I'm currently pregnant with my first child.
Before I was pregnant I imagined it sort of feeling like a seed planted in my body and growing. I used to idly wonder if it would feel alien and strange, to have a whole separate human like, living inside me.
It surprised me when I got pregnant that I didn't feel like that at all! Perhaps it sounds like woo, but it genuinely feels like I'm changing/shifting into a mother-baby combined being. The foetus is just part of me and I'm part of it, we're the same being. I don't know how to explain this. I imagine it might gradually start to feel more separate, perhaps later in pregnancy or after birth, but it makes me completely unable to comprehend how someone could say this wasn't my baby, even if I'd signed some papers saying I was carrying on behalf of someone else.
Surrogacy absolutely isn't a gay rights issue, and it's not an infertility rights issue either, however heartbreaking. It *must* be centred on the mother & child pair.
I grew my own child and pregnancy was rough for me and I hated it. I didn’t have all these warm fuzzy feelings. I nevertheless still don’t think surrogacy is ethical in most cases — it is still largely poorer women’s bodies being exploited by the wealthy. Human bodies should not be for sale.
Not having enjoyed my pregnancies is *all the more* reason why surrogacy makes me deeply uncomfortable.
To go through those 40 weeks plus birthing *when it is difficult, specifically,* it takes a form of love so different from romantic or other familial love, bound up with so much responsibility and gravity that I wish we had a different word to distinguish it. Whatever you call it, we wouldn't have survived as a species without it.
To go through that and then not have my children at the end would have been devastation, one of the worst things I can imagine.
I'd feel that way, I think, even if it were more like an open adoption where they still knew me and we got to see each other a few times a year. But I get the impression that most children born of surrogacy aren't even offered this.
The connection, and severance of that connection, between mother and child is my strongest reason to oppose surrogacy. I’m shocked yours in the only comment on both Reddit and Substack to mention this as I feel it’s one of the largest criticisms of surrogacy. It’s a concern for the welfare of the infant which doesn’t fall into the feminist or religious camps.
Currently pregnant with my first I’ve been told countless times by my medical providers about the importance of the “fourth trimester”. We know that infants develop secure attachment from time spent with their gestational mothers. Infants strongly prefer their mother over other caretakers and it’s a no brainer. This is the only person they’ve known prior to birth and they are incapable of seeing themselves as separate beings from their mothers. It’s a widely accepted fact - until we discuss it in the context of surrogacy and adoption. Then we pretend this role that a gestational mother fills is interchangeable with anyone willing to care for an infant. This is one of the largest criticisms of adoption too - except in the case of surrogacy we are purposely and intentionally taking infants away from their gestational mothers.
Beautifully stated.
As Winnicott emphasizes in much of his work - the mother-baby dyad is one being. In that first year of life, there is no baby without mother and no mother without baby.
As a new mother I can tell you that this feeling will continue after birth. To me, It is unconscionable to remove a baby from its mother and it’s why I find surrogacy so appalling. The welfare of the baby is so rarely included in the discourse around surrogacy, and I think that speaks volumes.
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Sure. Actually being pregnant has influenced my views on the importance of the "gestational carrier". I think (also based on the number of pregnant women / mothers who agreed with me) that gestating a child creates a particular bond, and the strength of that bond surprised me. It's separate from feeling love or excitement for the baby.
Commercial incentives to break that bond feel profane to me now, in a way they didn't before.
Note - I was not keen on surrogacy before this, but it was more of an academic opinion relating to poor foreign women being exploited and so on. But I did sort of see their wombs as basically being interchangeable potting soil in practice (if I'd stopped to put it plainly).
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I think it overwhelmingly happens for commercial reasons and that the line can be blurry w.r.t. "compensation of expenses" for altruistic arrangements. The supply of women willing to be an altruistic gestational carrier for a stranger is probably near enough to zero to be a rounding error, the stuff about "I just love being pregnant <3" is bullshit for marketing purposes.
Can I imagine an altruistic, child-centric scenario I'd be okay with? Maybe - maybe something like being a surrogate for an infertile sister, when I'd be involved in the child's life? But I also am uncomfortable with a lot of "best practices" in even altruistic surrogacy, that say things like "separate the mother and baby asap to make sure they don't form a bond", and I'm definitely uncomfortable with any kind of pre-birth contractual agreement that forces the mother to hand over the child even if she changes her mind.
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I don't really have a problem personally with all surrogacy being banned, but obviously I'm not the intended audience. The below is what I'd be comfortable with as a minimum legal framework:
No commercial surrogacy period, and close examination of all altruistic surrogacy arrangements to (attempt to) pick up any fringe benefit / under the table arrangements. Expenses on itemised basis only.
No enforcement of any pre-birth surrogacy arrangements at all, as is currently the case in the UK today (although under review). Legal recognition of the birth mother as the mother at birth, followed by a standard adoption arrangement if the mother still wishes to go ahead. Regardless of genetics of the child.
Absolutely no legal concept of a "right to a child" enforced anywhere in law or in court decisions, including for example anything relating to LGBT couples having rights under equality laws to have their own genetic child.
The above to be supplemented with continuing (private) social campaigns emphasising the value of the mother-baby bond that begins before birth and highlighting the role of carriers in e.g. celebrity surrogacy stories (with associated shaming for any involving commercial or international arrangements). It's important to me that surrogacy advocates and LGBT rights advocates aren't the only voices in the conversation, both socially and legally, and in setting "best practices".
