I agree wholeheartedly, but I would like to see a discussion of surrogacy that goes into more detail about the impact of surrogacy on the resulting child.
I’m an adoptee, and like many others, have “unexplained” trauma symptoms, despite being raised by a family who loved and wanted me. Years of my own research has led me to increasing evidence that removing an infant from its birth mother in any circumstances can be traumatic. We don’t take puppies and kittens away from their mothers until >8 weeks, but a human infant can be handed over immediately, away from the sole human being it has developed a bond with.
Children are not commodities to be bought and sold, they are not blank slates who can be handed off to anyone with no effects. In some cases this is unavoidable, but to manufacture situation that will traumatise a child from birth to satisfy personal vanity and narcissism is barbaric.
Scott Allan
4 years ago
This is what happens when we as a society adopt mental illness as normal. Two men cannot conceive a child. Two women cannot conceive a child. Let us not even go down the Trans rabbit hole. The magic formula in nature is male + female = child.
Whether you are a supporter of biological or environmental construct of the LGBT dogma trying to fit the cult of Neo-Marxist SJW ideology has a destructive effect to the core of society, which is family unit.
I do have a beautiful surrogacy story though. One sister gets leukaemia and has her eggs harvested prior to chemotherapy. Her sister becomes the surrogate for her sister’s child. This is a true story. Whenever I see this child and those sisters I know that surrogacy itself is not the evil, that lies in the cult commercialization by the Neo-Marxist SJW ideology cult.
We know that from all research children do so much better with both a father and mother. Not only that Warren Farrell’s new book “The Boy Crisis” outlines the research that especially for boys a connection to the biological father assists their development.
So what happens when there isn’t two natural parents? 5 times more likely to grow up in poverty, 9 times more likely not to graduate high school, 11 times more likely to have mental illness and 20 times more likely to be incarcerated.
The CULT of Neo-Marxist SJW ideology has failed. We need to accept it and return to traditional values and common sense. This means that front line support must be given to keeping children with their natural parents. Outside of that possibility, best interests for the child are to keep the maximum connection to their biological roots even if surrogate parents, including fostering LGBT parents, are needed to provide a stable home environment.
If you are an LGBT person try to love the child more than your pride. If you do, your “desire” for a child will be superceded by what is best for any child. Otherwise that child is really just a Gucci handbag that makes you feel better. That is not the job of a parent. Our job is doing what is best for our children even when it hurts us, the natural parent.
Have you noticed that close to the majority of children born in the UK (almost entirely to heterosexuals) are born to unmarried parents, something which is clearly correlated with poor outcomes for the children? In case you’re finding that difficult to process, here’s a translation:
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
It is utterly dishonest to compare worst-case situations in this instance. The optimal situation for a child is to be raised by loving and functional biological parents.
Everything else is second-best. Next comes being raised by family members.Next is being raised by a mother and a father as adoptive parents.
After that comes the rest with two mother or two fathers with no biological connection absolutely bottom of the list because it is a totally alien situation for which no human has yet evolved.
Correlation isn’t causation. Isn’t it possible that the correlation between not having two natural parents and all the bad outcomes you list is a result of low intelligence and self-destructive tendencies being heritable?
roslynross3
4 years ago
We are well aware of the trauma created by forced adoption in times past. We are well aware of the desperate and often traumatic search by adoptees who want to be reunited with parents, siblings or any biological family.
And yet here we have a situation where a bunch of adults choose to deny a child its biological family, whether through purchased egg, sperm or womb!! Madness writ large in the name of self-serving selfishness. The DNA of the baby passes to the mother in utero and vice-versa, and only a fool would think that does not create a biological connection which matters.
Mechanistic, materialist-reductionist, profit-driven science-medicine is criminal when it plays with human life. And sure, all very well-intentioned but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions and since it will not be known for another 100 years, what the effects of artificial conception might be, and there will be effects – that is when a first generation has grown up to live a reasonably healthy life and given birth to children who do the same, taking an average of 70years, that means 140 years before we know what harm could be done by this artificial process – can we not introduce some sanity, some ethics, even integrity into this process of playing with human lives? Indeed, can we stop playing and demand that adults who are infertile grow up and deal with it and adopt if they can and if they cannot then make the best of the hand life has dealt them?
A cute baby for a few years, followed by a reasonably cute child for ten more, is not the reality of a dysfunctional, damaged, angry, frustrated, wounded adult for another 50 years or more. Science-medicine has acted disgracefully in terms of IVF.
