‘It’s almost like a heterosexual relationship. I’m the provider. And this other woman that I met on Facebook is staying at home and having my kid for me.’
I think this piece just skimmed the surface of the negatives around surrogacy. There seemed to be a focus on the personal joy of couples, and the agency of a few, chosen surrogates.
What about the babies and their trauma of being taken away from their birth mother? Adoption trauma is well known, it applies the same to the surrogate babies.
What about the immense potential for child abuse? Reduxx just published another story of a convicted pedophile operating a surrogacy empire, under investigation for baby trafficking.
Why is okay for rich women like Paris Hilton to outsource the risk of childbirth to financially poor women?
There will never, ever be a case of a rich woman choosing to be a surrogate for a family that she has no connection to. This alone tells you everything about this horrendous exploitation of poor women.
No one has the right to a biological child. Yes, that is absolutely heart-breaking, but that is the human condition.
“There will never, ever be a case of a rich woman choosing to be a surrogate for a family that she has no connection to. This alone tells you everything about this horrendous exploitation of poor women.”
Yeah, funny how you never hear of multi-millionaires who feel “called” to be surrogates for some random middle-class suburbanites.
This. As a gay man I had to face the fact that I wouldn’t have kids. I processed that when I was young and found other ways to be fulfilled in life. I’ve come to call myself a rational naturalist … what’s natural to me, what’s a rational POV. I’m not built to father kids for whatever reason. What else could I do with my life? I don’t understand chasing an impossible dream.
Thank you for reminding us that there is someone else involved in this issue - namely the baby. You mentioned the trauma that often goes along with adoption. Hence, I I offer just a bit of my own story and that of my son whom we adopted over 50 years ago when he was 5 days old. It was a closed adoption as many were in those days , so we knew nothing of his birth parents or their history.
My son never lacked for love - he was the apple of everyones eye and was a very happy kid until about 9 , the age when his personality changed from a bubbly kid to one that began to exhibit issues of depression caused, I now know by issues of abandoment. The first words out of his mouth to me 33 years later after HIS son was born were "I can't imagine giving up your baby"
In those days, we knew nothing about the child recognizing in utero the voice of the mother - the movement of the mother's body - the breathing patterns, etc - that knowledge came long after if was possible to discover such things through medical advances. So in a very real sense, he was taken from the womb and handed over to strangers. It took me years to understand this.
His adolescence and teenage years were difficult for him and for us but we got through it and he is now happily married with a son of his own. He has not, however, in spite of the ability to do so and my encouragement, ever looked for his birth parents.
If I had had the book Being Adopted, the Lifelong Search for Self available to me 50 years ago I would have understood more of what my son was going through but I didn't read it until very recently. There are interviews in it with other adopted children - who are now adults. Several have carried with them for years the idea that "something must have been wrong with me to have my mother give me away."
I share this story only to say again - please don't leave out the most important person in this surrogacy story. While all the others involved might have fulfilled a life-long dream and be happy, it is possible there is another one involved who might struggle with the "who am I " question for years. .
I totally disagree. I can find you just ask many adopted kids who are happy and well adjusted - my husband to start. I also work in child welfare where adoption saves children. Yes there are kids who feel they aren’t enough but that’s not the story of surrogacy. In many cases it’s the biological child of the parents anyway, so who is the “mother”? The person who raises him and is genetically related or to one who gave birth?
Of course many adopted children are happy and well adjusted. Many are not, or at least they have difficulties. Much of what has fueled DNA testing over the years is adopted children seeking out their biological parents.
I completely disagree that it's okay to purposefully deny a child, from birth, a biological mother and/or father. If the child is the biological child of both parents, then there is significant mitigation. But that is not always the case.
I have had several friends, and dated a woman who was adopted. Most had this same experience, not feeling a full connection with their families, usually due to their "who am I" questions.
I completely concur with this. I appreciate that this article was written and loved many things about it, but there's no mention of the fact that when a mother is not biologically related to the child she is carrying, the risks are greater for her than when she's carrying her own child. This whole process gives me the "ick."
But that’s what informed consent is for. This is an amazing thing that humans can do for each other. Life is full of risks and people do so many dangerous things. This can’t be singled out when two willing participants are involved.
I understand what you're saying and I'm sure there are instances in which surrogacy is a blessing. A former co-worker once carried twins for a sibling who wasn't able to have them. But surrogacy has turned into an industry in which the risk of pregnancy is being transferred from the very fortunate to the less fortunate, and it seems like a lot of the risks aren't part of the discussion at all.
There is no possible way to truly consent to the risks of surrogacy. In some states, women lose their right to end-of-life decisions while they are surrogates. But put all that aside: this is clearly an exploitative practice that primarily targets poor women. Rich people are buying the bodies of poor women for nine months. Then they buy a baby - immediately ripping that child away from the only mother is has ever known. Children are miracles, gifts that not one of us truly deserves, and having lucre to burn doesn't change that.
Well by that reasoning every time money changes hands it is exploitative. Paying football players to ram their skulls until they’re brain damaged? Where most of them are poor too. What about Amazon workers? What about first responders? Everything has risk. If they want to carry a baby for someone and be compensated it’s not inherently exploitative.
You are making a ridiculous argument. By your own logic - that compensation makes act not "inherently exploitative" - then we should view being paid to make a coffee and being paid to give a blow job as equal, neutral acts of work for pay. These two things are not alike and if you say that they are, you are lying. You are ignoring your rightly triggered sense of moral disgust. Don't.
Like it or not, there *is* something inherently special about sex, pregnancy, motherhood, birth, and the parent-child bond. These are not acts or relationships we can disenchant just by saying so. The baby being "carried" by a "surrogate" - the baby growing in its mother's womb, surrounded by the sound of her heartbeat, her blood rushing by, her voice, her hands on her belly - doesn't and could never know that she "isn't really the mother." That baby, whisked away to people it does not recognize, is being bought and sold, exploited even before conception.
wow. I guess we have to agree to disagree. you don't have to give birth to a baby to be an amazing mother. I hate to use personal examples but I will. my friend lost a baby and her uterus in a tragic car accident when she was 8 months pregnant. Through a surrogate, she and her husband went on to bring four amazing kids into the world, all biologically theirs.
Is she less of a mom because she couldn't carry and deliver her own babies? nope she's not. she's amazing and the kids are perfect. the kids are not damaged or broken because someone else's blood rushed passed their ears for 9 months, that's patently ridiculous. This is a miracle of modern technology in every sense of the word. was it risky? yup. did the lady who delivered the babies struggle? probably. would she do it again? yes she would, if asked.
No one gets guarantees with children -- I would have wondered about attachment and genetics too, when my bright and loving daughter turned ten and became a raging depressed "hormonoid" (my Mom's word for pre-teens). But, in my small town, she and I were the only two patients in the ENTIRE hospital, and being faithfully married, had no such explanation. Kids have their own development greatly effected by genetics, environment and so many factors it's impossible to "know" for certain. We all do our best...glad your son grew into a lovely human, as did my daughter.
haha, when our first was born, I was the only one delivering a baby in our small town hospital too. Good thing because I was paranoid about those accidental baby switching news stories.
Rich women aren’t going to choose to be prostitutes either, but at some point one has to draw a line and accept that poor women have agency too and that illegal sex work has a tendency to drive them into much more problematic circumstances than does legal sex work.
First off, so this comment isn't misinterpreted, child abusers should be put in prison for LIFE at the very least.
That said, I would think the potential for child abuse with a surrogate child is EXTREMELY low. Who is going to pay $100,000 and then raise a child for years for the sole purpose of abusing it when they could just foster and get paid.
You should never underestimate the lengths men will go to to commit abuse. Look up Jose Prados on Reduxx as an example.
Certain agencies have no checks on the people asking to buy a human baby (unlike adoption agencies who conduct background checks), a single man can order a baby daughter, no questions asked. It is human trafficking.
“[C]hildbirth and death are the two things that scare me more than anything in the world.” - Paris Hilton
This is the kind of weak person who should forego parenting and why I question some of the merits of surrogacy. The 'lower class' person carrying her child is far stronger.
This quote from Hilton epitomizes weak America. Life IS suffering - overcoming it to produce and nurture new life brings the greatest joys. Avoiding, shirking and running from it defines cowardice.
The indescribable joy of holding your infant after giving birth is lost to those who don't take the risk. And there are ways of reducing pain and suffering in labor if one is willing to do it, no shame there.
When I read that from Paris Hilton, I thought of the moment after the birth of my first child and the Dr. stood there finishing up “down there” and I said to him, “My mother says THAT [the giving birth] was the easy part,” and he replied, “Your mother is right!” And 30 yrs later, I know she was!
Paris Hilton is a perfect epitome of our society’s trend in avoiding pain or simply being uncomfortable, if you could afford it. The coddling of the young generation: you think you don’t like your gender or your body - we will give you another one. You disagree with someone - we will create a safe space where you will never have to confront people who think differently. You want to have a child, but too scared of the childbirth labor- someone will do it for you. Of course, I do not include here couples or women who are not able to have children the natural way and for whom using surrogates is the only road to parenthood. So, they medicate to have the pain go away, pay someone to do the physically painful thing for them, or protest and bully people into doing things their way.
When she was 19, her thirty-something boyfriend pressured her into making a sex tape, which was supposed to be private. He then sold it after she begged him not to. She felt humiliated and like the tape might ruin her future. So can we maybe quit the guffawing over what basically amounts to revenge porn?
How stupid do you have to be to allow anyone to videotape you having sex? It’s about as stupid as believing a male when he tells you he won’t come in your mouth.