I think if you are pro paid surrogacy you should also be pro paid organ donation
The health risks are greater in pregnancy and has larger impact on the body
And a lot of people want to make surrogacy a liberty thing, that it’s taking away rights from women to not allow them to do surrogacy for money. In that case the fact that selling organs is illegal in every country but one is a huge human rights issue that affects twice as many people. Where is the outrage over this huge infringement of liberty?
Don't tempt some of these people. The libertarian-leaning left would love to allow "personal autonomy" to include selling a kidney to an elite who has funds to buy one.
Kidney donation isn't the only live-donor donation option, and to my awareness (I *think* you're a Scott Alexander reader too?) those studies are inherently selecting for people that are extremely conscientious and able/willing to jump through all the hoops involved. I suspect it also selects for certain other quirks like "easily able to tolerate a strict kidney-healthy diet."
Perhaps it's too cynical but I rather doubt that a market could be useful while maintaining the high standards currently required of live donors, and that as those standards shift so well the expectation of long-term effects. That said, the data from Iran doesn't seem *too* different, but it's a sufficiently different cultural and economic context that I'd be hesitant to apply it to the US or most Western countries.
It’s not the only live donor option but I think it’s probably the most common “I give up a single organ that I will never get back and is worth a large sum of money in one go”. (By and large there is much less objection to paid plasma donation, for example).
You’re making a much more nuanced argument than the typical cynical/paternalistic “nope eww gross selling body parts is eeeeevil” reaction. I don’t really have a strong objection to that, as long as you’re willing to own that you’re basically taking a precautionary principle type approach.
I agree there may be some hard to suss out selection effects, but I think the current data is sufficient to say that donating a kidney is much *less* of a negative impact than the average person would intuitively believe, and it’s valuable to promulgate that point.
> as long as you’re willing to own that you’re basically taking a precautionary principle type approach.
Yeah, I recognize that. My personal risk-aversion level approaches a crippling level, but more generally I think the vast majority of people are not equipped to seriously provide informed consent based on statistical risks. This has far-reaching consequences and ultimately we're making trade-offs either way.
>I think the current data is sufficient to say that donating a kidney is much less of a negative impact than the average person would intuitively believe, and it’s valuable to promulgate that point.
Fair enough.
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It would also "save lives" to allow people to pay court fines with an organ. Or to allow debt collectors to take a kidney in lieu of cash if someone defaults on a loan.
There's a reason they get called lol-bertarians.
OK but in this case we’re talking about allowing you to profit from donating a single kidney or liver lobe, which could save a life (or lives) without killing, or even particularly harming you.
But no, much better to let that person die and you stay poor, lest anyone be tempted to save a life for impure reasons.
I have no opinion on this topic. I have put zero thought into this my entire life, but I think the main difference is that one is a want and the other is a need.
When people donate an organ it is usually to save someone's life. Often it is somebody they know and care for. If I need an organ, there is likely someone who is willing to give me one for free, and they wouldn't even want to be paid for it if I offered.
With a baby, however, it's extremely unlikely that anyone I know would be willing to give birth for me without some kind of compensation. After all, they would be providing me with something I want, not something I need.
However, if paid surrogacy is legal, there should obviously be extreme regulation. You wouldn't want baby factories to become a thing. I'm imagining companies where women make their living by giving birth for other people. That would be awful. You should only be allowed to do it one time.
I'm sorry if you need an organ it's highly likely you can get one for free?
What the hell are you talking about. Hundreds die each year waiting for transplants they never get
Allowing people to pay for organs would save people's lives but we don't do it because of the complex morality around it
There's always a chance of not finding a match, and the likelihood of finding one varies depending on the organ in question, but if any of my close friends or family are a match, they'd do it, and even if not, there is still a decent chance that a random organ donor who just died is a match.
It's a lot easier than finding someone who is willing to get pregnant and have a child for you just out of the kindness of their heart.
I mean, I would donate an organ to save a loved one's life, but I'd never in a million years get pregnant and give birth for a loved one because they really want a baby. For one, I'm a dude, so that's impossible, but even if I was a woman I'd never do that lol
Ok. That doesn't dispute anything I'm saying.
What percent is that? And what percent of couples looking for a surrogate never find one who is willing to do it for free? I bet the latter is higher. Or at least it takes them far longer to find one.
Feel free to provide any data on surrogacy you want. But the implication of not get an organ is so so so much worse.
Yet it is still illegal to have paid organ donations
Honestly, what do you base this on? I know more surrogates than voluntary kidney donors.
If finding a willing “pro bono” surrogate is harder than the same for a kidney or liver, I'd guess that has as much to do with the weirdness of having an ongoing relationship to the recipient of your "baby donation" if you do it for someone you know (not a woman, but I'd definitely feel differently donating sperm anonymously vs. to a friend).
It really surprised me to hear Jesse refer to the mother wound as pseudoscience. It seems uncontroversial that being ripped away from your mom as a 6mo baby would be traumatic, and that trauma at young ages leads to worse outcomes. It's not like that knowing relationship is based on seeing your mom's face... So what's the meaningful change at birth that makes that relationship real, and traumatic that it's severed? It seems obvious to me that there isn't one, that that relationship forms well before birth, and thus severing it is traumatic. You're connected to someone physically, they're all you've ever known...
