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Exploitation and coercion

Exploitation is the word most closely associated with surrogacy. Whether the definition is exploitation depends on whether the client and the institution use the surrogate woman completely as a tool, and whether the vulnerable position of the surrogate woman is used unfairly.

Is a surrogate mother completely used as a tool for pregnancy? For example, Phoebe, who gave birth to triplets for his brother ’s family for free, must not be used as a tool by his brother, but in a real commercial surrogacy environment, many clients may not even see the surrogate mother, or only Very short contact, then in thisUnder the circumstances, for the client, what is the surrogate mother not a tool?

The surrogate mother Phoebe in “Friends”

Was surrogacy women unfairly exploited because of their disadvantaged position? Some scholars suggested that two factors need to be considered:

1) Have the client and the surrogate mother both assumed similar risks and enjoyed similar benefits?

2) Is the surrogate mother voluntary?

The benefits of surrogacy for the client can be said to be extremely high. In addition to the child ’s sense of well-being, there is also the support and protection of the future life. At the same time, the client needs to pay, in addition to sperm and eggs, a certain amount of time and energy, is a commission. In addition, the client hardly needs to bear other risks caused by surrogacy (unless allowed by national laws or culture) .

However, for most surrogate mothers, although they are paid many times more than they usually get from work, they are not comparable to the value of a live child received by the client. Therefore, they did not enjoy similar benefits.

More importantly, Both parties bear completely disproportionate risks.

Pregnancy and childbirth inherently have certain risks (Many wealthy couples will even choose surrogacy because of fear of pregnancy risks and discomfort) , Especially considering that most surrogate mothers are in poverty, how much medical resources they have to ensure their health during pregnancy and after birth is a very big problem.

However, if you have a miscarriage during pregnancy, the surrogate mother can only get about $ 70 per month (India) . In other words, while they bear these risks, they cannot guarantee that they will get the final “huge sum”.

At the same time, surrogate mothers are constantly facing various spiritual challenges and risks. Even with the early psychological preparation, the trauma of the child being taken away after birth is difficult to assess, not to mention who cares about their psychological trauma?

Also, the freedom of movement of surrogate mothers is often restricted. For example, in Dr. Patel ’s institution, surrogate mothers can only stay in this institution for nine months. They must not be out of the house. They must be separated from their families.

This is aptly named to protect the safety of surrogate mothers, but in fact their bodies are no longer their own, but a commodity, so their freedom is not theirs, but for employers ’services.

Some people may say that because these surrogate women are voluntary, they cannot be considered as exploitation. So do people who carry mortgage loans and children’s tuition fees need to be put around their necks to work overtime? If such “voluntary” can also justify exploitation, then there is probably no exploitation in the capital society.

Of course, the coercion faced by more surrogate mothers is not “if you do not do surrogacy, then life will be worse”, but “there is a possibility of getting better benefits, but this benefit can only be obtained through surrogacy.”

In this sense, the client does not have this obligation to provide better welfare or income to the surrogate mother, but the state and society have this obligation.

So if a country allows surrogacy, but does not provide surrogate women with better welfare or income, so that they must be obtained through surrogacy, then women are actually coerced by this system to “voluntarily” Perform surrogacy.

The legalization of surrogacy does not provide opportunities and hope for the bottom women, but uses the system to exploit and oppress the bottom women.

More sadly, making money through surrogacy may not be the idea of ​​many women themselves. They often start surrogacy under the persuasion and even persecution of their husbands and family members. For the bottom women, they have been heavily exploited and oppressed by their families and society.

So before we support the legalization of surrogacy, we must think about whether society has prepared these women so that they can be free from coercion?

The dehumanization logic of commercial surrogacy

If there are enough rewards and the surrogate women are not in a poor state with no choice, is commercial surrogacy feasible? I’m afraid not because commercial surrogacy measures and buys and sells all relationships, emotions and even characteristics of anyone with money, and is fully dehumanized (dehumanization) , so there will be many bad consequences.

The surrogacy is different from any other business, because it contains the tightest bond that multiple layers of humans should maintain.

The client needs to put his sperm or egg into another person ’s body, hoping that that person can give birth to the next generation of life for him, but the client ’s understanding of the surrogate mother is often poor. The surrogate mother will accept the child of two strangers to conceive in her body, which will inevitably feel fragile and uneasy.

But this missing link is not a problem in commercial surrogacy. Because the condition of the surrogate mother is divided into three, six, nine, etc. for the client to choose, and the surrogate mother is not safeFeeling was also bought out at a price.