It’s as stupid as preferring a leader who is cognitively impaired to one who is rude.
We all have to pay continually for our past mistakes. Having sex with older badass tattooed rich guys when you’re 19 counts as a mistake.
She’s fine by the way and I in no way look down on her for this mistake as I have made several myself. My mistakes didn’t pay off immensely like hers did, so perhaps I’m jealous.
If it was actually revenge porn he should have been bankrupted or imprisoned but I don’t know those details.
But thanks for the scolding. Would you like to speak to the manager?
What I’d like is for men to stop using, “But she had sex, dur hur hur” as a punchline, especially when it comes to barely-legal women who were sexually exploited for money. That may be too difficult for you.
Paris was not known for making good decisions. I always thought of her as spoiled, privileged, snot nosed, kid who knew she was a spoiled, privileged, snot nose, kid and didn't give a damn what anyone thought as long as she could fulfil her hedonistic way of life.
“Not making good decisions” is a pretty predictable outcome for someone dealing with eleven months of abuse in a “troubled teens” boarding school, having too much money at too young of an age, being groomed by a teacher as a younger adolescent, easy access to drugs, and undiagnosed ADHD. Of all the possible criticisms of Paris Hilton, I think some are more fair than others.
But this way, she can take it back if she gets tired of stinky diapers. The surrogate would probably have to resell at a discount. “Refurbished” or whatever.
This article is disturbing on many levels but the biggest tragedy is that children have become commodities instead of the true gifts they really are. Ideally, children are raised by their biological mother and father. That is the best situation for human flourishing. I get it that this misses the mark frequently but it should still be the gold standard. I also understand adoption is difficult but at least the process is in keeping with the dignity of the child!
Kids, to me, come with marriage,” - what a narcissistic statement from a gay man. No one would have said or thought this even 30 years ago.
When people (kids and women) are allowed to be bought and sold, our world is in serious trouble. How easy it is to discard and abuse commodities. There is a declining respect for the dignity of what it means to be human and that can’t end well for society.
We have already lived through slavery and found that it was horrific- are we really going down this path again?
“We have already lived through slavery and found that it was horrific- are we really going down this path again?”
Yes. Of course. We never left that path. Slavery, “outsourcing”, surrogacy, Ai ... it never ends.
One thing you can count on across the ages: the “bad guys” will always want to have the right to kill life if it suits them. (Err...I mean “reductions” )
Their identity is an extension of vapid consumerism. What hashtag to add to their bio today. What humans they surround themselves with serve a similar role of vanity and signaling.
“Everybody wants to pick the eye color, but thats not possible.” YET. GMO babies are the least of the twisted dystopian distortions satanic forces are currently propagandizing upon the world
And "Kids, to me, come with marriage,” - this is true only in the sense that kids are often (but not always!) the natural and often "unplanned" result of marriage. That guy sounds horrible.
In addition to the ethical issues touched upon here, two pieces of the puzzle are missing from this article, which is, overall, more nuanced than most of what I've seen on the subject.
The first--and most important piece--is how surrogacy affects the children who are born through it. Babies are born to bond with their mothers, and recognize the voices and smells of the person who carried them. We don't let puppies leave their mothers until they are at least eight weeks old, but children born through surrogacy are given to their intended parents almost immediately after their born.
The second piece is the health risk to the gestational surrogate. The evidence (and there isn't much of it because no one will do the research) seems to suggest that surrogate pregnancies are higher risk for the woman carrying the baby than a normal pregnancy would be. The Center for Bioethics and Culture (https://cbc-network.org/) has done a lot of work around this issue, and their documentary (Eggsploitation) and podcast (Venus Rising) are worth checking out for more information on this side of the issue.
I came here to say this. What is the long term impact of ripping a baby away from the woman who carried her? You cannot just replace that with another person and think there is no difference.
One of the things the Center for Bioethics and Culture points out is that we always frame this discussion in terms of the desires of the adults involved, but no one stops to think about the children. They can't advocate for themselves here, so they get missed. At the very least, it needs to be part of the conversation. Katy Faust, of Them Before Us (https://thembeforeus.com/) talks about this, too.
"no one stops to think about the children. They can't advocate for themselves here, so they get missed" I couldn't agree more. These discussions seem only centered around the surrogate Mother or the parents purchasing the services. This is also the perspective that is generally ignored in the abortion debate. The children in both cases are referred to as if they were abstract commodities rather than individuals who just might have an opinion if we considered their perspective a bit more deeply...
Isn’t that what’s done with adoption? A child is “ripped from the woman who carried her”?
I understand the troubling ethics of renting a uterus—and in some cases, also purchasing the eggs—but there’s nothing new about children being raised by non-biological parents.
The difference is that adoption usually isn't intentional. Something else severs the parent/child bond in adoption, and adoption is a (hopefully) better fix for a bad situation. Surrogacy involves intentionally creating a child in order to separate that child from at the woman who carried her, and in many cases, at least one, if not both, biological parents.
Then yes, that it what happens with adoption, and that is part of why adoption - and surrogacy - are so traumatic. It's kind of like limb amputation - whether you do it because you like the way it looks or because you need to do it to save your life, the pain is somewhat similar. But the similarity is irrelevant. The "similarity" is analogous to the similarity between surrogacy because you want it and can buy it, and adoption because there is a baby and the birth parents simply can't, due to death or illness or extreme poverty, raise the child.
Adoption is not the desired or planned outcome, it is done as a solution to a desperate situation. We should not hold it up as our standard of how we treat our children.
Adoption is remedial. For whatever reason, the child's biological parents cannot or will not care for the child. It is a fix for an existing child - it is not the genesis of the child's life.
The difference is when the child is conceived with the full knowledge that it will never know one or both of its biological parents. That is cruel.
Excellent comments. I would love to see the surrogacy contracts that dictate what the surrogate can eat drink etc during the gestation period not to.mention the clause that exculpates the baby buyers idf the surrogate dies or otherwise suffers illness etc.
I have had friends who were surrogates and it literally does dictate what they can and cannot do. My friend stipulated she was no okay with reduction and that she would not again put more than one egg for implantation. She was able to dictate that because of the company she went with. The intended parents have a ton of say over the bodily autonomy of the surrogate.
I had a friend who was a gestational surrogate and her second surrogacy almost killed her. She almost bled to death and her husband had to watch it all unfold. It created quite a trauma for them.
Interestingly, I agree with a lot of your points but not your conclusions. Yes the bonding period right after birth is important, so wouldn’t it be extremely important for the baby to bond with the intended parents, who will be the ones to raise the baby? Yes, we don’t let puppies leave their mothers until 8 weeks, but I see that as a commentary to the lack of paid maternity leave for mothers in the US to give them time to focus all of their attention on their new baby, regardless of how that baby was born. It’s ridiculous that mothers need to find day cares for their weeks-old infant so that they can keep their jobs!
It stipulated that the couple she was carrying for would have the final say over “reductions”—which is surrogacy-speak for abortion. “I’m a pro-life surrogate,” Mareko told me. “I was heartbroken, but I had to walk away.”
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LOL ‘reductions’. Modern Democrats are nothing more than Joseph Goebbels with a thesaurus.
At least now we know you can just sign away your basic human right to abortion via DocuSign. So restricting abortion will literally kill people *but also* you can sign a contract with someone you met on Craigslist that gives your sacred right to abortion to them. Talk about unsafe working conditions. Someone call OSHA.
There will be, in the next 5 years, a major lawsuit where a surrogate refuses to abort the baby she's carrying and the Court forces her to do it anyway.
I wonder if that contract could be enforceable. Oh I’m sure there would be a judge that would allow it, but short of imprisoning the surrogate and cutting the baby out in an abattoir (ie planned parenthood) how would one enforce it. Hey yiu didn’t kill the child when I told you to so you have to pay me back?
In all these talks about new fertility treatments, surrogacy, etc. a very important person is usually left out of the equation... The baby. Not a commodity, not a right - a baby who will one day grow up and have to grapple with their beginnings. Babies in utero hear their mother's voice (or their surrogate's) - they come into the world seeking that voice, that comfort. Likewise a woman's body is leaking milk, hormonally wrecked as she prepares to care for this infant. Biology demands one reality - we, 'post biology' - demand another.
I write this while nursing my second child, 2 and a half months old. I just wonder how much is being lost, for both mothers and their children, when we pretend the most vital of all things - life - can be turned into an industry. I wonder how many memories will be coming out 20 years from now from children who have to learn just how much money and human capital was exchanged for them to exist at all.
Katie I shook my head at the line about the surrogate's work being "done" after the birth "except a few months of pumping breast milk". Nursing a newborn is a full time job in and of itself. Pumping for a few months would be difficult and time consuming, not as simple as it sounded in the article.
Yes! Breastfeeding is so hard. Pumping included! I had to exclusively pump with both my daughters for the first six or seven weeks due to latch issues. It's a full time job and then some. Pumping for a few months is no small thing.
I’ve seen this done and usually the woman is compensated quite well. Not saying that it isn’t hard (also nursing my 4 month old at the moment) but they’re not usually doing this as a free service.
I think most children would be pretty perturbed by the amount of money involved in this whole process. I don't really know if you can compensate for the loss that the child will someday feel over this whole bizarre science experiment. I guess I just don't think there's a dollar amount on these sort of things.
Agreed. That said, I have a dear friend who used a gestational carrier to have her two children. She anatomically could not carry a child, but she and her husband were able to create embryos. Their gestational carrier was a nice woman they met through an agency. Although they didn’t know her prior to the pregnancy, they have become very close and she remains an important part of their lives. It hasn’t been as transactional as this article or commentators have portrayed…it was something that was very thoughtfully considered…the risks, the potential for heartache on all sides…this couple and carrier talked through it all before proceeding.