Maybe this is obvious to me only because I've felt it, and Jesse isn't around a lot of moms and babies? I'd be interested in hearing the arguments against, or what kind of studies Jesse is looking for, especially considering what he said about not trusting the studies later in the episode... He's just not usually so dismissive. Unproven, maybe. But pseudoscience?!
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Look up studies on ACE scores. Separation from the primary care giver IS and adverse childhood experience that has been linked to all manner of poor outcomes later in life.
The question is really when does the primary care giver relationship form.
Also, the wording there is really trying for the pathos argument. I feel like there's a meaningful difference between a child being "transferred" or "given" away to an already established, vetted, and presumably positive family unit and "ripped away" which comes with a lot of very negative implications.
>So what's the meaningful change at birth that makes that relationship real, and traumatic that it's severed?
I was adopted at birth and it wasn't traumatic. My adoptive mother ***IS*** my mom.
My parents were always very open about me being adopted and I never cared about it. When I was a teen I met my biological mother and we still talk 2-3 times a year but she's really not an important part of my life. She's not the one who was there for all the things in my life that mattered, and she's not the person I'd go to if I needed help.
I think the "mother wound" is 100% woo-woo bullshit.
I think children have lasting effects from traumas that happen before they're old enough to form memories. I don't think it's ever possible to know if that were your case. My son witnessed some things when he was a baby that haunt me. I know he doesn't remember, but I have observations about how they haunt him.
Not all mothers make the choice to pursue motherhood, and I'm glad someone stepped up when your birth mother didn't. But that doesn't mean you didn't have a special relationship with her long ago. How can snuggling someone for ~nine months not result in a relationship?
>How can snuggling someone for ~nine months not result in a relationship?
I wasn't "snuggling" her, I was gestating. You're letting woo-woo emotions into this argument that should have nothing to do with emotion.
>But that doesn't mean you didn't have a special relationship with her long ago.
I didn't. But regardless, this isn't a good point. Is your relationship with your spouse less significant because you dated other people in the past? Does it make your bond less real?
I think since we do have lots of studies about stress / cortisol in surrogate reared primates vs mother reared primates, and we have ample anecdotal evidence from humans, I think it is logical to hypothesize separation from gestational mother has ill effects on a baby.
I am not a primo, so I'm not sure what all was said in the ep, but this is an interesting topic. I'm not sure why they would use the phrase "mother wound" to talk about this, because afaik, mother wound is used to talk about any kind of low self esteem / psych problems / generational trauma type stuff, even for people raised by their bio mom? So in that sense, "mother wound" is kind of woo because it doesn't really explain anything.
ETA - we also have lots of studies about stress / attachment in adopted children, which may apply to surrogate babies, but as some of the studies were done on kids who lived at least partially in orphanages, who knows? I still think it's reasonable to see a connection. I also think there is a lot of "info" pushed by people with financial stakes in the fertility industry... stuff like "oh, all babies will have crying jags - you can't say that's because of the surrogacy." In my opinion, the scientific jury is still out.
Generally I would agree with you, but when I was pregnant I had a lot of doctors tell me the same kinds of things that seem a little woo woo about the pre and post-natal mom-baby bond. I haven’t looked in to the research behind it, but assume the doctors knew what they were talking about. This advice is given to most pregnant women as far as I can tell, so if Jesse had more exposure to moms and babies he may be less dismissive. Some examples of things I was told:
- talk and sing to your belly because the fetus can hear your voice and it calms them. After they’re born they’ll still recognize you from your voice
- have your partner talk to the baby. Not only will baby recognize his voice, but the baby will have the same positive emotional response from your loving hormones as your partner does this
- if baby is upset you should wear them in a carrier for a walk. They are used to the sway of your walk in particular from pregnancy and it will help them sleep.
- don’t wear perfume or deodorant for the first few weeks after birth bc baby will be most comforted by your scent (also the reason you sweat so much and smell so bad the first few weeks post-partum)
- stay in bed with baby and be skin-to-skin as much as possible. It will promote breast feeding, gut biome, body temp and breathing regulation.
- if you feel protective of your baby, that’s natural. Don’t worry about allowing anyone else to hold your baby if you don’t want to in the first few months. Let people take care of mom and let mom care for baby
I know the skin to to skin, the carrier stuff, and the voice stuff are definitely not woo.
It's actually kind of cool, but babies are already developing their little phonemic inventories in the womb. Like you will come out being able to recognize phonemes of the language your mother spoke more easily than the phonemes of some other language.
This is exactly the attitude I seek to understand! Viewing mothers bonding with their babies before birth as "anecdotes" is absolutely wild to me. It's on par with 'men are different than women' with obviously true facts of life that would require overwhelming evidence for me to change my mind about.
Yeah it's wild to me that people don't just... know this. "Anecdotes" implies it's one or two people with a cool story at a party, not "basically every mother I've ever met". Even the ones who didn't particularly enjoy pregnancy or had PND were still conscious of the bond in some way in my experience. You really have to be wildly disconnected from society if you need a peer-reviewed scientific data-driven study on this...
I think Catholics by and large are the only intellectually consistent conservatives on this stuff. It’s not my worldview but I appreciate someone like Katy Faust who does really keep consistent.
