ended- a last resort for couples struggling. But it’s become something monstrous now.
It is also just another way that women can be less than to justify patriarchy. Women aren't special, it's just a mechanistic process to have a baby. Anyone can do it. It's anti-life.