"Australians have had occasion to question the practice of child surrogacy in recent weeks as the story of “Baby Gammy” has unfolded in the national and international media. A 21-year-old surrogate in Thailand gave birth to Gammy and his twin sister Pipah on behalf of an Australian couple early this year. But when Gammy was born with Down syndrome, his parents reportedly took his healthy twin sister to Australia and left Gammy behind with the surrogate. The case has brought new attention to the trade of paid surrogacy, which is illegal in many countries, including Australia. But couples from all over the world hire surrogates in countries where doing so is legal or loosely regulated, as it is in the U.S., India, Thailand, Mexico, and Ukraine. “All of a sudden, this is a huge issue here,” Mossop says.
"Ekman’s critique of the practice is certainly provocative. The title of her talk emphasizes “trafficking” in children, but her main argument against commercial surrogacy is that it resembles prostitution; they are two industries, she says, “that sell the female body in different ways.” Whereas prostitution promotes sex without reproduction, surrogacy promotes reproduction without sex, Ekman argues. Both employ large numbers of poor women. “How come in prostitution and surrogacy you need to actually go to all these poor countries and fool people into it? I mean that tells you something also about the nature of the job,” Ekman says. “In one way [surrogacy is] worse, because it doesn’t take 15 minutes and you can forget about it.”
“If you’re somebody who has had a child through some kind of surrogacy and somebody’s saying to you, you’re the equivalent of a human trafficker, it’s very confronting,” Mossop says. “Because it goes to these primal … very strong feelings that people have about having children, people find it quite threatening.”
"Which is part of the point. The Festival of Dangerous Ideas is “not really designed to offend,” Mossop says. But offense is practically baked into the conceit of systematically challenging deeply held beliefs specifically because they are deeply held.
18 comments:
Whereas prostitution promotes sex without reproduction, surrogacy promotes reproduction without sex, Ekman argues.
And Humanae Vitae strikes again.
The baby gammy story gets worse.
What a mess adult humans have made. And the real sufferers of the mess are the babies.
I think it's great that some people have such high regard for their own genes that adoption is beneath them.
Generally, the problem is avoiding having children until your mid-30s or later.
Then you need to buy someone else's kid, your own ovaries having become useless.
I know there are exceptions.
But much infertility is having delayed too long.
How is the surrogate fooled?
The surrogate thought the couple was going to use her Eucharist.
Contractually, the welfare of a less-than-perfect infant was subsumed under the marriage clause "for better or for worse, in sickness and in health." But since modern couples have decoupled childbearing from marriage, the problem rears its ugly head in the form of "we're sorry we caused it but go rear your problems by yourself."
Quelle surprise
It may be provocative, but it's the truth.
Ideas can certainly be dangerous.
Does anyone disagree?
I don't disagree entirely.
Ideas in and of themselves are not dangerous. They are just an idea until they are acted upon. What IS dangerous if people act on those ideas and the consequences of those actions turn out to be dangerous or disastrous. Are some ideas just not very good. Even really bad. Yes. But until they are used. The are just an idea.
Are we going to ban thinking? Even dangerous thoughts? Who gets to decide what is a dangerous thought? Evil thoughts? Incorrect thoughts? Inconvenient thoughts? Who is going to appoint the thought police? Do we send people to re-education camps and cure them of their 'dangerous' thoughts.
Ideas are much less dangerous when you say them in a French accent like Pepé Le Pew.
In almost every society prior to our contemporary society the slogan "We are the ones we've been waiting for" would have been soundly rejected and, more importantly, understood to express a dangerous thought. Why? Because it is an expression of self-worship, idolatry. And all premodern, or more accurately pre-postmodern societies had moral codes that firmly rejected all forms of idolatry. They all understood that idolatry, in all its forms, must end in catastrophe: "Pride goeth before a fall;" the Greek horror of hubris, and of course the injunctions in the Old and New Testaments. That's how dangerous thoughts were handled in pre-postmodern societies. Not with bans, not by policing them; by inculcating a moral code. We are in terrible trouble in our postmodern society because moral codes have been laughed away by the best and brightest sophisticates.
DBQ:
That ideas might be dangerous doesn't necessarily imply any sort of action against thoughts.