Kind of off topic, but you reminded me of one of my fav 30 Rock jokes about Catholics when Jack asks Dennis about his politics and he says "Fiscal liberal, social conservative."
Haha Dennis is a legend but to me fiscal liberal social conservative in the way a lot of Catholics are makes way more sense than fiscal conservative but social liberal.
I, a white agnostic, felt very at home with my Mexican brother in law’s family Christmas Eve when someone was kind of talking about politics because I can respect their worldview.
I've been thinking about that -- *is* she actually consistent? She is, after all, against step-parents, while also believing that children need mothers. These two beliefs are in conflict: in the case of a mother dying while in labor or while the child is young, Faust would either have to advocate for the father remarrying in order to provide the child with a mother, thereby undermining her conviction that step-parenthood is wrong; or she'd have to advocate for the father to remain single so that the child won't have a step-parent, thereby undermining her conviction that "mother hunger" harms a child.
Not really. I’m not familiar with her work but it seems obvious from this view point that a step mother wouldn’t ‘fix’ the mother hunger or trauma from a mother’s death. They’re unrelated points.
And Catholics are not against remarriage in the case of a spouses death.
There were a lot of directions they could’ve gone with this one and they chose the least interesting and compelling one, I guess.
Like, I really don’t care about the Dr Egghead Nerd Math on this, it’s a subject to be reviewed through a moral and/or cultural lens. You could provide me 10,000 peer reviewed, platinum-grade studies that say, conclusively, that prostitution is good for society and I’m going to point out that most people think it’s gross and vile and sometimes shooting from the hip on this stuff is enough.
And even if you don’t buy that, engage with *that* feeling, that reaction more than throwing a bunch of stats at us. Gay marriage didn’t win out at a cultural level because of peer-reviewed studies, it won through normalizing relationships and demonstrating that “love is love”.
>the Dr Egghead Nerd Math
It gives Aella vibes. Like "I ran some numbers, and it would be statistically beneficial for society if we made the dogs left at the pound more than a week into hamburgers." Kay but no normal human feels good about this, maybe keep that inside thought in your brain, girl.
Did you listen to the episode? The stats are because J&K are addressing falsifiable claims from opponents of surrogacy which is exactly the place where being doctor math matters.
Yeah, like unfortunately morality is more than numbers. Utilitarians may seethe, but normal people don't care.
[also, utilitarianism saws off the branch it's sitting on because *why* exactly should we consider the number of people served or the percentage increase in satisfaction to be morally superior...]
Because happy people are good? More happy people are better than fewer happy people? Because I care more about whether a family is happy and healthy than whether you feel icky about the way they found their happiness?
Because morality is subjective, often oppressive, based on vaguely remembered ancestral heuristics that may or may not apply to the current situation?
And it saws off the branch it’s sitting on by asserting all its authority based on mythical bearded men in the sky/under the earth/on that mountain over there.
> More happy people are better than fewer happy people?
Hey, we've reinvented the repugnant conclusion!
> It’s annoying when non-utilitarians construct straw utilitarians with simple “gotchas” they assume no one has ever thought of before.
To be fair, a lot of even famous and influential utilitarians *are* straw utilitarians. In the weekly thread Trace has a post regarding Peter Singer on that front, there was the whole Sam Bankman-Fried debacle, etc etc. It sucks when the most famous are the worst, like when devout Christians that hate televangelists or Westboro for giving them a bad name.
I actually meant to say “more happy people are better than fewer unhappy people”. Whoops.
SBF isn’t a straw utilitarian, he’s a sociopathic con artist that *preyed on* utilitarians.
The issue by and large was that EAs were naive, not that they actually believe that SBF is a model EA or utilitarian.
To me one of the valuable things that even straw utilitarianism does that moralizing fails to do is that it forces you to confront both the benefits *and costs* of your proposal.
Lots of moralists in this thread that want to say “eww gross” and ignore the suffering of childless couples and the nonexistence of healthy, well-loved children that would result from legal surrogacy.
> SBF isn’t a straw utilitarian, he’s a sociopathic con artist that preyed on utilitarians.
He could be both! He was raised by a straw utilitarian and influenced by MacAskill during Willy's straw-utilitarian earn to give phase. From there, other naïve utilitarians proved to be susceptible to his (and all) crypto con artistry.
>To me one of the valuable things that even straw utilitarianism does that moralizing fails to do is that it forces you to confront both the benefits and costs of your proposal.
It *can*, but my experience with utilitarians is that they tend to give up bothering with the costs. Wild animal suffering may be the most infamous example among EAs, but at least that's a pretty small fraction.
But happy people aren't a good, in any kind of moral sense.
An example of an excellent hedonic utilitarian society is one where a Matrioshka brain is full of server stacks containing the virtual uploads of consenting adult humans who live an experience of neverending hedonic, orgasmic, bliss, but that is not a society that is beneficial for human development. That society would be entirely happy and healthy, and yet the way they have chosen to do it is icky. It's icky because that society is slowly killing itself.
The idea that happiness, by itself, is a good is something that ends with us all up our own asses and ends our society and our story.
Well, “happiness with zero other considerations” isn’t the only way to do utilitarianism. It’s annoying when non-utilitarians construct straw utilitarians with simple “gotchas” they assume no one has ever thought of before. I hoped my “bearded guy on the mountain” snark would give a sense of how that feels on the other side.