Yes, this industry has huge potential for exploitation and abuse, but it’s not super simple. Their oldest child is now 7 and they’ve explained that while she grew in someone else’s tummy (the child knows the carrier), she is 100% their child because they used mom and dad’s material to make her…they just needed some help getting her big enough to come home with them. Kind of simplistic explanation, but I know they’ve tried to explain it in a way that honors their gestational carrier and makes clear that she is not some mysterious amalgam of genetic material between the three adults. It’s hard, I’m sure, but I don’t sense this is going to be an identity problem for her.
Perhaps is this is a fringe case, but of the three different couples I know that have utilized gestational carriers, all of them seem more like this situation than the transactional/exploitative ones described in this article. Again, maybe they’re more rare than I realized.
Great point! And the ‘right’ to have it all paid for by insurance! Eighteen years ago I utilized IVF services for my second child. Because I was healthy, but of advanced maternal age, and naturally not able to conceive on my own, we paid for this ourselves and we borrowed the money. Completely fair! I never expected anyone else to pay. Why is this so hard to understand? Insurance pays for sick care, not well care!
On the whole, people misunderstand and misuse the word "right" IMO. There are only two "god-given" rights: the right to think one's own thoughts and the right to die. All the rest are legal agreements, which can generally be improved upon the more money one has.
This reminds me of a discussion I had with an attorney who was certain there were "rights," to many things. I only realized several months later he was referring to "Staturory rights," which is to say rights granted by a particular law that may or may not have anythign to do with God given rights.
It is not at ALL like a heterosexual relationship. The woman becomes the baby’s mother in that relationship and the husband sees her and loves her in a whole new way after she becomes the mother to his children. Comparing the two is disgusting.
Ok that's a very idealistic way of looking at it from a very modern day first world norm. That's really not how it is half the time in human history and half of the world. I'll begin with pointing out Exhibit #1 when Melania Trump was pregnant, Donald Trump saw it as time for him to go have a fling with Stormy Daniels, leading to us having a national crisis today. /s. And throughout history and even now in many places, wives are just the means of producing a male heir. It may not be surrogacy, but families and producing children have always been an arrangement if not an outright transaction involving money.
For the record I'm against surrogacy the more I learn about it. And I actually agree the ideal you present is the best case scenario. I find the examples I gave to be sad states of human nature and wish it ain't so. But what you describe just can't be stated as fact.
I am a wife and mother of 2 boys who experiences this every day with my husband. And our friends all feel the same way. Additionally, we learned this from generations of men who felt the same way about their wives and mothers to their children. I don’t know where you are living, but what you are describing sounds a lot like woke ideology without a real grasp on traditional family dynamics handed down through many generations that has worked for a very long time to produce healthy, thriving children.
How am I describing woke ideology? Family as an institution historically around the world was an arrangement to protect inheritance of property. Historically in most parts of the world two people who marry had no say in who their marital partner would be. The parents or even more senior family elders decide based on need to form alliance of two families, for mutual protection of properties and otherwise. Look at the European aristocracies and royal families. Marriages were formed for political alliances and determination of the male heir. This practice was (and still is in some places) widespread to general populations in Asia and Africa too. And in many cases families involved polygamy, with one husband having multiple wives. This was the norm of traditional family around the world. And you accuse me of having no grasp of "traditional family dynamics"?
Even for people of labor classes where properties weren't a major consideration, people chose marital partners based on necessities. Young women married a man who could best provide for them who might be older, and men chose women who could take care of their house, contribute to work in needed, and give him children. Arranged marriage was a very real thing in most parts of the world historically speaking. Husbands and wives didn't necessarily like each other much, and the ideal of husband adoring and looking the wife in a new way doesn't quite jive with reality of history.
People forget that free love and marriage based on free love a very recent concept that came about circa turn of 20th century. To say the kind of family you have and describe was handed down through many generations--well I guess that depends on the definition of what "many generations" mean. Many generations in recent times, yeah. But nothing compared to the 5000+ years of human history.
I'm not denigrating the kind of family you describe. In fact, I'm glad families have progressed to this form as the norm. That's true human progress. It just always strike me as myopic when people talk about family and marriage as if it has always been like this, when it's a pretty new norm in the course of human history, and not even the norm still in so many other parts of the world.
Woke has nothing to do with what I said. Woke people hate history so many likely don't even think much about this.
You’re description of history sounds very “women were oppressed” by men. Factually, around marriage, every point you raise is true. But that doesn’t mean people didn’t learn to love each other within those marriages, especially after a child is brought into the world. And it doesn’t mean women didn’t wield other types of power in that relationship. Money and land are not the only things we have power over. Losing sight of that is why women are so depressed these days. There is power in providing for a family which is not materialistic. I am not commenting on why or how people got married. I am commenting on the bond that forms between a man and woman when the woman carries a child who then becomes a part of their family. Arranged marriages still go on today for reasons you have noted. I know a few of these people and I have seen how love grows. If both people respect marriage and the importance of growing a family with values, it doesn’t matter if they fell in love magically to begin with or if they grew into that love when the child was born. And that is the beauty of bringing a child into the world out of husband and wife to create father and mother.
To conflate the act of carrying some random persons baby, to two people creating a child of their own and what that does to the bond between a husband and wife is missing the key ingredient of what is produced after that baby is born. Regardless of how that marriage started. “Wokeness” always wants to blame power dynamics for why things are the way they are, and that’s something that really irks me because life is so much more than that. That’s the only reason I am pushing back here.
Ok so you're the one who brought up the "women are oppressed" thing because that's how you chose to read what I said that way, and wokeness is on your mind or something. Historical facts are historical facts whether women or whoever were oppressed or not. I shouldn't have to worry about woke crap when I'm talking about history. I said nothing about oppression one way or another, nor was I even thinking about that when I commented. You're now saying you're commenting only on the bond between a man and a woman. Well I was only commenting that this idealistic way of looking at families creating children is just a modern phenomenon and in fact not a historical norm as many people today think it is. I'm not denying that this modern norm is in fact what is considered ideal in most first world countries today.
I just feel based on everything I know about human history globally, this bond you're talking about was not highly valued in many cases, enough to evidence that a norm also existed (and still existing) where there was no such bond.
I do apologize if my comments irked you. That wasn't my intent. But I do always find talks about marriage and families to be continually incomplete because the way people describe it, especially the way conservatives describe it, tend to be idealized and disregard a lot of history. And also, that doesn't mean I agree with or support in any way how the left wants to destroy contemporary norms either.
I think unintentionally you have identified what separates conservatives from the rest and explained why there is a chasm which cannot be healed. You have also made it very clear which side of the chasm you are on. While you think you are just reciting history, what you did was recite historical facts colored with your biases and prejudices. There is nothing wrong with doing so. There is something wrong with insisting that this is some sort of universal truth. It is not. It is merely your POV.
Your comment is generally, historically false. The family unit is as old as the human race itself. Pointing to aberrations as the norm is silly. The scholarship on this topic is widespread; and yes, some scholars have agendas, particularly those that wish to pretend that all kinds of "families" work and the idea of the nuclear family is "modern".
Just to take one example, why not mention the Church's ancient canon law of marriage, whereby all that was required was mutual consent notwithstanding any objections by family? Where's the "inheritance" concern in that? That's more than 1,000 years ago.
It is not historically false, unless you're focusing only on European families. You're all having Woke Derangement Syndrome as for some reasons, you all seem to think I'm talking about some new variations of family the left pushes for. Though I don't blame you all for being that way since the left has lost their plot when it comes to family and family cohesion, and their failure to see how the destruction of family has led to a whole load of problems today. Of course you can point out the Church's cannon law of marriage. I don't deny that at all. But if we do that we can also point to the Old Testament and how families generally entailed polygamy. Polygamy in fact has been a widespread cultural norm throughout human history everywhere. I personally don't think polygamy is good at all; in fact I find it highly destructive to human well-being (and FYI if you don't know already, the left today is also pushing "polyamory"). But I'm not going to deny that it was very much a norm in many places, and is still so in some places today.
“When you start to grow a human”. Yes these are all people, humans we are talking about. I’m a bit troubled by the class divide here. The wealthy off loading their problems on the poor. Not sure how I feel about this but I can tell you I prefer one man with one woman creating a new family.
Oh yeah??? Well I love all people of all kinds because I embrace pluralism and I am open-minded and I am kind-hearted and I believe in The Science Justice Climate™️.
*sniffs haughtily
*adjusts robe
*prances off pharisaically while sneering obnoxiously over my shoulder
It’s baby trafficking and prostitution in one! Children aren’t commercial products to be bought and sold. Viewing women as birthing vessels is the opposite of feminism, and the more our capitalist, consumerist society views women as sexual objects or baby incubators, the worse off we all will be. Children are sacred. Women are sacred. The love that makes a child is sacred.
This article treated the topic with such a soft touch, it’s revolting. We have drifted further from women’s equality than at any time since we won the right to vote. It’s not surprising that the founders of surrogacy companies tend to be men, and clueless about menstrual cycles at that! That guy is a pimp.
The "soft touch" works...if author comes down as majorly judgmental, it would elicit a different reader response. Reporting the facts is enough to convey the horror.
The way they talked about the foreign surrogates was awful “She plays tennis, shes 5’10”, shes gorgeous, she likes art” Its like the movie Gattica but instead theyre acquiring “good genes” from the lower classes to repopulate the soy-ified sterile upper classes.