Islam was and is a dangerous idea.
This little bundle of love. Now she seeks to give me a child through another woman. Touching, is it not? Come, my little peanut of brittle. I will help you. Wait for me. Wait.
But madame! I have overstocked the furnace, yes? Your love for me is so great to make another of me. Control yourself! Madame!
I am the broken heart of love. I am the disillusioned. I wish to enlist in the Foreign Legion of love. So that I may be blessed with a bébé le Pew. Take me.
What is this? A surrogate skunk? Un king-size youthful skunk in full health. Acres and acres of her, and she is mine!
All is fair in love and war et le services de reproductions.
What is this? Oh, but of course. The little one wants to bear mon bébé to prove her love for me. But alas, she cannot bear les bébés through the portals of her womb. Therefore mon, how do I say ... jus. and her œuf must take up residence and brought to fruition in another, no?
Poems are made by fools like me.
Why does everyone leave? Oh, but of course. I have achieved the post of honor and must reproduire avec l'aide of another femme, a youth in a distant land.
Come with me, we can make beautiful muzic together.
Here you are … Darling? Never underestimate the reproductive powers of another woman.
I am se Locksmith of love, no?
Guess who? It is me. Oh partu pertu le mois, uh partu let me eentroduce you myself. I am Pepe le Pew, your lover! So impetuous, but nice.
Oil Ole el yo, epule? I am your guide to love, no? I tell you what, you stop resisting and I stop resisting you. Eh eh, eh, eh, eh, I pierce you with the ack ack of love, Flowerpot.
If you have not tried it, do not knock it. Or perhaps knock up another.
Quelle est? Ah, le belle femme fatale rejects le jumeau de syndrome de Down upon a pays étranger.
You know it is possible to be too attractive. Let us try another way for le reproduire.
I must find out what this "pew" means every time I appear.
[Dangerous sayings of Pepe le Pew]
Ideas can certainly be dangerous.
Does anyone disagree?
No disagreement here. But I believe that in the universe of ideas, the good outweigh the dangerous, and that that speaks well for humanity. No cause for smugness, though; the existence of dangerous and bad ideas tells us the journey is still long.
It still is all about good versus evil.
I'd be inclined to say "Make it legal so we can regulate it" but that's not actually what I mean.
I think that the bottom line is that the law *must* accept reality. Not dealing with futuristic reproductive technologies is like saying that the law doesn't need to acknowledge pistols because they didn't used to exist so if someone kills you with one the law doesn't know how to respond. And then... insisting that this will make pistols go away.
From the sounds of this it is very simply a custody issue. Currently, if the child didn't issue from your vagina and if you were not married to the woman *at the time* the child issued from her vagina... the law doesn't know what to do with you or the child. Now we can prove paternity the law might stick it to the biological father and not just the man who married your mom... but what if your mom is married to a woman? Now what does the law do?
We make this all far more complicated than it needs to be. And I think that the biggest reason that it's made more complicated than it needs to be is that simplifying terms requires legal obligations to incur at conception.
This totally screws up abortion, it screws up medical research, it screws up every single last convenient ambiguity about responsibilities to those involved in the inception of life. It screws up forcing cuckolded men to support other men's children.
But once that is done, it becomes simple... did you deliberately or negligently create this life... it can be in a test tube, it can be in a womb, it can be in someone else's womb. Fraud now can be defined if conception is forced on someone by someone else. Legal responsibility can now be set at inception for that stupid woman who together with her husband, arranged a surrogate and donor egg, then divorced him and claims she's not responsible and the child is not hers. In all ways she's responsible for the inception... he didn't do it without her.
"Who is responsible for this baby" in no matter how weird a situation can be determined by one question... who decided to bring it into being?
And the Australian couple had better teach their "perfect" child that imperfect children aren't human, because that kid will find out that she has a brother, will seek him out, and will most likely hate and despise her parents forever.
As for the prostitution thing... I simply do NOT understand why getting paid matters. If it's slavery, that's what it is. If it's a job that a woman (or a man) would not otherwise do, well, that's pretty much all employment on the planet, isn't it. Would you go to work if they quit paying you?
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