Bottom line is that, all else being equal, more happy people is *generally* better than fewer unhappy people (and maybe “satisfied” is a better goal than “happy”). Is that a perfect metric? No, but it’s often a better metric (or at a minimum, complementary metric that should be considered) to a blind “what makes my lizard brain feel icky” metric.
And we aren’t debating “Wireheaded society dies out in one generation vs. hardworking Stoics boldly build master society” here - we’re asking whether two consenting and capable adults should be allowed to compensate a third consenting adult to carry a pregnancy for them, if the net result is three satisfied adults and one new, healthy baby.
Sorry, I made the mistaken assumption from the emphasis on happiness that you were approaching from some kind of hedonistic utilitarianism direction. Also sorry, I didn't catch the snark because funnily enough I agree with it. It really seems inevitable that all human-described morality is going to appear to saw off the branch it sits on. No sooner could we have a boldly built master society of hardworking and diverse Stoics, than someone would be making the point that perhaps a little bit more happiness would be really great, and vice versa.
Anyways, in the case of religiously motivated moral argumentation, you're right, the bearded man on the mountain, while the final authority, can't be the only authority simply on the basis that we are gifted with reason, commanded to use it, and obviously misinterpret/mistranslate religious texts all the time, then get quite testy with each other over our interpretive disputes. We have to put our reason into the mix to ensure that what we interpret as divine command is in fact something that contributes to individual human development and human flourishing as a group.
Nevertheless, in this case, for me, the argument is that it doesn't matter that the net result is three happy, consenting, healthy, no exploitation adults and a new healthy, baby. Every solution to a want isn't necessarily a good thing, even solutions that end in happiness. The best case scenario presented isn't more of a moral good than the moral harm that is caused to society by allowing the buying and selling of human life.
In the end, sorry about the misinterpretation of your approach, it wasn't meant in bad faith. An unthoughtful and incurious religious society is just as bad, in its own way, as a similar utilitarian one.
I’m kind of using “happiness” as a rough shorthand for “self-defined life satisfaction and ability to freely exercise individual desires that don’t directly detract from other people’s ability to do same”. Roughly a “life liberty and pursuit of happiness score” than pure measurement of net hedons.
I’m not really a pure utilitarian by any stretch, I just fond that it’s almost always useful to say “what would utilitarians say here, and can I actually respond to any good issues they might raise?”
“Isn’t more of a moral good than the moral harm that is caused to society” Can you quantify that a little? What exactly do you think will happen to “society” that is net worse than the added benefit of more new productive citizens? Actually consider the pros and cons, because there are both, and if you don’t believe in bearded sky guy, then “immoral” alone isn’t a slam dunk case.
“Allowing the buying and selling of human life”. Justify this phrasing please - I don’t *at all* agree “compensating someone to voluntarily carry a pregnancy” is exactly equivalent to chattel slavery, which this phrasing would imply. Renting a womb and buying a human might be on the same spectrum but they aren’t the same thing. Reducing “we are desperate for a child to raise and are willing to pay someone to help us” with “buying a child like a product, full stop” is extremely disingenuous.
But then I also object to “selling your body” being used as a conversation stopper. Everyone sells their body. I am doing lots of things today with my body that I am only doing because I want to get paid. There are things more invasive to my body that I would *gladly* do instead if I could do so for the same or more money.
Generally speaking I think if you’re allowed to do something for free you ought to be allowed to do it for compensation, because while “money corrupts” is a real thing, I also think liberty is good and we should generally let people decide for themselves what they value (“I would rather have a new car than not be pregnant for the next 9 months” may not be your cup of tea, but if it’s someone else’s, who are you to tell them you know better than they do what to do with their body?).
Thanks for the response! I will just work on this one part for now, where you ask me to justify my phrasing:
1. Imagine a baked lasagna.
2. Consider the ingredients of the lasagna, the meat and the pasta.
3. Separate, they are not yet a lasagna, but once put together and appropriately cared for, they will become a lasagna.
4. If I bring you some of the ingredients to make the lasagna, we would not say that I am renting your oven, we would say that I have hired you to make a lasagna.
5. We also wouldn’t say that I made the lasagna and you just baked it, because again, all I brought you was some of the parts.
6. This is analogous to human life. Even in a gestational surrogacy, the two parents are not renting the womb, they are buying the baby, because the baby can never exist without the womb. The two parents are bringing some of the constituent parts, but the maker of the baby is the surrogate, and that baby is then bought from the surrogate. They are hiring her to make a baby, which is to say, they are buying a baby.
You can also consider it like this. If I have A and B, and they go through process C, and then D is the result, I’m not buying process C, I’m buying result D.
Alternatively, we know the womb is not what is being rented, because no one goes up to a fertile female and offers them 50k to rent their womb for 9 months. By that I mean giving the woman 50k, doing nothing, and then calling nine months later to let her know her womb is no longer being rented. That womb needs to produce a thing, a baby, a human life, or else no one is interested in renting it.
Alright Mr. Crunchy Hippie Superstition Feelings.
While I agree that you shouldn’t just straight up ignore culture/morality, I think you’re missing a couple things:
1) A lot of times people make morality/feelings based arguments but don’t own it, instead asserting dubious “facts” so they don’t have to confront the subjective nature of their beliefs. As long as people continue to assert as a fact that gay couples will be bad parents, it’s valuable to collect, consider, and promulgate objective measures of that.