Also the lady who said her big three included covid vaccine and abortion rights made me laugh a bitterly despair at the same time for our evil clown world
Whether the people participating in this want to admit it or not, this is a step in the direction of transhumanism. Designer genes, rent-a-womb, the right to terminate pregnancy based on a contract, wealthy having access to “services” the less wealthy do not — where do people think this going?
This is sort of off topic, but seeing as many wealthy people use surrogates due to age, I have come to believe that this constant dose of telling women to “wait” has resulted in a massive wave of 40 year old women who want to become moms but realize they can’t. I think feminist messaging ironically has a massive hand in creating and maintaining Big Fertility. Telling 25 year old women they’re too poor, dumb, and unstable doesn’t seem to be working out for women’s long term happiness.
I’m eternally grateful to my mom for telling me as a preteen, “Women should never count on being able to get pregnant when they want to get pregnant.” I always knew I wanted kids, so I purposely structured my life knowing that, ideally, I wanted to be married and have a baby before I turned thirty. (Married at 26, first baby at 28, second and last baby at 31.)
About 10 months. I got a fluoroscopy and all the blood tests and all is good with me. My husband has below average sperm motility but we have been attempting to raise it naturally before seeing a fertility specialist. I have the referral papers that I’d rather not use... so fingers crossed.
Another piece of advice my mom gave me: “If you’ve been trying for twelve months to get pregnant and you’re still not pregnant, go see a fertility specialist.” She got pregnant with me at 35, after ten years of not using birth control and several years of actively trying to get pregnant. I think the fertility problems were with both her and my dad - they had to do something to his sperm for increased mobility, and my mom had something called a “short luteal phase.”
I completely agree, I am so grateful that my grandma was born in 1928 and was after me to “Go to college, get married, and have a baby” she would remind me that I did not have to live life in that order “school will always be there but your eggs come with an expiration date” she would say. I had my son at 27, and am still a full-time student/stay-at-home mom at 28 and it is seriously the best thing ever.
I used to be all “feminist af” but living a “girl-boss” life is not as fun as drinking a mimosa while taking my 20-month-old for walks in a remote control car that he's convinced he is driving to the park down the street (at least to me.)
And worse, women like Betty Friedan had figured this out by the 80’s and got sidelined for it. Realities of fertility were denied and obscured. Maternity friendly work innovations were slapped with a Mommy Track warning and actively avoided... It was, is, the most capitalist thing ever: just keep the women working. Keep everyone working, especially in the big, loaded corporations. For a supposedly progressive movement, it is totally bonkers. (Actually, it’s bonkers any way one looks at it, but particularly ironic from the progressive perspective.)
In grad school, I took a class on adoption in literature (I had a vested interest, since I was adopted). The professor's premise was that adoption was "commodifying" (in Marxist-speak) a child. Eventually, I figured out that in Woke-land, adoption *has* to be demonized because it presents a feasible alternative to abortion.
Which makes Woke support for surrogacy all the more ironic. A gay couple who literally *pays* a woman to have a baby is somehow magically not "commodifying" the child the way an adoptive heterosexual couple is. Also, regardless of this article's assertions, surrogacy is still largely a luxury of the wealthy.
All of which goes to show that money is more important than ideology. And--as with Trans Activism--the needs of men are readily placed ahead of any respect for women.
Also insane how white adoptive parents are called racist(!) for adopting a nonwhite child even if that childs mother died in cambodia or compton or something. And yet you can hire an agent to scout out a mexican woman (albeit skin color unknown), “but make sure shes tall with green eyes!” and that is totally ok in the woke worldview? Dude this kinda stuff is legit bonkers
I’d like to hear more about the surrogate kids’ povs and whether it’s healthy for them. Most of these articles focus solely on the desires of grown adults but nothing about the lives of kids who were essentially incubated and taken away from the body that created them. I mean, every single adopted kid I know has grown up with a serious complex about where they really came from. And then there’s the lack of bonding for these mothers and the babies - it’s my understanding that the act of carrying a baby creates a very real attachment bond that simply cannot be emulated. The early round of surrogate kids have to be coming of age soon. It’s why I’m not convinced by these sort of “happy surrogate” articles. There’s a human being whose pov isn’t being considered.
I had the same thoughts. Wondering about health risks for a baby that has gestated in a body it is not related to, and also the psychological side effects (for mother and baby).
You know how trans women claim to have periods? Jamie Chung, actress who used a surrogate, claimed to have postpartum depression. I feel like that’s a pretty clear example of a woman who is trying to cope over being handed a child she did not have a bond with.
I’ve heard of “post-adoption depression,” so I can understand having a hard time dealing with the changes that come with being a new parent. But having had PPD twice - once with a voluntary psych hospitalization - I know that the physical and hormonal aspects are a major component. (That’s why I get pissed off when people talk about “postpartum depression in men.” It’s not the same, so let’s not give it the same name, please.)
Interesting that you ask that because there is some research linking IVF and ASD but most consider it invalid due to average age of the mother. It’s a multibillion dollar industry so I doubt we will every get unbiased research or answers to such questions.
Fertilization is *not* taking place inside the body, so we really don't know what the long term effects (if any) will be. Agree there are big bucks at stake so getting real answers will be difficult to impossible.
my acupuncturist told me a story about a client/friend who is a special ed teacher. half of the kids in her classes year after year are all IVF babies. According to her, there is also research outside the US demonstrating that long-term use of hormonal birth control is linked to autism
“I’d like to hear more about the surrogate kids’ povs and whether it’s healthy for them.”
As much as I don’t like many of the moral and social issues of this growing surrogacy movement; I think I can answer this one. Having children of my own and being around children quite a bit my entire life, I can honestly tell you that the last thing any kid wants to know about is how they were conceived 🤪
Maybe not when they are small. When they are older they will certainly want to know more about the biological parent(s) that have never been in their life in any way.
My experience with this is like many things, some do some don’t. I was mostly referring to children not adults. Adults have completely different knowledge they wish to attain than kids.
By and large I think we humans are basically pack animals and don’t really care about who actually gave birth to us as long as we have a “pack”. But that’s just my opinion. 😃
Paris Hilton thinks childbirth is scary? Oh, you poor, pouty selfish girl, just wait till you try child rearing. Unlike your pocket pups,, you can’t tote a tot around in your purse
I feel most for these baubles, I mean children, being created to satisfy their parents’ idea of true happiness and fulfillment. What happens when this little human demonstrates him- or herself to be just that — an autonomous, independent human?
I’d believe in evolution if it weren’t for mankind.
The only way wokeness can repopulate is if they grow babies in a lab and drill mantras into their heads from infancy. Ive always thought we were lurching closest towards:
Brave New World, Farenheit 451, and 1984- in that order of similarity to events unfolding. But perhaps all three books are just different phases and facets of the unfurling dystopia
I think this piece just skimmed the surface of the negatives around surrogacy. There seemed to be a focus on the personal joy of couples, and the agency of a few, chosen surrogates.
What about the babies and their trauma of being taken away from their birth mother? Adoption trauma is well known, it applies the same to the surrogate babies.
What about the immense potential for child abuse? Reduxx just published another story of a convicted pedophile operating a surrogacy empire, under investigation for baby trafficking.
Why is okay for rich women like Paris Hilton to outsource the risk of childbirth to financially poor women?
There will never, ever be a case of a rich woman choosing to be a surrogate for a family that she has no connection to. This alone tells you everything about this horrendous exploitation of poor women.
No one has the right to a biological child. Yes, that is absolutely heart-breaking, but that is the human condition.
“There will never, ever be a case of a rich woman choosing to be a surrogate for a family that she has no connection to. This alone tells you everything about this horrendous exploitation of poor women.”
Yeah, funny how you never hear of multi-millionaires who feel “called” to be surrogates for some random middle-class suburbanites.
and you never will..
“ No one has the right to a biological child”
This. As a gay man I had to face the fact that I wouldn’t have kids. I processed that when I was young and found other ways to be fulfilled in life. I’ve come to call myself a rational naturalist … what’s natural to me, what’s a rational POV. I’m not built to father kids for whatever reason. What else could I do with my life? I don’t understand chasing an impossible dream.
I appreciate your comment here Vernon and maybe understand something about this as a woman without children.
Thank you for stating this, Vernon. - LM
Bravo, Vernon. I imagine that was hard. Good on you for giving yourself to the things you could.
Thank you for reminding us that there is someone else involved in this issue - namely the baby. You mentioned the trauma that often goes along with adoption. Hence, I I offer just a bit of my own story and that of my son whom we adopted over 50 years ago when he was 5 days old. It was a closed adoption as many were in those days , so we knew nothing of his birth parents or their history.
My son never lacked for love - he was the apple of everyones eye and was a very happy kid until about 9 , the age when his personality changed from a bubbly kid to one that began to exhibit issues of depression caused, I now know by issues of abandoment. The first words out of his mouth to me 33 years later after HIS son was born were "I can't imagine giving up your baby"
In those days, we knew nothing about the child recognizing in utero the voice of the mother - the movement of the mother's body - the breathing patterns, etc - that knowledge came long after if was possible to discover such things through medical advances. So in a very real sense, he was taken from the womb and handed over to strangers. It took me years to understand this.
His adolescence and teenage years were difficult for him and for us but we got through it and he is now happily married with a son of his own. He has not, however, in spite of the ability to do so and my encouragement, ever looked for his birth parents.
If I had had the book Being Adopted, the Lifelong Search for Self available to me 50 years ago I would have understood more of what my son was going through but I didn't read it until very recently. There are interviews in it with other adopted children - who are now adults. Several have carried with them for years the idea that "something must have been wrong with me to have my mother give me away."
