Don’t buy, adopt (Stop Surrogacy Now)

by Mara Ricoy Olariaga

On the 29th of March my country, Spain, woke up to the biggest piece of gossip ever, and as a warm Mediterranean country we like gossip. What we didn’t know at the time was that this gossip was going to be turned into a sort of macabre soap opera.

The news given as an exclusive by the Spanish Hello magazine was that actress and presenter Ana Obregón had become a “mother” via surrogacy at the age of 68 (some say 71).

The most commented on fact to begin with was the age; some journalists called her selfish. The second was the fact that she was pictured leaving the maternity hospital in Miami in a wheelchair, as new mothers tend to do there, and even wearing a hospital ID bracelet.

All of these superficial discussions were loaded with meta-misogyny, taking place as they were on programmes with male journalists who have bought babies via reproductive exploitation. Meanwhile, we feminists took to social media once again, and used every opportunity on other platforms, to make our voice heard.

Because feminism is against any form of exploitation of women. What is called surrogacy, which is illegal in Spain, involves a woman gestating, birthing (or enduring miscarriage) for an agreement in which she renounces that baby. Depending on where in the world this is carried out the amount of money in exchange can be seen as compensation for “altruism” or as an actual substantial fee for her “work”.

In Spain there are plenty of cases particularly of celebrities who travel abroad and come back with one, two or more babies. And despite being illegal there is nothing that can stop them bringing these babies into the country.

And then the press talks about it with euphemisms and of course erasing the mother. They will say things like: “born via surrogacy”.

As a birth educator I can tell you, there is no other way to be born but vaginally or by caesarean. And if they ever refer to the mother, they refer to her as “la gestante” (the gestator).

But as we were angrily protesting about these kinds of issues, a rumour started to spread… the sperm Ana Obregón might have used could have been from her deceased son.

It sounded too far-fetched, difficult to believe that it could be true. However, Ana Obregón has always had a reputation for being imaginative and she had been pretty much locked up for three years since her 27-year-old only son died of cancer during the pandemic. And before we could even really doubt it, it was confirmed in another exclusive with the same magazine. On the 4th of April a more posed picture with her and the baby had a caption which read: “She introduces us to her granddaughter.”

So yes, she had used the frozen sperm from her son and possibly an egg from a separate "donor" as well as the body of the "gestating mother”. But legally in all this mess she is apparently registering the little girl as her daughter.

In the first of her interviews it is plain to see that this woman hasn’t processed the grief of losing her son and is desperately looking for a substitute of sorts or a way to relieve her pain through “having” this baby. She explained in a recent interview how the baby will sleep in the intact room of her deceased son. The baby´s father and legal brother?

It is a tragedy. But it is a tragedy in a way that most people fail to see.

The so-called egg “donors” are young women who could do with some money, normally lured by agencies in universities or online, and for selling their eggs they might get between £750 and £1000 (depending on country) per “donation”.

But if you choose to do this you also need to inject yourself over seven days to stimulate your ovaries, you will have to give up your method of contraception, take more medication, undergo counselling and have an operation, under either general anaesthetic or sedation depending on the country you are in, where they puncture your ovaries to get the eggs.

The women who have done it talk about suffering with swollen breasts and abdomen and mood swings. There are accounts of haemorrhages and women who were at risk of losing one or both of their ovaries. In Spain the current maximum number of treatments is six and for many women this is too many.

In the U.K. I read: “There's no limit as such on the number of times you can donate your eggs but in reality the limit will be when the maximum of 10 families has been reached from your donations. Egg donors can have up to three recipients per treatment cycle.”

Then there is the surrogate. I don’t think I need to say much about what a pregnancy entails. Her whole body will be affected by a pregnancy, including her emotions. And the more we learn about babies, the more we know that those emotions have an impact on them. It is difficult to decide whether it is better for a baby to grow in the uterus of a woman who bonds with him or her and give him or her away, or to actually grow that baby while rejecting it or caring for it because of the worry of losing money if you lose that baby.

There are of course many risks for the women, like ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, having twins and the complications associated with a pregnancy of multiples and amongst them a three-times greater likelihood of suffering with high blood pressure and therefore preeclampsia than in “non-surrogate” mothers. They have also a higher risk of birthing premature babies (10.7% versus 3.1% )

None of this feels morally acceptable.

The narrative that we are fed is one that is disinfected and euphemistic, with selective vocabulary that masks reality.

There is a constant reference to the altruism, freedom and generosity of women.

Because we women are always expected to be the providers of care, sex and love. The bodies of women have to be there for others permanently. And, of course, in the heated debates this week in Spain there were many men who wanted women’s freedom to be surrogates. They are the ones who want women’s freedom to be prostituted. “Their freedom for us” is always under their so-called feminist ideas.

