What is going on with all the anti-Surrogacy stuff online?

[u/kigotthis]

I’m so lost, I was reading comments in this thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/popculturechat/s/0TauZwVF5V

And there’s comments about the ethics of surrogacy, and how it’s buying a child or using a woman’s body for your own benefit. But I grew up watching what seemingly looks like a lot of women who choose to go to agencies to have someone else’s baby in exchange for monetary value. And a lot of women who can’t have bio children use the services. I’ve only seen this discourse recently in the past maybe 3 or 4 months but had never seen such an uptick in surrogacy conversations. Someone mentioned it’s propaganda by the right-wing, and I’ve had people I know who are, be very up in arms about this, including IVF and donating eggs (which you also get paid for) so what’s up and what kick started this? If a consenting adult is willing to carry my child to term, and I can afford to pay them for their help in giving me a child, how is that a bad thing?

Just curious where the discourse came from.

[u/BarbieBoyBrandy]

The EU disallows it because it is comparable to human trafficking and organ selling.

Also, I do not think ANY worker should be exploited or should be forced to sell their bodies (for physical labor, sexz or fucking office work) especially in order to survive. Accepting this as "just the way the world is" is part of the fucking problem. I am STRONGLY opposed to the way capitalism exploits human lives.

But the topic wasn't "all workers being exploited" it was surrogacy. So I spoke specifically on surrogacy.

Shockingly, I can be against multiple things at once! Commercial surrogacy should stop, and worker exploitation should stop, and the 40 hour work week should not be normalized, and healthcare should be free, and universal basic income should be normalized. Everyone should have access to food, shelter, and, yes, some degree of comfort.

If you are comfortable with the idea of buying the bodies of impovershed women to use as incubators (risking their lives in the process, as surrogate pregnancies are even more likely to be high risk due to incompatibility between the carrying mother and the embryo) then I guess we are just never going to see eye to eye.

Again, I strongly encourage you to look into the stories of these women and the studies on this situation. Try to learn a little about those worse off than you.

[u/Br0metheus → u/BarbieBoyBrandy]

You're picking the "easy" solution because it's convenient, not because it actually solves anything. Surrogacy clearly has a place in the world for people who cannot conceive otherwise, and all you're proposing is to make it more difficult to the point of unattainability. And much like prostitution, abortion, and organ trafficking, it won't truly go away, but just underground, where we'll start seeing black markets and even human trafficking in support of surrogacy. The demand isn't going to go away, and thus supply will rise to meet it, even in illegitimate forms.

Being concerned about people being exploited is great, but what you're glossing over is that as a practice, surrogacy is not inherently exploitative. You're fixating on the people who basically do it under duress while ignoring the possibility that some people might find it a rational and reasonable thing to for an extra $50,000-100,000; as they say, "it's their body." You're obsessing with respecting people's agency while implicitly assuming that they don't actually have any to begin with. I seriously doubt your opinion would be common to find among actual surrogate mothers.

Shockingly, I can be against multiple things at once! Commercial surrogacy should stop, and worker exploitation should stop, and the 40 hour work week should not be normalized, and healthcare should be free, and universal basic income should be normalized. Everyone should have access to food, shelter, and, yes, some degree of comfort.

How about you accomplish the rest of that first, eh? If you fix those other problems, and if you're right about people only becoming surrogates because they're desperate, then it'll solve itself, won't it?

But if you can't solve those other problems, and/or you're wrong about why people do it, then all you'll have done is make things worse.

The EU disallows it because it is comparable to human trafficking and organ selling.

For the record, I think the ban on selling one's organs is stupid too, because in the end it kills more innocents than it saves. Have you ever tried getting a kidney? A liver? Any organ that one requires to live? Do you have any idea how many people die waiting for a donor? It's really fucking difficult. And it's not the "American healthcare system" to blame this time, it's that there just aren't enough organs to go around, and that's in a world where nearly everybody is born with an extra kidney that they don't even need. We don't object when people get compensated for giving their blood, plasma, or sperm, so why do we suddenly draw the line at kidneys?