Kathy Prendergast
3 years ago
“Almost all the surrogate mothers in the study described the practice as a form of slavery.”…if they chose it, and got paid for it, it cannot be compared to “slavery”. The fact that it feels like slavery is just their instincts telling them how wrong and unnatural surrogacy is.
David Bell
4 years ago
Unfortunately questioning the rights of Homosexuals or Transgender people is not allowed!
John Jones
4 years ago
As usual, Bindel and feminists like her are all in favour of women controlling their own bodies- unless they choose to do something that feminists don’t like.
Suddenly, these women become “victims” of the “patriarchy” because sometimes the consequences of their behaviour are not entirely satisfactory.
Sorry Julie, but once you accept the libertarian idea that people have the right to control their own bodies (a principle with which I agree), then you are precluded from complaining about the logical consequences of those choices.
After all, the principle of self-determination is the moral justification for abortion, isn’t it? But when have we ever heard that abortion may be ethically problematic because of the consequence of death for the unborn child?
It’s a strange notion of morality that supports the abortion of a child on the grounds of a woman’s right to choose, but condemns women who give birth to help another woman as somehow morally repugnant.
And women can control their own bodies unless they choose to be prostitutes. Suddenly they are cast as victims because they have absorbed “unconscious sexism” and therefore are not making legitimate choices.
For feminists like Bindel, women’s rights must always take precedence in any situation- unless, of course, the exercise of those rights offends their sense of what rights women should exercise.
Then feminists become as judgmental and controlling as any male chauvanist.
j flood
4 years ago
The fact that some farm workers are mistreated does not cause you to argue that nobody should do farm work – does it?
We would all starve.
Similarly, potential or actual mistreatment is not a good argument against prostitution or surrogacy.
I believe they should both be legal. We are all entitled to have opinions about the “morality” of prostitution and surrogacy.., but i am not sure why your moral vision should outweigh mine.
In the end, it comes down to practicality – if there is something that a significant number of adults wish to do.., it is very difficult to enforce laws against that behaviour. We could turn our country into a police state, and still not succeed. This is essentially my view about abortion – it is a difficult subject, but in the end, i am forced to admit i am uncomfortable with it.., much more uncomfortable than i am with either prostitution or surrogacy. Do I support making it illegal? No.., It would be impossible to police.
I find your connection between prostitution and surrogacy an incongruent connection because you have only considered the rights of adults. But there are also the rights of the child. This is the set of rights ignored. The child has a right to biological family. As such surrogacy is an issue to be navigated from the morality of child rights and not adult rights.
Feminist pieces seldom give any real thought or attention to the child. Unless it relates to so-called ‘toxic masculinity’ in boys or ‘barbie-fication’ in girls.
Feminism has, to say the least, a complex relationship with child bearing and rearing.
Raising a child requires one to relinquish a considerable portion of one’s narcissism in order to care for something infinitely more vulnerable and needy than yourself. As modern radical feminism is essentially based on being the number one victim, all of the time, and in every situation, it clashes with the need to prioritise a child’s life.
Additionally, observing children closely makes you realise that most of feminism is a complete myth when confronted with the real behaviours of girls and boys.
i make the connection only because the author does.
with respect to the rights of the child – i am sympathetic to your argument about the “morality of child rights” versus adult rights.
However, as I say, i do not base my argument in favour of legality of both prostitution and surrogacy on the morality of the issues.., but rather on the impossibility of enforcing laws against behaviour that is essentially un-policeable, and that significant mumbers of consenting adults wish to practice.
IVF in any form totally disregards the rights of any child involved and is an abuse of human rights fullstop. We have yet to find out what it does to a human being to be so artificially conceived in ways and form, impossible in nature, drowning in synthetic chemicals in a process which nature never intended.
Peter Kriens
4 years ago
The surrogate mother issue is an _ethical_ problem for humanity, not yet another sob story that is supposed to illustrate how awful life is for women. (As if not many more men make choices for money to do dangerous or extremely dirty work.)
Bindel’s stories seem always that women need to be protected against the consequences of their own choices. Life is hard for many people. However, in general women have more options and get better paid for them. A sperm donor gets a nothing or a few hundred dollar, surrogate mothers get tens of thousands of dollars. The liberty that Bindel’s predecessors fought for has consequences, you cannot get the old conservative protection and at the same time have unlimited freedom.
That said, the commercialization of parenthood opens some very disturbing questions over our long term future. It would be interesting to read an article that actually is about surrogate parenthood.