Let yourself be rented, was the title of another article I wrote recently because that is how it feels, let yourself be exploited, let yourself be sold, abused, raped.

But the question for me is why? Why are we expected to want to gestate for others? And of course in the same way every man knows a very happy prostitute who doesn’t need the money but does it because she wants to, they also speak of the happy generous woman who wants to have babies for others.

Because what about the disabled men who “need” sex and what about the woman who has tried everything but can’t have a baby.

But you see the examples are so revealing, there is a general assumption that men need sex therefore some women must provide it, and there is the assumption that women need to have babies, so some other women must provide them.

There are other constructs, for example, based on the ignorance around pregnancy and birth. Some people have the idea that we are some sort of oven, and the agencies and clinics love to tell you that there is no relationship between the “gestating mother” and the baby.

Well… apart from every single exchange through the placenta and the amniotic fluid, her movements, her voice, her smell and the fascinating occurrence of microchimerism, which is the presence of foetal cells as long as twenty years later in the body of the mother who carried the baby regardless of the baby’s survival.

A baby can’t be donated like an organ, as some seem to propose. He or she is a person not a thing; he or she can’t be gifted.

When people think of adoption, they think of becoming parents. But the reality is that adoption exists for the children, not for the adults.

And that is why there are procedures to ensure the children are going to be looked after.

“But that is too lengthy, too difficult, and you can’t choose and it’s not yours,” I can hear the over privileged society that sees no limits in what can and can’t be done. Having babies is not a right that can be demanded. And buying babies to jump over the necessary prerequisites for adoption can lead to horrific cases such as the Australian man who sexually abused the twins he had by surrogacy.

Or the story of the paediatrician who abused 52 children and ended up in jail, while a baby that he and his now ex-wife had bought in Ukraine was left unclaimed, apparently the grandfather eventually went to get him.

And it was in Ukraine as well where, after the borders were closed during the war, over 50 babies were stranded as the “parents” couldn’t come to get them.

In countries such as Ukraine the money that can be made from surrogacy is life changing. And it is no coincidence that Ukraine is one of the preferred destinations for “getting” a baby, along with countries such as India, Thailand, Russia and, the latest, Kenya, because the only thing that matters is the combination of a lack of legislation (or relaxed laws) and enough poverty for women to feel the need to do such things.

Those babies come to the world in such a way for various reasons, for example, Paris Hilton claimed to be terrified of giving birth. Guess who made Paris terrified of birth? Patriarchy, Paris and many other women, because as I always say: the one breaking our legs is the one selling us the crutches.

And in this new performance of birth, the majority of these “parents” tend to pose in hospitals as if they have given birth themselves.

Ricky Martin shouted: “We are pregnant!” at an award ceremony to announce that he and his partner had entered the 4th surrogacy process. The women who give birth to babies for these privileged people are the ones who some of us are fighting for, to put them at the centre of their birth experience. Those women disappear in order for others to take over total control of not just their bodies, but also their births, which are quite often caesareans, imposed upon them to suit the times and arrangements of those getting the baby.

I find it very disturbing to think of women as baby carriers and to think of babies as things you can get, sell or gift.

I find it even more disturbing that it is happily accepted and displayed in the media everywhere.

Although we started with the bizarre case of Ana Obregón, which brings new complexities, the list of other examples is extensive and full of men. The latest of this sort of "fatherhood" that we have heard about in the UK is Jon Snow who, at the age of 75, has received little or no criticism about his age. And in Spain there is the former boyfriend of Obregón, and famous singer and celebrity, Miguel Bosé. He also had a complex surrogacy case that not many criticised. He “had” four kids with his boyfriend Nacho Palau, but after they split up a difficult trial took place where they tried to divide the children based on the sperm used for each set. Rather than the rearrangement of a family, it sounds like a division of goods.

As it is the case with other issues today, your wishes can’t happen at the expense of others’ rights.

This week on social media I have been asked to have empathy, to understand what it must be like to lose a child.

I do have empathy. My empathy and my thoughts are with those who remain faceless, nameless and invisible in these stories: those mothers and those babies.

There is a lawyer in Ukraine who says she receives hundreds of calls from the surrogate mothers stressed and distressed after they have given away the babies.

But I have also heard a presenter who has twins “via surrogacy” stating that the one gestating is not the mother, but just a woman helping the mother.

It’s pretty scary to see so many attempts to reinvent what a mother is coming at us from every angle these days.

But then again patriarchy is the annihilation of the mother, and we should never forget it. 

Take Action: Ask your MP to say NO to commercial-style surrogacy in the UK | Nordic Model Now!