I share this story only to say again - please don't leave out the most important person in this surrogacy story. While all the others involved might have fulfilled a life-long dream and be happy, it is possible there is another one involved who might struggle with the "who am I " question for years. .
I
Thank you for this. It's remarkable (or is it?) how little concern there is for the child. "Being loved" is essential but not sufficient.
I totally disagree. I can find you just ask many adopted kids who are happy and well adjusted - my husband to start. I also work in child welfare where adoption saves children. Yes there are kids who feel they aren’t enough but that’s not the story of surrogacy. In many cases it’s the biological child of the parents anyway, so who is the “mother”? The person who raises him and is genetically related or to one who gave birth?
Of course many adopted children are happy and well adjusted. Many are not, or at least they have difficulties. Much of what has fueled DNA testing over the years is adopted children seeking out their biological parents.
I completely disagree that it's okay to purposefully deny a child, from birth, a biological mother and/or father. If the child is the biological child of both parents, then there is significant mitigation. But that is not always the case.
I have had several friends, and dated a woman who was adopted. Most had this same experience, not feeling a full connection with their families, usually due to their "who am I" questions.
I completely concur with this. I appreciate that this article was written and loved many things about it, but there's no mention of the fact that when a mother is not biologically related to the child she is carrying, the risks are greater for her than when she's carrying her own child. This whole process gives me the "ick."
But that’s what informed consent is for. This is an amazing thing that humans can do for each other. Life is full of risks and people do so many dangerous things. This can’t be singled out when two willing participants are involved.
I understand what you're saying and I'm sure there are instances in which surrogacy is a blessing. A former co-worker once carried twins for a sibling who wasn't able to have them. But surrogacy has turned into an industry in which the risk of pregnancy is being transferred from the very fortunate to the less fortunate, and it seems like a lot of the risks aren't part of the discussion at all.
Gosh, like we've never heard of healthcare providers who fail to give full chapter and verse on the risks, have we?
There is no possible way to truly consent to the risks of surrogacy. In some states, women lose their right to end-of-life decisions while they are surrogates. But put all that aside: this is clearly an exploitative practice that primarily targets poor women. Rich people are buying the bodies of poor women for nine months. Then they buy a baby - immediately ripping that child away from the only mother is has ever known. Children are miracles, gifts that not one of us truly deserves, and having lucre to burn doesn't change that.
Well by that reasoning every time money changes hands it is exploitative. Paying football players to ram their skulls until they’re brain damaged? Where most of them are poor too. What about Amazon workers? What about first responders? Everything has risk. If they want to carry a baby for someone and be compensated it’s not inherently exploitative.
You are making a ridiculous argument. By your own logic - that compensation makes act not "inherently exploitative" - then we should view being paid to make a coffee and being paid to give a blow job as equal, neutral acts of work for pay. These two things are not alike and if you say that they are, you are lying. You are ignoring your rightly triggered sense of moral disgust. Don't.
Like it or not, there *is* something inherently special about sex, pregnancy, motherhood, birth, and the parent-child bond. These are not acts or relationships we can disenchant just by saying so. The baby being "carried" by a "surrogate" - the baby growing in its mother's womb, surrounded by the sound of her heartbeat, her blood rushing by, her voice, her hands on her belly - doesn't and could never know that she "isn't really the mother." That baby, whisked away to people it does not recognize, is being bought and sold, exploited even before conception.
wow. I guess we have to agree to disagree. you don't have to give birth to a baby to be an amazing mother. I hate to use personal examples but I will. my friend lost a baby and her uterus in a tragic car accident when she was 8 months pregnant. Through a surrogate, she and her husband went on to bring four amazing kids into the world, all biologically theirs.
Is she less of a mom because she couldn't carry and deliver her own babies? nope she's not. she's amazing and the kids are perfect. the kids are not damaged or broken because someone else's blood rushed passed their ears for 9 months, that's patently ridiculous. This is a miracle of modern technology in every sense of the word. was it risky? yup. did the lady who delivered the babies struggle? probably. would she do it again? yes she would, if asked.
How do you feel about selling one's kidney?
I don't know of any kidney that has ever hosted an embryo.
The egg retrieval process can be dangerous to women as well.
Amen. I wish this piece had explored these concepts more.
I was just about to come on here and ask what could possibly go wrong. This is absolutely horrifying on so many levels.
No one gets guarantees with children -- I would have wondered about attachment and genetics too, when my bright and loving daughter turned ten and became a raging depressed "hormonoid" (my Mom's word for pre-teens). But, in my small town, she and I were the only two patients in the ENTIRE hospital, and being faithfully married, had no such explanation. Kids have their own development greatly effected by genetics, environment and so many factors it's impossible to "know" for certain. We all do our best...glad your son grew into a lovely human, as did my daughter.
haha, when our first was born, I was the only one delivering a baby in our small town hospital too. Good thing because I was paranoid about those accidental baby switching news stories.
Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore
Rich women aren’t going to choose to be prostitutes either, but at some point one has to draw a line and accept that poor women have agency too and that illegal sex work has a tendency to drive them into much more problematic circumstances than does legal sex work.
First off, so this comment isn't misinterpreted, child abusers should be put in prison for LIFE at the very least.
That said, I would think the potential for child abuse with a surrogate child is EXTREMELY low. Who is going to pay $100,000 and then raise a child for years for the sole purpose of abusing it when they could just foster and get paid.
You should never underestimate the lengths men will go to to commit abuse. Look up Jose Prados on Reduxx as an example.
Certain agencies have no checks on the people asking to buy a human baby (unlike adoption agencies who conduct background checks), a single man can order a baby daughter, no questions asked. It is human trafficking.
You can't adopt a rescue dog without a minimal check of yard and vet history. Seems we should perhaps do a little more for a human.
Check out the Zulocks in Atlanta.
"Who is going to pay $100,000 and then raise a child for years for the sole purpose of abusing it when they could just foster and get paid."
People who view a child as a commodity to be acquired.
People with more money than ethics.
Interesting piece, Suzy.
“[C]hildbirth and death are the two things that scare me more than anything in the world.” - Paris Hilton
This is the kind of weak person who should forego parenting and why I question some of the merits of surrogacy. The 'lower class' person carrying her child is far stronger.
This quote from Hilton epitomizes weak America. Life IS suffering - overcoming it to produce and nurture new life brings the greatest joys. Avoiding, shirking and running from it defines cowardice.
The indescribable joy of holding your infant after giving birth is lost to those who don't take the risk. And there are ways of reducing pain and suffering in labor if one is willing to do it, no shame there.
Absolutely. Three greatest days of my life were when my kids were born.
When I read that from Paris Hilton, I thought of the moment after the birth of my first child and the Dr. stood there finishing up “down there” and I said to him, “My mother says THAT [the giving birth] was the easy part,” and he replied, “Your mother is right!” And 30 yrs later, I know she was!
Paris Hilton is a perfect epitome of our society’s trend in avoiding pain or simply being uncomfortable, if you could afford it. The coddling of the young generation: you think you don’t like your gender or your body - we will give you another one. You disagree with someone - we will create a safe space where you will never have to confront people who think differently. You want to have a child, but too scared of the childbirth labor- someone will do it for you. Of course, I do not include here couples or women who are not able to have children the natural way and for whom using surrogates is the only road to parenthood. So, they medicate to have the pain go away, pay someone to do the physically painful thing for them, or protest and bully people into doing things their way.
She is too self absorbed for motherhood.
She probably didn’t tell the real reason...she’s old.
In fairness to Ms. Hilton, she does not have birthing hips.
On the other hand, I have seen video evidence indicating that she’s not *that* afraid of childbirth…..
When she was 19, her thirty-something boyfriend pressured her into making a sex tape, which was supposed to be private. He then sold it after she begged him not to. She felt humiliated and like the tape might ruin her future. So can we maybe quit the guffawing over what basically amounts to revenge porn?
How stupid do you have to be to allow anyone to videotape you having sex? It’s about as stupid as believing a male when he tells you he won’t come in your mouth.
It’s as stupid as preferring a leader who is cognitively impaired to one who is rude.
Great point!
Were you brilliant, wise, and made all the right decisions when you were 19? You'd be the only one.
We all have to pay continually for our past mistakes. Having sex with older badass tattooed rich guys when you’re 19 counts as a mistake.
She’s fine by the way and I in no way look down on her for this mistake as I have made several myself. My mistakes didn’t pay off immensely like hers did, so perhaps I’m jealous.
If it was actually revenge porn he should have been bankrupted or imprisoned but I don’t know those details.
But thanks for the scolding. Would you like to speak to the manager?
What I’d like is for men to stop using, “But she had sex, dur hur hur” as a punchline, especially when it comes to barely-legal women who were sexually exploited for money. That may be too difficult for you.
Don't waste your time looking for decency from this crowd.
Eliminating sex jokes is a policy position we can all get behind……
Paris was not known for making good decisions. I always thought of her as spoiled, privileged, snot nosed, kid who knew she was a spoiled, privileged, snot nose, kid and didn't give a damn what anyone thought as long as she could fulfil her hedonistic way of life.
“Not making good decisions” is a pretty predictable outcome for someone dealing with eleven months of abuse in a “troubled teens” boarding school, having too much money at too young of an age, being groomed by a teacher as a younger adolescent, easy access to drugs, and undiagnosed ADHD. Of all the possible criticisms of Paris Hilton, I think some are more fair than others.
I’m an independent who understands that eleven months of forcible vaginal penetration constitutes sexual abuse, no matter how much money anyone has.