I agree wholeheartedly, but I would like to see a discussion of surrogacy that goes into more detail about the impact of surrogacy on the resulting child.
I’m an adoptee, and like many others, have “unexplained” trauma symptoms, despite being raised by a family who loved and wanted me. Years of my own research has led me to increasing evidence that removing an infant from its birth mother in any circumstances can be traumatic. We don’t take puppies and kittens away from their mothers until >8 weeks, but a human infant can be handed over immediately, away from the sole human being it has developed a bond with.
Children are not commodities to be bought and sold, they are not blank slates who can be handed off to anyone with no effects. In some cases this is unavoidable, but to manufacture situation that will traumatise a child from birth to satisfy personal vanity and narcissism is barbaric.
This is what happens when we as a society adopt mental illness as normal. Two men cannot conceive a child. Two women cannot conceive a child. Let us not even go down the Trans rabbit hole. The magic formula in nature is male + female = child.
Whether you are a supporter of biological or environmental construct of the LGBT dogma trying to fit the cult of Neo-Marxist SJW ideology has a destructive effect to the core of society, which is family unit.
I do have a beautiful surrogacy story though. One sister gets leukaemia and has her eggs harvested prior to chemotherapy. Her sister becomes the surrogate for her sister’s child. This is a true story. Whenever I see this child and those sisters I know that surrogacy itself is not the evil, that lies in the cult commercialization by the Neo-Marxist SJW ideology cult.
We know that from all research children do so much better with both a father and mother. Not only that Warren Farrell’s new book “The Boy Crisis” outlines the research that especially for boys a connection to the biological father assists their development.
So what happens when there isn’t two natural parents? 5 times more likely to grow up in poverty, 9 times more likely not to graduate high school, 11 times more likely to have mental illness and 20 times more likely to be incarcerated.
The CULT of Neo-Marxist SJW ideology has failed. We need to accept it and return to traditional values and common sense. This means that front line support must be given to keeping children with their natural parents. Outside of that possibility, best interests for the child are to keep the maximum connection to their biological roots even if surrogate parents, including fostering LGBT parents, are needed to provide a stable home environment.
If you are an LGBT person try to love the child more than your pride. If you do, your “desire” for a child will be superceded by what is best for any child. Otherwise that child is really just a Gucci handbag that makes you feel better. That is not the job of a parent. Our job is doing what is best for our children even when it hurts us, the natural parent.
Have you noticed that close to the majority of children born in the UK (almost entirely to heterosexuals) are born to unmarried parents, something which is clearly correlated with poor outcomes for the children? In case you’re finding that difficult to process, here’s a translation:
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye;
and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
It is utterly dishonest to compare worst-case situations in this instance. The optimal situation for a child is to be raised by loving and functional biological parents.
Everything else is second-best. Next comes being raised by family members.Next is being raised by a mother and a father as adoptive parents.
After that comes the rest with two mother or two fathers with no biological connection absolutely bottom of the list because it is a totally alien situation for which no human has yet evolved.
Correlation isn’t causation. Isn’t it possible that the correlation between not having two natural parents and all the bad outcomes you list is a result of low intelligence and self-destructive tendencies being heritable?
We are well aware of the trauma created by forced adoption in times past. We are well aware of the desperate and often traumatic search by adoptees who want to be reunited with parents, siblings or any biological family.
And yet here we have a situation where a bunch of adults choose to deny a child its biological family, whether through purchased egg, sperm or womb!! Madness writ large in the name of self-serving selfishness. The DNA of the baby passes to the mother in utero and vice-versa, and only a fool would think that does not create a biological connection which matters.
Mechanistic, materialist-reductionist, profit-driven science-medicine is criminal when it plays with human life. And sure, all very well-intentioned but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions and since it will not be known for another 100 years, what the effects of artificial conception might be, and there will be effects – that is when a first generation has grown up to live a reasonably healthy life and given birth to children who do the same, taking an average of 70years, that means 140 years before we know what harm could be done by this artificial process – can we not introduce some sanity, some ethics, even integrity into this process of playing with human lives? Indeed, can we stop playing and demand that adults who are infertile grow up and deal with it and adopt if they can and if they cannot then make the best of the hand life has dealt them?
A cute baby for a few years, followed by a reasonably cute child for ten more, is not the reality of a dysfunctional, damaged, angry, frustrated, wounded adult for another 50 years or more. Science-medicine has acted disgracefully in terms of IVF.
“Almost all the surrogate mothers in the study described the practice as a form of slavery.”…if they chose it, and got paid for it, it cannot be compared to “slavery”. The fact that it feels like slavery is just their instincts telling them how wrong and unnatural surrogacy is.