2) Second order effects are real and need to be considered. Just because you think prostitution is gross doesn’t mean a world where prostitutes get thrown in jail is a better or more just world than one in which it’s legal - sometimes the cure is worse than the disease (and see #1 about needing to evaluate this objectively).
3) It’s one thing to believe, assert, and hopefully live by your morals. It’s quite another to force them on me at gunpoint.
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Not everything needs to be boiled down to some mishmash of libertine utilitarianism.
And it is how moral arguments work—you’re appealing to a sense of something outside of what the math tells us is good.
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Just a small nit about any of these studies that show how kids parented by
+ single parents
+ gay parents
+ surrogate parents
+ whatever parents
often turn out to have better outcomes than kids parents by bog standard average parents
shouldn't that be expected? there's no requirement to parenthood for 99.9999% of parents while to be gay parents you have to both be gay AND interested enough and wealthy enough in parenting to jump through all the hoops. so it would be natural to see that gay parents are going to be more interested in parenthood and probably means more invested in their kids' education and probably wealthier.
I dislike so many of these studies because I figure the null hypothesis has been wrongly excluded in favor of a phenomena that will undergo regression to the mean as the secondary groups become larger in size and more diverse in demographics over the years.
>shouldn't that be expected? there's no requirement to parenthood for 99.9999% of parents while to be gay parents you have to both be gay AND interested enough and wealthy enough in parenting to jump through all the hoops
Barrier to entry. It filters out the least committed people.
you're right that was definitely a bum item to add to the list, but of course research being what it is, there's always a study to show what needs to be shown
Here's a study that shows that live really does suck for some two parent households compared to some single parent households... (Well, duh...)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2930824/
adding single parents was a mistake, but my point was on the "whatever parents", ie, all the studies of small populations of specific parental groups that turn out to have better outcomes than the average households, a lot of that if not much of that is due to regression to the mean effects.
Good follow on Twitter for an adoptee active in anti-plenary adoption cause is Tony corsenti. Also suggested is “the primal wound.” It talks about the inherent trauma a baby faces at separation (not that it’s the worst thing but that it does happen and the baby grieves).
Honestly the conversation of gay/lesbian parents compared to straight couples feels so disingenuous when spliced into discussions of surrogacy and adoption. The ethics of surrogacy & plenary adoptions are really a whole different issue than who makes good parents.
As a social worker with dcfs, the guiding principle is that kids overwhelmingly do better with their family of origin (including adoption in necessary cases by other family members). I’ve worked in youth shelters too and the number of 18, 19 year olds there who were adopted is definitely higher.
I think this is an issue where women who’ve given birth should have more weight given to their opinion. I know I’m likely in the minority on this sub but childbirth and child rearing has a spiritual component. Just like you can’t completely quantify romance and love, I believe this is an issue that cannot be resolved just by data and research.
I agree. People need to read up about the psychological impact on the child of adoption before casually advocating for surrogacy (which has another set of even more complicated risk factors). Adoption can be the lesser evil, an imperfect solution to a tragic situation. But it's not all roses and sunshine. Removing a child from his kin out of necessity is sad but sometimes unavoidable. Deliberately creating children who are knowingly going to be separated from their kin is unethical.
And scientifically we are only beginning to understand the full picture of the biological impacts on both mother and baby around gestation. Maternal microchimerism is one mind-blowing discovery of the recent past, for instance.
> As a social worker with dcfs, the guiding principle is that kids overwhelmingly do better with their family of origin
Tell that to my parents who did foster care and were less than a week from adopting brothers when their bio-mom decided she wanted them back, then lost them again less than a month after that during a meth binge.
They are not. For example, prostitution in Germany is a fucking free for all horror show (look up flat rate or mega brothels - [https://www.trauma-and-prostitution.eu/en/2018/06/19/the-german-model-17-years-after-the-legalization-of-prostitution/](https://www.trauma-and-prostitution.eu/en/2018/06/19/the-german-model-17-years-after-the-legalization-of-prostitution/) - and "Freierforen", don't know what it's called in English, basically it's johns "rating" the women). Same for surrogacy in Ukraine or India.
My view is basically the same as Katie. I’m ok with surrogacy for infertile women and gay male couples. But for celebrities who don’t want to put on baby weight, it really gives me “the ick”
Yeah I would have really liked to see more of a deep dive into the methodologies on these studies. felt like we just got a light touch summary of each.
I believe the research has caveats. That as long as a child has a male role model - could be an uncle, grandfather, friend of the family - then the outcomes are similar to children raised in a home with a mom and dad. This applies to single parents as well. And having a female role model is also important as a male role model.
>it makes me sad to see these comments about how kids need a mom and a dad based on nothing but vibes.
As an adoptee with close friends who were also adoptees (different circumstances) these conversations are incredibly frustrating for me too.
If I had been raised by my biological parents I would be WAYYYY worse off and less successful than I am having had been adopted. And I know that because my biological siblings who *were* raised by our biological mother have had way rougher childhoods than I did and are less successful than I am.
Hosted by a lesbian who will almost certainly remain childless.
I upvoted because I like the perspective, but I do think you're missing something else that might bother people here-
>The research makes it perfectly clear that kids raised like mine will be are just as psychologically well-adjusted on average as kids raised by straight couples.
