Selling babies should be regarded as a scandal

The womb rental involved in surrogacy can never be ‘regulated’ into acceptability. Abolition is the only humane approach for women and babies, argues MARA RICOY OLARIAGA, Birth Educator, activist and FiLiA’s lead for Sexual and Reproductive Rights of Women

Published with permission of Morning Star, originally published here.

ON NOVEMBER 13 I travelled to The Hague to join fellow feminist activists who, called by the International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood, wanted to oppose the new approach from The Hague conference on private international law.

This conference is working on creating a kind of skeleton for a future international surrogacy law to make cross-border surrogacy agreements effective — but the team in charge of updating these laws seems to be keen to regulate instead of abolish and distinguishes between “surrogacy” and “trafficking surrogacy with the purpose of reproductive exploitation,” which is absurd — all surrogacy is exploitative.

I’m glad I went. I was representing FiLiA, the charity where I’m the lead for reproductive and sexual rights of women. I feel very passionate about the urgent need to abolish surrogacy everywhere.

Surrogacy, the concept of a woman gestating and birthing a baby for others (with or without direct genetic connection to the baby), has been infiltrating our social narrative through the ideas of “kindness,” “generosity” and “sacrifice” that are expected of women since the creation of patriarchy. This misogynistic perspective can be traced to obvious examples such as the Virgin Mary in the Catholic tradition, who was a redundant vessel in the patriarchal order of God and his son.

But nowadays we have more modern examples — disguised as inoffensive mainstream TV about the concept of women as “vessel mothers.” For example, Phoebe in one of the biggest sitcom hits of all time, Friends, is a surrogate mother to her brother’s babies (triplets) and she is even given the opportunity to think about it “carefully” by her own mother who gives her a puppy and asks her to give it away. (Interestingly puppies actually have more rights than babies in terms of not being separated from their mothers).

In Phoebe’s storyline, love and generosity with cheesy music conquer everything … But whose love? How is this manipulated? Primarily by hiding that which is most obvious to anyone who knows a tiny bit about how pregnancy and birth in mammals work, hiding in the discussion the actual physical love and connection which is fuelled by hormones and that is necessary to ensure the survival and health of the baby, which has implications in the postpartum bleeding, detaching of the placenta, establishment of breastfeeding, to name a few, by the mother euphemistically referred to as “the surrogate” in these commercial transactions.

And of course the so-called “surrogates” are not blonde middle-class North American women giving away their babies to family members, like in Friends. Instead the surrogates are almost invariably migrants; women who are already mothers who are struggling; impoverished or uneducated women — and, more generally, women in crisis. Let’s not forget that women exist in a world that profits from our oppression.

There are varied forms of sugar-coating to cover up the unpalatable reality that in 2023 women are exploited to gestate and birth babies for others to buy and obtain babies as an object. This ranges from allegedly defending gay rights to accepting “new models of family” and of course promoting “anecdotes” of women who really want to become surrogates in total freedom out of pure generosity.

The reality is that this practice and the excuses around its regulation are very similar to prostitution. The arguments are always around women’s “freedom” to rent their uteri out, altruism and the irrepressible wishes from those who rent her out “to be able” to have a family.

The dark side that is never shown is the poverty, the trafficking, the tourism shopping for babies in impoverished countries, the objectification and risks to emotional and physical health of two or more human beings.

Neither do we talk about how the different laws in different countries create situations that represent further dangers to mothers and babies.

The solution to such an abhorrent occurrence that enslaves women and ignores the human rights and dignity of mothers and babies is to abolish, not to regulate. Regulating the possibility of using women is simply unacceptable. Regulating the option of selling or “gifting” babies should be an embarrassing scandal in our so-called progressive society.

As a linguist, I love the etymology of words. Interestingly “altruism” comes from the old French altrui: the others. And once again the wishes of others are a superior cause when weighed against the rights of women.

Because being subjects with our dignity and rights intact as women while rejecting our objectification unavoidably means calling the “parents having a baby through surrogacy” exploiters of women — this is an unbearable truth for a commercial enterprise expected to make $129 billion by 2032, according to Forbes.

Celebrities buying babies from the impoverished, the migrants, is one of the most dehumanising events taking place in a world that prides itself in inclusivity and progress.

Women, particularly poor women already at a crisis, are always where capitalism and patriarchy are allied to make the ultimate profit — whether that is through porn, prostitution or surrogacy. And misogyny is the language in which this can be explained as an acceptable possibility.

And we know that language in these post-modern times is also the new way of not looking at ourselves in the mirror. Altering the terminology is patriarchy’s updated way of sweeping abuse under the carpet.

Mother is not mother and neither is woman. Women are dying and suffering all the same, now hidden in the convenient euphemisms. Our hands might be clean, however our words are bloody and guilty. Reproductive exploitation is the term we should be using for surrogacy.

According to the New York Department of Health, it can cost between $60,000 and $150,000 to employ a surrogate in the United States after legal fees, medical expenses, agency fees, the surrogate’s compensation and other expenses, compared to $50,000 in eastern European countries and between $60,000 and $70,000 in Mexico and Latin America, CNBC reported.

A society that promotes the idea that women can be containers of babies and that we should do it for love and freedom is such a monstrous society that it is not even able to recognise its monstrosity any more.

Any laws trying to regulate such crime will be complicit in the oppression and suffering of women and babies.