Divoosidee
Womb-renting dressed up as “diversity” and “choice”:
Surrogacy isn’t “diversity” in the touchy-feely pwogwessive way they want us to think. It’s different, but it ain’t progressive.
Replies are harsh.
The Royal College of Midwives piece is creepy as fuck.
My Surrogacy Journey (MSJ) bring this webinar to raise awareness for all healthcare professionals involved in maternity services.
But it’s not “maternity” services; it’s rent-a-womb services.
Michael and Wes, the co-founders of MSJ, will be sharing their experiences of maternity services and their pathway to parenthood, focussing on both the difference that high quality, equitable care from midwives can make, and the harmful impact poor, stigmatised care can have on a surrogate and intended parents.
All about the men, the men who rent women to gestate and push out their luxury bespoke paid-for babies.
They will also provide a brief overview of their extensive campaigning and the change in direction of both of their careers, all due to them both becoming parents through surrogacy.
Parents through renting women.
So with cuckoos it’s described as ‘nest parasitism ‘, so is this ‘womb parasitism’ or is a fetus a sufficient parasite in itself?
If the cuckoo paid the other bird would that make it OK?
One popular line of justification is to note that humans often pay other humans to care for their children, starting immediately after birth. So it’s worth asking what is the difference with surrogacy. And I think the answer is complicated. The “model” surrogates are self-confident middle-to-upper-middle-class women who really enjoy being pregnant and are happy to provide the service of carrying a child to other people – in some of these cases, the only money changing hands is to just to cover medical expenses. The brutal reality is that women lacking other options will see surrogacy as an opportunity, to feed their families or even to get out of poverty. (Not very different from the long-standing tradition of poor women taking care of rich people’s kids, but both the risks and benefits are higher in the case of surrogacy.)
In 2023, the WHO declared that “Individuals and couples have the right to decide the number, timing and spacing of their children,” further clarifying that this right applies to people who are infertile, and goes on to state that “fertility care” should be made available to “A wide variety of people, including heterosexual couples, same-sex partners, older persons, individuals who are not in sexual relationships and those with certain medical conditions…” (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/infertility)
I couldn’t find any WHO statements specifically about surrogacy, but a report from the UN Humans Rights Commission recommends,
(https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-sale-of-children/surrogacy)
About these self-confident middle-to-upper-middle-class women who really enjoy being pregnant – do they also really enjoy giving birth??
Are there such women, or are they just a fantasy of the surrogacy industry?
Anecdotally, they do appear to exist: I have heard interviews with these women in which they have claimed to at least not to find labour and delivery intolerable. I also had a personal friend (upper-middle-class) who enjoyed being pregnant so much that she had 7 kids!
as I’m not an “x-ter (formerly known as a twit?) following links to “tweets” (x’ts?) does not let me see replies, only that there are:
23 Reposts 129 Quotes 41 Likes 34 Bookmarks
Is there a trick to seeing the “replies” that works if you are not “logged in”
I don’t think so. I think Musk got rid of all the tricks. He got rid of the ones I knew about at least.
I am not now and have never been a
member oftwitter user, but I’m going to keep on calling them twits because they can’t stop us. ;-) (All this “previously known as” boilerplate everyone includes annoys me no end because that’s not how names work; it is still known as twitter whatever the official branding and preferences of the corporation might be, and it will continue to be so as long as people keep using the older name.)nitter.net still seems to work. Just modify the URL for a given tweet to use that hostname instead of twitter.com. For example with the tweet in this post: https://twitter.com/MidwivesRCM/status/1742879553133920504 -> https://nitter.net/MidwivesRCM/status/1742879553133920504
@Banichi, thanks for the nitter link. Wonder how long before Elon will demand his techs to close that loophole?
Some powerful stories to read, starting with this one: https://nordicmodelnow.org/2020/01/29/i-was-an-altruistic-surrogate-and-am-now-against-all-surrogacy/
It’s certainly instructive to see examples and arguments against even “altruistic surrogacy”. I have long had problems with the idea of any surrogacy being a good thing. I can’t imagine ever doing it myself*. But I have previously had a hard time making an argument that didn’t rely on a slippery slope challenge – i.e. if the only problem is exploitation of poor women in desperate circumstances, it should be possible to create restrictions that would eliminate all but the *good* surrogacies. And I have a firm commitment to the principle of bodily autonomy, so a woman should be able to decide for herself if she wants to use her body to gestate a child for someone else. Of course there is a parallel with the arguments about sex-work/prostitution. Interestingly, if you ask someone (even they are generally sex-work-positive) if they would like their spouse or kids to be sex workers, most people would say no. But I suspect that responses would be much more positive if the question were asked about surrogacy instead.
* having survived 2 not-fun-but-not-utterly-terrible pregnancies, with 2 healthy boys delivered (only a few minor complications), it is not something I would ever consider doing for fun.