And I have better ways to spend my time than to continue this pointless conversation, too. Have a nice day.
She enjoyed every minute of it. She was that generation's Dylan Mulvaney.
Very true!
But this way, she can take it back if she gets tired of stinky diapers. The surrogate would probably have to resell at a discount. “Refurbished” or whatever.
BARBARISM. God have mercy. This is so wrong.
Great point. I had no idea.
This article is disturbing on many levels but the biggest tragedy is that children have become commodities instead of the true gifts they really are. Ideally, children are raised by their biological mother and father. That is the best situation for human flourishing. I get it that this misses the mark frequently but it should still be the gold standard. I also understand adoption is difficult but at least the process is in keeping with the dignity of the child!
Kids, to me, come with marriage,” - what a narcissistic statement from a gay man. No one would have said or thought this even 30 years ago.
When people (kids and women) are allowed to be bought and sold, our world is in serious trouble. How easy it is to discard and abuse commodities. There is a declining respect for the dignity of what it means to be human and that can’t end well for society.
We have already lived through slavery and found that it was horrific- are we really going down this path again?
One might say narcissism is the defining trait of this Age.
Or at least those who wind up in media-friendly stories.
It’s immoral to purposely deny a child a mother or a father. Disgusts me to no end.
Thank you. You expressed this much better and more concisely than I did.
“We have already lived through slavery and found that it was horrific- are we really going down this path again?”
Yes. Of course. We never left that path. Slavery, “outsourcing”, surrogacy, Ai ... it never ends.
One thing you can count on across the ages: the “bad guys” will always want to have the right to kill life if it suits them. (Err...I mean “reductions” )
Virtue signaling parents view their children as just another accessory.
Their identity is an extension of vapid consumerism. What hashtag to add to their bio today. What humans they surround themselves with serve a similar role of vanity and signaling.
The agenda is transhumanism
“Everybody wants to pick the eye color, but thats not possible.” YET. GMO babies are the least of the twisted dystopian distortions satanic forces are currently propagandizing upon the world
I agree with you, Nancy.
And "Kids, to me, come with marriage,” - this is true only in the sense that kids are often (but not always!) the natural and often "unplanned" result of marriage. That guy sounds horrible.
Such a well stated response!
I am horrified by this trend.
The dignity of the child, and the dignity of women continue to degrade in our “brave new world.”
Tragic.
In addition to the ethical issues touched upon here, two pieces of the puzzle are missing from this article, which is, overall, more nuanced than most of what I've seen on the subject.
The first--and most important piece--is how surrogacy affects the children who are born through it. Babies are born to bond with their mothers, and recognize the voices and smells of the person who carried them. We don't let puppies leave their mothers until they are at least eight weeks old, but children born through surrogacy are given to their intended parents almost immediately after their born.
The second piece is the health risk to the gestational surrogate. The evidence (and there isn't much of it because no one will do the research) seems to suggest that surrogate pregnancies are higher risk for the woman carrying the baby than a normal pregnancy would be. The Center for Bioethics and Culture (https://cbc-network.org/) has done a lot of work around this issue, and their documentary (Eggsploitation) and podcast (Venus Rising) are worth checking out for more information on this side of the issue.
I came here to say this. What is the long term impact of ripping a baby away from the woman who carried her? You cannot just replace that with another person and think there is no difference.
One of the things the Center for Bioethics and Culture points out is that we always frame this discussion in terms of the desires of the adults involved, but no one stops to think about the children. They can't advocate for themselves here, so they get missed. At the very least, it needs to be part of the conversation. Katy Faust, of Them Before Us (https://thembeforeus.com/) talks about this, too.
"no one stops to think about the children. They can't advocate for themselves here, so they get missed" I couldn't agree more. These discussions seem only centered around the surrogate Mother or the parents purchasing the services. This is also the perspective that is generally ignored in the abortion debate. The children in both cases are referred to as if they were abstract commodities rather than individuals who just might have an opinion if we considered their perspective a bit more deeply...
It's obvious, but has to be said: same goes for abortion.
Yep. It's hard (impossible?) to care about the bioethics of assisted reproduction and support abortion.
Not surprising in a culture that routinely denies the basic humanity of all babies in the womb.
Isn’t that what’s done with adoption? A child is “ripped from the woman who carried her”?
I understand the troubling ethics of renting a uterus—and in some cases, also purchasing the eggs—but there’s nothing new about children being raised by non-biological parents.
Adoption is making the best of circumstances that have already happened. Surrogacy is intentionally creating the circumstance.
The difference is that adoption usually isn't intentional. Something else severs the parent/child bond in adoption, and adoption is a (hopefully) better fix for a bad situation. Surrogacy involves intentionally creating a child in order to separate that child from at the woman who carried her, and in many cases, at least one, if not both, biological parents.
I was addressing the point of being “ripped from the biological mother” not whether one was more noble than the other.
Then yes, that it what happens with adoption, and that is part of why adoption - and surrogacy - are so traumatic. It's kind of like limb amputation - whether you do it because you like the way it looks or because you need to do it to save your life, the pain is somewhat similar. But the similarity is irrelevant. The "similarity" is analogous to the similarity between surrogacy because you want it and can buy it, and adoption because there is a baby and the birth parents simply can't, due to death or illness or extreme poverty, raise the child.
Adoption is not the desired or planned outcome, it is done as a solution to a desperate situation. We should not hold it up as our standard of how we treat our children.
Adoption is remedial. For whatever reason, the child's biological parents cannot or will not care for the child. It is a fix for an existing child - it is not the genesis of the child's life.
The difference is when the child is conceived with the full knowledge that it will never know one or both of its biological parents. That is cruel.
Excellent comments. I would love to see the surrogacy contracts that dictate what the surrogate can eat drink etc during the gestation period not to.mention the clause that exculpates the baby buyers idf the surrogate dies or otherwise suffers illness etc.
I have had friends who were surrogates and it literally does dictate what they can and cannot do. My friend stipulated she was no okay with reduction and that she would not again put more than one egg for implantation. She was able to dictate that because of the company she went with. The intended parents have a ton of say over the bodily autonomy of the surrogate.
It’s like slavery except you get paid and not whipped!
I had a friend who was a gestational surrogate and her second surrogacy almost killed her. She almost bled to death and her husband had to watch it all unfold. It created quite a trauma for them.
Interestingly, I agree with a lot of your points but not your conclusions. Yes the bonding period right after birth is important, so wouldn’t it be extremely important for the baby to bond with the intended parents, who will be the ones to raise the baby? Yes, we don’t let puppies leave their mothers until 8 weeks, but I see that as a commentary to the lack of paid maternity leave for mothers in the US to give them time to focus all of their attention on their new baby, regardless of how that baby was born. It’s ridiculous that mothers need to find day cares for their weeks-old infant so that they can keep their jobs!
Or just the regular risks of pregnancy.
It stipulated that the couple she was carrying for would have the final say over “reductions”—which is surrogacy-speak for abortion. “I’m a pro-life surrogate,” Mareko told me. “I was heartbroken, but I had to walk away.”
———————————————————-
LOL ‘reductions’. Modern Democrats are nothing more than Joseph Goebbels with a thesaurus.
At least now we know you can just sign away your basic human right to abortion via DocuSign. So restricting abortion will literally kill people *but also* you can sign a contract with someone you met on Craigslist that gives your sacred right to abortion to them. Talk about unsafe working conditions. Someone call OSHA.
The pro-surrogacy people need to work on their agitprop. Next time there is a school shooting the pro-surrogacy people should say
“Surrogacy doesn’t kill people. Guns kill people.”
That’s literally what the transvestite industry just did after one of their clients massacred a church full of kids.
And again.
There will be, in the next 5 years, a major lawsuit where a surrogate refuses to abort the baby she's carrying and the Court forces her to do it anyway.
I cannot like this but I fear you are correct.
You have nailed again.
I wonder if that contract could be enforceable. Oh I’m sure there would be a judge that would allow it, but short of imprisoning the surrogate and cutting the baby out in an abattoir (ie planned parenthood) how would one enforce it. Hey yiu didn’t kill the child when I told you to so you have to pay me back?
In all these talks about new fertility treatments, surrogacy, etc. a very important person is usually left out of the equation... The baby. Not a commodity, not a right - a baby who will one day grow up and have to grapple with their beginnings. Babies in utero hear their mother's voice (or their surrogate's) - they come into the world seeking that voice, that comfort. Likewise a woman's body is leaking milk, hormonally wrecked as she prepares to care for this infant. Biology demands one reality - we, 'post biology' - demand another.
I write this while nursing my second child, 2 and a half months old. I just wonder how much is being lost, for both mothers and their children, when we pretend the most vital of all things - life - can be turned into an industry. I wonder how many memories will be coming out 20 years from now from children who have to learn just how much money and human capital was exchanged for them to exist at all.
Just left a comment about this. There’s a narcissism to these types of articles that rubs me. It’s always about adults getting what they want.
Yes. It’s ALL about Narcissism...Worship of self is the religion of choice these days.
Conforming the world to your ideology of what reality should be is how I would describe it
Katie I shook my head at the line about the surrogate's work being "done" after the birth "except a few months of pumping breast milk". Nursing a newborn is a full time job in and of itself. Pumping for a few months would be difficult and time consuming, not as simple as it sounded in the article.
Yes! Breastfeeding is so hard. Pumping included! I had to exclusively pump with both my daughters for the first six or seven weeks due to latch issues. It's a full time job and then some. Pumping for a few months is no small thing.
I’ve seen this done and usually the woman is compensated quite well. Not saying that it isn’t hard (also nursing my 4 month old at the moment) but they’re not usually doing this as a free service.