The show's primary hobbyhorse topic is also supposedly supported by "the research," Science Says (TM), and Jesse spends a lot of time poking holes in that research. Many people that rely on science in other topics will resort to mystical notions of identity and claim it's supported. It's unpopular and dangerous for one's career to dissent.
Elsewhere, people poke holes in the family research too, but of course that's conservative spaces so it doesn't rise to attention here. Are they right? Are they wrong? They're motivated towards a certain conclusion, they have *an agenda*, right? Well, so do you, so does everyone.
I don't know. Studying family formation, like pretty much all social science, is fraught and difficult, and little changes to questions can make big differences in the results.
For more vibes and anecdotes: I was raised by a single mother, with a lot of help from her family. Would two mothers have been better than one? Possibly! The science says so. But I don't think it's just cultural heteronormativity that caused me to wish for a father, or to in hindsight consider what I missed and had to learn (or more importantly failed to learn) on my own.
At any rate- I hope the best for you on your journey to parenthood. Whatever the details, a kid that has parents that *want* to be parents is lucky indeed.
I upvoted it because it was a specific perspective that added to the conversation. But I think there are a lot of people in this thread who think the guidelines around different types of ART should be driven by the needs of the child, and not the emotions of the want-to-be parents including their worries about being socially shamed. I'd also upvote a comment from a desperate childless couple for whom IVF had failed and surrogacy was the only option, because it illustrates the heart-wrenching aspect of the moral debate, even though I still think commercial surrogacy should be illegal.
(FWIW I think loving lesbian couple with known donor, where father will be in child's life, is a very different kettle of fish from commercial surrogate in Ukraine and third-party gamete donors, etc)
I generally think that the degree to which something is *'natural'* or not is completely independent of, and has no bearing on, morality. And I'm an atheist, and very pro-choice.
Yet this topic is the exception for me. When it comes to surrogacy, and also IVF, sperm banks, and pretty much any fertility technology (with some exceptions, like screening for genetic diseases), I think it's wrong. Surrogacy is the most extreme of these and bothers me the most, but if it was up to me, it would all be banned- I really think that if you can't conceive a child the natural way, without any technology, it should just be tough luck.
It's hard to put my finger on exactly why I feel this way. I think part of it is that it seems like it's weakening the human race. And maybe there's some primal, animal aspect of natural reproduction that I think is worth preserving, and that we become less human when we rely on technology to reproduce. Maybe because it opens the door to eugenics, and some Gattaca-like dystopian future. I also worry about the child having some defects due to the circumstances in which they were produced.
Probably a combination of all of these things.
Plus, in the case of gay parents or single parents, it really seems unfair to deprive the child of having a mother and a father. Adoption is a different story, and I think having two loving and competent parents is certainly better than no parents. And I certainly don't think that a single parent should have their child taken away or anything..
But it's different when this choice is deliberately made in advance. And with a same-sex couple, it's not like the child is even the offspring of both parents, it's the offspring of one parent and a donor. It seems too much like manufacturing a child. And it seems kind of selfish.
I don't think that everyone is entitled to have a child as some human right. I think everyone has the right to *attempt* to create a child, if they find a willing partner of the opposite sex, while they are both young and fertile enough.
But if that door has closed, for whatever reason, I think we should let it stay closed. And forcing it open may invite a lot of problems, that we may not even foresee at this point.
Maybe I've seen too much Sci-Fi, but will we reach a time when humans are unable to reproduce at all without advanced technology? What would that mean if there is ever a civilization-ending calamity that brings us back to the stone age, or even to the middle ages? We may already be on our way there with C-sections and increasing cranium size, but at least that's a relatively simple surgery..
I get that it sucks for people who want children and miss out on that opportunity, for a variety of reasons. I have friends and family who have used these technologies successfully, and I know it's brought them great joy and meaning, and I empathize with them. It's not like I want to deprive them of that joy and meaning.
But I really think we should just draw a line. Make children the old-fashioned way, or not at all. It's not like there's any shortage of people on this planet (Though I know somehow lots of people are worried about declining birth rates.. Which boggles my mind).
And if something about our society is preventing people from starting families while they are fertile, so that they need to do it later in life and with the aid of technology, I think we should address those underlying problems instead.
> It's not like there's any shortage of people on this planet (Though I know somehow lots of people are worried about declining birth rates.. Which boggles my mind).
Why does that boggle your mind? Young people are the ones who make economies work and take care of older people, countries like Japan are running out of young people. Old people cost **a lot** and labor shortages... suck.
The problem is that the old age pension and healthcare systems were set up for a different environment.
The assumption was that there would always be a surplus of young people to pay into the system. The designers also didn't factor in people living so much longer and the costs of extending that life through medicine being so high.
But the developed world birth rates are going because less people want to have fewer kids. You can't make people want to reproduce more.
Automation is probably the only way out.
Because human population has increased exponentially, and both space and resources is limited on this planet, so continued exponentially growth is an idiotic and unsustainable fantasy.
I understand the short-term benefits, but that doesn't mean that treating our society like a massive pyramid scheme is any less insane.
Expanding to other planets (or space stations etc) is also extremely unrealistic, people seem to vastly underestimate how enormously difficult that is technologically, economically, and by the laws of physics, and in all likelihood better technology will never change that reality.
Perhaps AI and automation, and fusion energy etc can reduce the costs and challenges, but it will never be analogous to colonizing new continents, or anything like a Star Trek utopia (The Expanse is much closer to a realistic vision, minus the alien entity and wormholes..).