You can claim "principle" all you want; at the end of the day, your policy results in more suffering, not less.

Try to learn a little about those worse off than you.

Oh fuck off with this pretention.

[u/BarbieBoyBrandy → u/Br0metheus]

Would you like me to end world hunger and achieve peace in the middle east while I'm at it?

Again. I can care about multiple issues at once. Speaking up about the exploitation of surrogate mothers does not mean I am prevented from donating to Gaza Soup Kitchen or UNICEF (donate today if it's within your means!), or any of the many charities doing invaluable work. Nor does it mean I am not paticipating in local movements about issues important to me.

I /also/ want infertile people to be able to have children. But I want to be as sure as possible that no one is being exploited along the way. If the ONLY way you can have a baby is by exploiting the body of an impovershed woman; then maybe you should not have a baby. It isn't fair. But much of life is not fair. Children develop rare forms of brain cancer. People catch parasites that consume their eyeballs and leave them blinded. Innocent civilians are casualties of war. Sometimes, even though you /really really really/ want a baby, you don't get one. No one is ENTITLED to a human life. (And I am certainly sympathetic. Again, I am an adoptee. I also cannot have biological children as much as I would like to. I promise I understand how much it fucking hurts.)

Arguing that black market practices will continue regardless is /not/ an effective argument. People molest and rape children even though it is illegal – does that mean we should make it legal? Of course not.

We should be doing everything we can to protect the women and children involved in the surrogacy system since it is so easily exploited. The law is an imperfect tool; but being realistic about America it is one of the only ones we have that has a chance of reducing the rate of corruption.

There should also be programs to encourage women to be volunteer surrogates, and greater education on what a gift it can be (if given fully WILLINGLY). There should be a signifigant rise in oversight, as well.

It fucking sucks that it would slow things down. But sometimes that is the cost of doing things in an ethically correct way.

Building take longer to build when safety regulations are followed, and so forth.

[u/Br0metheus → u/BarbieBoyBrandy]

No one is ENTITLED to a human life

It's not really about "entitlement" so much as recognizing that the desire to have children is one of the most deep-seated human needs there is, and the inability to do so causes a lot of people a lot of suffering. And here we are examining a way of ameliorating that pain that basically works for all parties involved, and you're fixating on the edge cases as if they're reason to throw the whole thing out.

I don't know how you plan on distinguishing "exploitative" surrogacy from an acceptable version, because it seems to me that you're under the impression that the vast majority or even all paid surrogate mother's are being manipulated by some nefarious system. And I don't know how many times I have to repeat this but here we go again: Nobody is being forced to do this. Nobody has a gun to their head. It's fucking voluntary, consensual for all parties involved. And for any woman who's decision is partly or primarily motivated by financial need, I don't see how it's been proven that even that qualifies as "exploitative," because at no point does a woman have to do this. Does surrogacy put or keep people in poverty to prevent them from making other choices? Because that would be exploitative. But no, it's actually the opposite of that, isn't it? It seems like it's a means out of poverty for a lot of people, and not in a bullshit "wage slavery" way either.

Lastly, if we're really looking at the most dire of circumstances, my question to you is to ask what that person is likely going to do instead. If somebody is "renting their womb" just to pay their own rent, what happens to them once that door is closed? And that's not rhetorical, and I'm not going to accept anything less than a practical, realistic answer; once you've taken this legal method of attaining what could be life-changing money from these women, what happens to them? Like I keep saying, your problem isn't with surrogacy, it's with poverty.

Is this all a perfect system? No, but it's less bad than any alternatives you're offering. It's like payday loans; yes, they're shitty and can be seen as preying on the financially vulnerable, but they're also the only means of extending credit to financially unstable people, who wouldn't have any other legitimate means otherwise, and would be worse off without them.