I think most children would be pretty perturbed by the amount of money involved in this whole process. I don't really know if you can compensate for the loss that the child will someday feel over this whole bizarre science experiment. I guess I just don't think there's a dollar amount on these sort of things.
Agreed. That said, I have a dear friend who used a gestational carrier to have her two children. She anatomically could not carry a child, but she and her husband were able to create embryos. Their gestational carrier was a nice woman they met through an agency. Although they didn’t know her prior to the pregnancy, they have become very close and she remains an important part of their lives. It hasn’t been as transactional as this article or commentators have portrayed…it was something that was very thoughtfully considered…the risks, the potential for heartache on all sides…this couple and carrier talked through it all before proceeding.
Yes, this industry has huge potential for exploitation and abuse, but it’s not super simple. Their oldest child is now 7 and they’ve explained that while she grew in someone else’s tummy (the child knows the carrier), she is 100% their child because they used mom and dad’s material to make her…they just needed some help getting her big enough to come home with them. Kind of simplistic explanation, but I know they’ve tried to explain it in a way that honors their gestational carrier and makes clear that she is not some mysterious amalgam of genetic material between the three adults. It’s hard, I’m sure, but I don’t sense this is going to be an identity problem for her.
Perhaps is this is a fringe case, but of the three different couples I know that have utilized gestational carriers, all of them seem more like this situation than the transactional/exploitative ones described in this article. Again, maybe they’re more rare than I realized.
On this note - do we have a RIGHT to children? This article grapples with this question well -- https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/parenting/is-there-a-right-to-have-children
Great point! And the ‘right’ to have it all paid for by insurance! Eighteen years ago I utilized IVF services for my second child. Because I was healthy, but of advanced maternal age, and naturally not able to conceive on my own, we paid for this ourselves and we borrowed the money. Completely fair! I never expected anyone else to pay. Why is this so hard to understand? Insurance pays for sick care, not well care!
On the whole, people misunderstand and misuse the word "right" IMO. There are only two "god-given" rights: the right to think one's own thoughts and the right to die. All the rest are legal agreements, which can generally be improved upon the more money one has.
This reminds me of a discussion I had with an attorney who was certain there were "rights," to many things. I only realized several months later he was referring to "Staturory rights," which is to say rights granted by a particular law that may or may not have anythign to do with God given rights.
And what is a "god given" right? I mean, besides the two that I enumerated?
This was beautifully put. I am a mother as well. When we deny biology we deny ourselves and our babies ease and dignity.
Katie, agree 💯
*memoirs
It is not at ALL like a heterosexual relationship. The woman becomes the baby’s mother in that relationship and the husband sees her and loves her in a whole new way after she becomes the mother to his children. Comparing the two is disgusting.
You, sir, are denying the truth that diversity is our strength. Please learn to trust the science.
I am reporting you to DHS for transphobia and calling your employer.
Kevin, you’re cracking me up this morning.
Kevin always does 😂😂his posts are often tonic for the day.
That’s funny? Maybe to you.
I’m a woman lol
*womxn
😂😂😂
Your on quite the roll this morning!
You’re simply a very meaningless ideologue. No one should take your comment seriously. What happened to you?
Trans rights are women’s rights, Greg.
Kevin, one of your primary skills is revealing satire-impaired people.
Omg this one I’m stealing!!! Lol
😇😇
This is absolutely true. I’ll never forget how my view of my wife changed when our first was born.
Ok that's a very idealistic way of looking at it from a very modern day first world norm. That's really not how it is half the time in human history and half of the world. I'll begin with pointing out Exhibit #1 when Melania Trump was pregnant, Donald Trump saw it as time for him to go have a fling with Stormy Daniels, leading to us having a national crisis today. /s. And throughout history and even now in many places, wives are just the means of producing a male heir. It may not be surrogacy, but families and producing children have always been an arrangement if not an outright transaction involving money.
For the record I'm against surrogacy the more I learn about it. And I actually agree the ideal you present is the best case scenario. I find the examples I gave to be sad states of human nature and wish it ain't so. But what you describe just can't be stated as fact.
I am a wife and mother of 2 boys who experiences this every day with my husband. And our friends all feel the same way. Additionally, we learned this from generations of men who felt the same way about their wives and mothers to their children. I don’t know where you are living, but what you are describing sounds a lot like woke ideology without a real grasp on traditional family dynamics handed down through many generations that has worked for a very long time to produce healthy, thriving children.
How am I describing woke ideology? Family as an institution historically around the world was an arrangement to protect inheritance of property. Historically in most parts of the world two people who marry had no say in who their marital partner would be. The parents or even more senior family elders decide based on need to form alliance of two families, for mutual protection of properties and otherwise. Look at the European aristocracies and royal families. Marriages were formed for political alliances and determination of the male heir. This practice was (and still is in some places) widespread to general populations in Asia and Africa too. And in many cases families involved polygamy, with one husband having multiple wives. This was the norm of traditional family around the world. And you accuse me of having no grasp of "traditional family dynamics"?
Even for people of labor classes where properties weren't a major consideration, people chose marital partners based on necessities. Young women married a man who could best provide for them who might be older, and men chose women who could take care of their house, contribute to work in needed, and give him children. Arranged marriage was a very real thing in most parts of the world historically speaking. Husbands and wives didn't necessarily like each other much, and the ideal of husband adoring and looking the wife in a new way doesn't quite jive with reality of history.
People forget that free love and marriage based on free love a very recent concept that came about circa turn of 20th century. To say the kind of family you have and describe was handed down through many generations--well I guess that depends on the definition of what "many generations" mean. Many generations in recent times, yeah. But nothing compared to the 5000+ years of human history.
I'm not denigrating the kind of family you describe. In fact, I'm glad families have progressed to this form as the norm. That's true human progress. It just always strike me as myopic when people talk about family and marriage as if it has always been like this, when it's a pretty new norm in the course of human history, and not even the norm still in so many other parts of the world.
Woke has nothing to do with what I said. Woke people hate history so many likely don't even think much about this.
You’re description of history sounds very “women were oppressed” by men. Factually, around marriage, every point you raise is true. But that doesn’t mean people didn’t learn to love each other within those marriages, especially after a child is brought into the world. And it doesn’t mean women didn’t wield other types of power in that relationship. Money and land are not the only things we have power over. Losing sight of that is why women are so depressed these days. There is power in providing for a family which is not materialistic. I am not commenting on why or how people got married. I am commenting on the bond that forms between a man and woman when the woman carries a child who then becomes a part of their family. Arranged marriages still go on today for reasons you have noted. I know a few of these people and I have seen how love grows. If both people respect marriage and the importance of growing a family with values, it doesn’t matter if they fell in love magically to begin with or if they grew into that love when the child was born. And that is the beauty of bringing a child into the world out of husband and wife to create father and mother.
To conflate the act of carrying some random persons baby, to two people creating a child of their own and what that does to the bond between a husband and wife is missing the key ingredient of what is produced after that baby is born. Regardless of how that marriage started. “Wokeness” always wants to blame power dynamics for why things are the way they are, and that’s something that really irks me because life is so much more than that. That’s the only reason I am pushing back here.
Ok so you're the one who brought up the "women are oppressed" thing because that's how you chose to read what I said that way, and wokeness is on your mind or something. Historical facts are historical facts whether women or whoever were oppressed or not. I shouldn't have to worry about woke crap when I'm talking about history. I said nothing about oppression one way or another, nor was I even thinking about that when I commented. You're now saying you're commenting only on the bond between a man and a woman. Well I was only commenting that this idealistic way of looking at families creating children is just a modern phenomenon and in fact not a historical norm as many people today think it is. I'm not denying that this modern norm is in fact what is considered ideal in most first world countries today.
I just feel based on everything I know about human history globally, this bond you're talking about was not highly valued in many cases, enough to evidence that a norm also existed (and still existing) where there was no such bond.
I do apologize if my comments irked you. That wasn't my intent. But I do always find talks about marriage and families to be continually incomplete because the way people describe it, especially the way conservatives describe it, tend to be idealized and disregard a lot of history. And also, that doesn't mean I agree with or support in any way how the left wants to destroy contemporary norms either.
I think unintentionally you have identified what separates conservatives from the rest and explained why there is a chasm which cannot be healed. You have also made it very clear which side of the chasm you are on. While you think you are just reciting history, what you did was recite historical facts colored with your biases and prejudices. There is nothing wrong with doing so. There is something wrong with insisting that this is some sort of universal truth. It is not. It is merely your POV.
Your comment is generally, historically false. The family unit is as old as the human race itself. Pointing to aberrations as the norm is silly. The scholarship on this topic is widespread; and yes, some scholars have agendas, particularly those that wish to pretend that all kinds of "families" work and the idea of the nuclear family is "modern".
Just to take one example, why not mention the Church's ancient canon law of marriage, whereby all that was required was mutual consent notwithstanding any objections by family? Where's the "inheritance" concern in that? That's more than 1,000 years ago.
It is not historically false, unless you're focusing only on European families. You're all having Woke Derangement Syndrome as for some reasons, you all seem to think I'm talking about some new variations of family the left pushes for. Though I don't blame you all for being that way since the left has lost their plot when it comes to family and family cohesion, and their failure to see how the destruction of family has led to a whole load of problems today. Of course you can point out the Church's cannon law of marriage. I don't deny that at all. But if we do that we can also point to the Old Testament and how families generally entailed polygamy. Polygamy in fact has been a widespread cultural norm throughout human history everywhere. I personally don't think polygamy is good at all; in fact I find it highly destructive to human well-being (and FYI if you don't know already, the left today is also pushing "polyamory"). But I'm not going to deny that it was very much a norm in many places, and is still so in some places today.