For the next nine months, the client often cannot or does not want to take care of the surrogate mother who is carrying her child. But it doesn’t matter, guilt and laziness can also be used to buy peace of mind in commercial surrogacy.

The most cruel dehumanization is forced to happen to the surrogate mother. During these nine months, they must separate their emotions from their bodies “justly” and only take care of the child’s health but not have too much affection for TA.

More importantly, the surrogate mother must face the cruelest thing in nature-there are no children after birth. This is not a sorrow that can be suppressed or let go with mental preparation.

Tanya, an American mother who once surrogate, said that when the child was taken away, she collapsed and could not accept this reality. And for the poor mothers of transnational surrogacy, even want to look at the child at a glance.

In a study on surrogacy in India, a surrogate mother said: “They (client) should at least come and see how we are Well … this is a caesarean section, it will leave scars. For this part, at least they should also give me a picture of the child. “

But in this study, none of the surrogate mothers saw the child in person after giving birth, and one in four people never even got a picture of the child.

The client after obtaining the child, and the surrogate mother who is always absent

It can be said that the emotions of the surrogate mothers are worthless in front of the contract, or they can be said that their feelings for their children have been “compensated” by money.

People often overlook that although there is no genetic link, newborn babies recognize the heartbeat and speech sounds of pregnant mothers, and they rely on such sounds to make themselves feel secure. So leaving the surrogate mother at birth is also a very cruel thing for babies.

However, in this layer of human deepest ties, all money is bought out in commercial surrogacy. The client has no responsibility other than money for the surrogate mother, and all trauma and emotions are rationalized in this way.

Because everything is materialized in commercial surrogacy, the child and the surrogate mother become commodities, so you can choose, customize, or even abandon.

The surrogate mother is first priced according to race, education level, etc., and Chinese customers, not surprisingly, like to choose whites for surrogacy, whether it is borrowing the womb or borrowing eggs or sperm “Bloodlines are nothing new in surrogacy. Of course, there are also projects to guarantee the birth of boys in the surrogacy agency in China.

The scary thing is not just what the client chooses for children, but they can choose not to have children.

In 2012, an Australian couple ’s dragon and phoenix was born in India through surrogacy, but for economic reasons, they abandoned their son in India and only took their daughter.

In 2014, an Australian couple’s phoenix was born in Thailand through surrogacy, but because the boy Gammy had Down syndrome, they abandoned him in Thailand. Later, it was discovered that the biological father had been jailed for child sexual assault. This case also caused the Thai government to prohibit foreigners from seeking surrogacy in Thailand.

In 2016, an American couple gave birth to a daughter in Ukraine through surrogacy, but because the girl had a brain development defect, they left her in Ukraine, and she still lives in an orphanage.

In 2018, a Chinese couple gave birth to a daughter through surrogacy in Cambodia, but this daughter had brain atrophy and hydrocephalus. Fortunately, this Chinese mother still left her child to care for and raise it, but the surrogacy agency in Cambodia didCommitted to “can return the child to make another one for free”.

It is conceivable how many babies may be returned as commodities, and may even die because they are “defective”.

The seemingly beautiful ideal of surrogacy has inevitably become the exploitation of women ’s body and spirit under the operation of commerce, and also the exploitation of the upper class to the lower class and rich countries to poor countries.

If every organ and every emotion of ours can be traded as a clearly priced commodity, is it true that humans develop the economy or the economy develops humans?

So, let us maintain the most basic respect and sympathy for people’s emotions and bonds, and refuse to dehumanize others, which is also the bottom line to maintain our own humanity.

References

1.Wilkinson, S. (2003). The exploitation argument against commercial surrogacy. Bioethics, 17 (2), 169-187

2.Lamba, N., & Jadva, V. (2018). Indian Surrogates: Their Psychological Well-Being and Experiences. In Cross-Cultural Comparisons on Surrogacy and Egg Donation (pp. 181-201). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

3.Lamba, N., Jadva, V., Kadam, K., & Golombok, S. (2018). The psychological well-being and prenatal bonding of gestational surrogates . Human Reproduction, 33 (4), 646–653.

4.Webb, AR, Heller, HT, Benson, CB, & Lahav, A. (2015). Mother’s voice and heartbeat sounds elicit auditory plasticity in the human brain before full gestation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112 (10), 3152-3157.

This article comes from the WeChat public account: See the ideal (ID: ikanlixiang) , author: Yang Rui