Unfortunately questioning the rights of Homosexuals or Transgender people is not allowed!
As usual, Bindel and feminists like her are all in favour of women controlling their own bodies- unless they choose to do something that feminists don’t like.
Suddenly, these women become “victims” of the “patriarchy” because sometimes the consequences of their behaviour are not entirely satisfactory.
Sorry Julie, but once you accept the libertarian idea that people have the right to control their own bodies (a principle with which I agree), then you are precluded from complaining about the logical consequences of those choices.
After all, the principle of self-determination is the moral justification for abortion, isn’t it?
But when have we ever heard that abortion may be ethically problematic because of the consequence of death for the unborn child?
It’s a strange notion of morality that supports the abortion of a child on the grounds of a woman’s right to choose, but condemns women who give birth to help another woman as somehow morally repugnant.
And women can control their own bodies unless they choose to be prostitutes. Suddenly they are cast as victims because they have absorbed “unconscious sexism” and therefore are not making legitimate choices.
For feminists like Bindel, women’s rights must always take precedence in any situation- unless, of course, the exercise of those rights offends their sense of what rights women should exercise.
Then feminists become as judgmental and controlling as any male chauvanist.
The fact that some farm workers are mistreated does not cause you to argue that nobody should do farm work – does it?
We would all starve.
Similarly, potential or actual mistreatment is not a good argument against prostitution or surrogacy.
I believe they should both be legal. We are all entitled to have opinions about the “morality” of prostitution and surrogacy.., but i am not sure why your moral vision should outweigh mine.
In the end, it comes down to practicality – if there is something that a significant number of adults wish to do.., it is very difficult to enforce laws against that behaviour. We could turn our country into a police state, and still not succeed. This is essentially my view about abortion – it is a difficult subject, but in the end, i am forced to admit i am uncomfortable with it.., much more uncomfortable than i am with either prostitution or surrogacy. Do I support making it illegal? No.., It would be impossible to police.
I find your connection between prostitution and surrogacy an incongruent connection because you have only considered the rights of adults. But there are also the rights of the child. This is the set of rights ignored. The child has a right to biological family. As such surrogacy is an issue to be navigated from the morality of child rights and not adult rights.
Feminist pieces seldom give any real thought or attention to the child. Unless it relates to so-called ‘toxic masculinity’ in boys or ‘barbie-fication’ in girls.
Feminism has, to say the least, a complex relationship with child bearing and rearing.
Raising a child requires one to relinquish a considerable portion of one’s narcissism in order to care for something infinitely more vulnerable and needy than yourself. As modern radical feminism is essentially based on being the number one victim, all of the time, and in every situation, it clashes with the need to prioritise a child’s life.
Additionally, observing children closely makes you realise that most of feminism is a complete myth when confronted with the real behaviours of girls and boys.
i make the connection only because the author does.
with respect to the rights of the child – i am sympathetic to your argument about the “morality of child rights” versus adult rights.
However, as I say, i do not base my argument in favour of legality of both prostitution and surrogacy on the morality of the issues.., but rather on the impossibility of enforcing laws against behaviour that is essentially un-policeable, and that significant mumbers of consenting adults wish to practice.
IVF in any form totally disregards the rights of any child involved and is an abuse of human rights fullstop. We have yet to find out what it does to a human being to be so artificially conceived in ways and form, impossible in nature, drowning in synthetic chemicals in a process which nature never intended.
The surrogate mother issue is an _ethical_ problem for humanity, not yet another sob story that is supposed to illustrate how awful life is for women. (As if not many more men make choices for money to do dangerous or extremely dirty work.)
Bindel’s stories seem always that women need to be protected against the consequences of their own choices. Life is hard for many people. However, in general women have more options and get better paid for them. A sperm donor gets a nothing or a few hundred dollar, surrogate mothers get tens of thousands of dollars. The liberty that Bindel’s predecessors fought for has consequences, you cannot get the old conservative protection and at the same time have unlimited freedom.
That said, the commercialization of parenthood opens some very disturbing questions over our long term future. It would be interesting to read an article that actually is about surrogate parenthood.
Agreed.
Brindell writes; “But in my view, all surrogacy, including the altruistic sort, is exploitation”.
I would say that in her view there is nothing in the whole history of humankind that when related to women is not exploitation.
Yeah, it is quite surprising Unherd pays these professional sobbers, the rest of the magazine seems much more even handed.