Not sure if that’s our National crisis today.
It was a joke. Hence the "/s" (ie sarcasm)
Yes half the world's women are former models married to a billionaire human Cheeto that have the means to pay a porn star for sex.
I see this as one more reason for the societal divorce.
“When you start to grow a human”. Yes these are all people, humans we are talking about. I’m a bit troubled by the class divide here. The wealthy off loading their problems on the poor. Not sure how I feel about this but I can tell you I prefer one man with one woman creating a new family.
Oh yeah??? Well I love all people of all kinds because I embrace pluralism and I am open-minded and I am kind-hearted and I believe in The Science Justice Climate™️.
*sniffs haughtily
*adjusts robe
*prances off pharisaically while sneering obnoxiously over my shoulder
Glad you’re back Kevin.
“When you start to grow a human”
She almost sounds like a talking Petri Dish.
It’s baby trafficking and prostitution in one! Children aren’t commercial products to be bought and sold. Viewing women as birthing vessels is the opposite of feminism, and the more our capitalist, consumerist society views women as sexual objects or baby incubators, the worse off we all will be. Children are sacred. Women are sacred. The love that makes a child is sacred.
This article treated the topic with such a soft touch, it’s revolting. We have drifted further from women’s equality than at any time since we won the right to vote. It’s not surprising that the founders of surrogacy companies tend to be men, and clueless about menstrual cycles at that! That guy is a pimp.
The "soft touch" works...if author comes down as majorly judgmental, it would elicit a different reader response. Reporting the facts is enough to convey the horror.
“For $4,000, through Marin, you can choose your baby’s sex. For $10,000, you can have twins.
“Everyone asks to pick out the eye color, but it’s not possible,” he said.”
This turns my stomach! Children are not a commodity to pick off a shelf like Cheerios at Walmart. 🤬
The way they talked about the foreign surrogates was awful “She plays tennis, shes 5’10”, shes gorgeous, she likes art” Its like the movie Gattica but instead theyre acquiring “good genes” from the lower classes to repopulate the soy-ified sterile upper classes.
Also the lady who said her big three included covid vaccine and abortion rights made me laugh a bitterly despair at the same time for our evil clown world
Whether the people participating in this want to admit it or not, this is a step in the direction of transhumanism. Designer genes, rent-a-womb, the right to terminate pregnancy based on a contract, wealthy having access to “services” the less wealthy do not — where do people think this going?
This Marin should not be in this role. Unethical.
This is sort of off topic, but seeing as many wealthy people use surrogates due to age, I have come to believe that this constant dose of telling women to “wait” has resulted in a massive wave of 40 year old women who want to become moms but realize they can’t. I think feminist messaging ironically has a massive hand in creating and maintaining Big Fertility. Telling 25 year old women they’re too poor, dumb, and unstable doesn’t seem to be working out for women’s long term happiness.
I’m eternally grateful to my mom for telling me as a preteen, “Women should never count on being able to get pregnant when they want to get pregnant.” I always knew I wanted kids, so I purposely structured my life knowing that, ideally, I wanted to be married and have a baby before I turned thirty. (Married at 26, first baby at 28, second and last baby at 31.)
I’m trying to get pregnant at 34 and I wish I’d started earlier!
Best of luck. How long have you been trying?
About 10 months. I got a fluoroscopy and all the blood tests and all is good with me. My husband has below average sperm motility but we have been attempting to raise it naturally before seeing a fertility specialist. I have the referral papers that I’d rather not use... so fingers crossed.
Another piece of advice my mom gave me: “If you’ve been trying for twelve months to get pregnant and you’re still not pregnant, go see a fertility specialist.” She got pregnant with me at 35, after ten years of not using birth control and several years of actively trying to get pregnant. I think the fertility problems were with both her and my dad - they had to do something to his sperm for increased mobility, and my mom had something called a “short luteal phase.”
I completely agree, I am so grateful that my grandma was born in 1928 and was after me to “Go to college, get married, and have a baby” she would remind me that I did not have to live life in that order “school will always be there but your eggs come with an expiration date” she would say. I had my son at 27, and am still a full-time student/stay-at-home mom at 28 and it is seriously the best thing ever.
I used to be all “feminist af” but living a “girl-boss” life is not as fun as drinking a mimosa while taking my 20-month-old for walks in a remote control car that he's convinced he is driving to the park down the street (at least to me.)
And worse, women like Betty Friedan had figured this out by the 80’s and got sidelined for it. Realities of fertility were denied and obscured. Maternity friendly work innovations were slapped with a Mommy Track warning and actively avoided... It was, is, the most capitalist thing ever: just keep the women working. Keep everyone working, especially in the big, loaded corporations. For a supposedly progressive movement, it is totally bonkers. (Actually, it’s bonkers any way one looks at it, but particularly ironic from the progressive perspective.)
It seems age would increase demand for egg donation, not surrogacy. But maybe the thinking is, "why not outsource the whole thing?"
In grad school, I took a class on adoption in literature (I had a vested interest, since I was adopted). The professor's premise was that adoption was "commodifying" (in Marxist-speak) a child. Eventually, I figured out that in Woke-land, adoption *has* to be demonized because it presents a feasible alternative to abortion.
Which makes Woke support for surrogacy all the more ironic. A gay couple who literally *pays* a woman to have a baby is somehow magically not "commodifying" the child the way an adoptive heterosexual couple is. Also, regardless of this article's assertions, surrogacy is still largely a luxury of the wealthy.
All of which goes to show that money is more important than ideology. And--as with Trans Activism--the needs of men are readily placed ahead of any respect for women.
Also insane how white adoptive parents are called racist(!) for adopting a nonwhite child even if that childs mother died in cambodia or compton or something. And yet you can hire an agent to scout out a mexican woman (albeit skin color unknown), “but make sure shes tall with green eyes!” and that is totally ok in the woke worldview? Dude this kinda stuff is legit bonkers
I’d like to hear more about the surrogate kids’ povs and whether it’s healthy for them. Most of these articles focus solely on the desires of grown adults but nothing about the lives of kids who were essentially incubated and taken away from the body that created them. I mean, every single adopted kid I know has grown up with a serious complex about where they really came from. And then there’s the lack of bonding for these mothers and the babies - it’s my understanding that the act of carrying a baby creates a very real attachment bond that simply cannot be emulated. The early round of surrogate kids have to be coming of age soon. It’s why I’m not convinced by these sort of “happy surrogate” articles. There’s a human being whose pov isn’t being considered.
I had the same thoughts. Wondering about health risks for a baby that has gestated in a body it is not related to, and also the psychological side effects (for mother and baby).
You know how trans women claim to have periods? Jamie Chung, actress who used a surrogate, claimed to have postpartum depression. I feel like that’s a pretty clear example of a woman who is trying to cope over being handed a child she did not have a bond with.
I’ve heard of “post-adoption depression,” so I can understand having a hard time dealing with the changes that come with being a new parent. But having had PPD twice - once with a voluntary psych hospitalization - I know that the physical and hormonal aspects are a major component. (That’s why I get pissed off when people talk about “postpartum depression in men.” It’s not the same, so let’s not give it the same name, please.)
Interesting that you ask that because there is some research linking IVF and ASD but most consider it invalid due to average age of the mother. It’s a multibillion dollar industry so I doubt we will every get unbiased research or answers to such questions.
Yes, have heard of that as well as questions about "nutrient goo" they use to grow an embryo before it is implanted.
https://www.statnews.com/2016/08/23/embryo-cultures-ivf-outcomes/
Fertilization is *not* taking place inside the body, so we really don't know what the long term effects (if any) will be. Agree there are big bucks at stake so getting real answers will be difficult to impossible.
my acupuncturist told me a story about a client/friend who is a special ed teacher. half of the kids in her classes year after year are all IVF babies. According to her, there is also research outside the US demonstrating that long-term use of hormonal birth control is linked to autism
“I’d like to hear more about the surrogate kids’ povs and whether it’s healthy for them.”
As much as I don’t like many of the moral and social issues of this growing surrogacy movement; I think I can answer this one. Having children of my own and being around children quite a bit my entire life, I can honestly tell you that the last thing any kid wants to know about is how they were conceived 🤪
Maybe not when they are small. When they are older they will certainly want to know more about the biological parent(s) that have never been in their life in any way.
My experience with this is like many things, some do some don’t. I was mostly referring to children not adults. Adults have completely different knowledge they wish to attain than kids.
By and large I think we humans are basically pack animals and don’t really care about who actually gave birth to us as long as we have a “pack”. But that’s just my opinion. 😃
Paris Hilton thinks childbirth is scary? Oh, you poor, pouty selfish girl, just wait till you try child rearing. Unlike your pocket pups,, you can’t tote a tot around in your purse
I feel most for these baubles, I mean children, being created to satisfy their parents’ idea of true happiness and fulfillment. What happens when this little human demonstrates him- or herself to be just that — an autonomous, independent human?
I’d believe in evolution if it weren’t for mankind.
Child rearing? The child is an accessory. The nanny will provide the child rearing.
If you think this has some serious ethical implications, just wait until we start to use artificial wombs. Brave new world, man
The only way wokeness can repopulate is if they grow babies in a lab and drill mantras into their heads from infancy. Ive always thought we were lurching closest towards:
Brave New World, Farenheit 451, and 1984- in that order of similarity to events unfolding. But perhaps all three books are just different phases and facets of the unfurling dystopia
Misery. Disgust. Maybe there is no hope for the human race.