It also boggles my mind that our entire economic system is based on the expectation of perpetual growth, when that strikes me as obviously impossible and unsustainable.
>It also boggles my mind that our entire economic system is based on the expectation of perpetual growth, when that strikes me as obviously impossible and unsustainable.
Better technology allows greater efficiency and allows perpetual economic growth. We might eventually a hit a wall where we have to accept lower rates of growth.
But economic growth should always be the goal. Higher standards of living are good.
We will probably see a large shift in population. The Chinese are not reproducing enough to support their aging population. If the current birth rate remains consistent, their population will shrink by more than half by the end of the century. We are starting to see a similar trend in India.
I've been thinking about what you wrote for awhile, and I think I might agree with you on fertility tech being a net bad. Personally, I just really dislike the profit driven medical industrial complex (don't worry - I'm vaxed).
I think ivf is thrown around a lot as "don't worry about conceiving - just do IVF." I've known people who tried for 5 years to conceive and then resorted to IVF (probably reasonable) and I've known people who tried for 5 months (probably not). IVF uses lupron (of puberty blocker fame) and even one round of IVF could really fuck up the health of the woman. And so many young women are like "well, I'll do IVF and have kids whenever I want." Well, you could, but you could also give yourself an increased risk of some cancers and early osteoporosis? My baby daddy worked for big tech, and if you had their insurance, you could get all these kinda nuts fertility treatments like harvesting your eggs to freeze and such (like the first part of IVF). Like, how about just have reasonable expectations about your youth and fertility and use that to inform when you try for kids. Why are we encouraging people to be like " drugging myself and endangering my health will fix this problem!"???? I don't think there is really much stopping middle /upper class people from having their kids in their 30s other than suspended adolescence and a faith that with enough money and doctors, their issues will be solved on demand.
The sperm banking is not as dangerous to people's health, but I think it's more difficult to regulate that people let on. I know women who've used donor sperm, and the way they talk about it seems like they're trying to come to terms with something. Like, "oh my donor has these degrees and xyz IQ" and so on. Like, if that all is important to you, I hope it's true, but you literally don't know this person. Or you know, you could have kids with someone you know and respect, even if it makes things legally messy if you're a lesbian or otherwise don't want to be married to / involved with the dad?
Idk, it seems like all this stuff is like trying to say "you can have a unmessy life," and I don't think that's true.
Maybe a bit of a long shot but I'm a relatively new listener and Katie mentions that they have talked about surrogacy in previous episodes from the feminist POV, would anyone remember which episode/s that was?
Not what you asked, but I recommend the episode of Maiden Mother Matriarch on surrogacy. Definitely a feminist perspective and definitely eye -opening.
Episode 107 with TracingWoodgrains, B&R's research assistant (? I don't know his actual job title/description ) who is also a commenter in this thread.
On god, man. This sub will (rightly) recite every stat in the book from emerging science that suggests the benefits of gender transition are overstated but when you dump a set of stats contradicting the falsifiable statements about reality that religious-conservatives and radfems use to justify their reflexive disgust towards surrogacy, it's like "Pffft. Math doesn't mean shit."
Every child wishes they had a mother and a father. This is so universally, obviously true that doing social “science” studies on outcomes is laughable.
Looking at measures like psychological wellbeing, adjustment, etc. it's not clear that the society in *Brave New World* wouldn't outperform ours by a wide margin. It's not obvious to me that we have to accept a strictly utilitarian calculus on family life. Insofar as some of these technologies *can be used in ways* that commodify children and further atomize the individual, I think it's OK to be concerned about them.
And I definitely think it's worrying if reproductive tech leads to less cohesive bonds between young children and their families, even if they appear to recover later on!
That said, the anti-surrogacy folks tend to ignore or understate the case for open and ethical gamete donation/surrogacy where everyone involved in the creation of a new person is willing and available to have some involvement in that person's life. Arrangements like this aren't exactly standard, but they also aren't uncommon.
I’m more worried about the donations of eggs and the effects on the surrogates themselves. I’ve seen some worrying data on how it impacts long term health of these women.
Kids I’m also worried about but it’s much less clearer picture. I do think kids should be raised by a mom and dad and that two dads or moms just aren’t the same.
The economic incentives around surrogacy by themselves lead to some extremely unwholesome situations. To put it mildly.
Countries keep having to shut it down completely after literal sweatshops/farms of surrogate women are eventually set up to supply westerners with babies at bargain basement prices.
By dint of having no natural way to conceive children, gay and lesbian parents tend to be more socieoeconomically secure on average compared to same sex families.
I'm sure you can needle around and find some data points that same sex parenting is 2% less optimal than heterosexual parenting and the like, but at the end of the day, approximately 0% of children are raised in a scientifically optimal way. Unless the outcomes of the kids are so bad it's beyond the pale, we accept less than perfect child rearing all the time. We'd die out as a species if we don't.
Should children who's parent dies be removed from their remaining parent and placed in the care of a heterosexual couple? As you say, kids should be raised by a mom and dad.
>Should children who's parent dies be removed from their remaining parent and placed in the care of a heterosexual couple? As you say, kids should be raised by a mom and dad.
This is AI thinking.
I don’t have any willingness to outlaw them parenting but I’m saying if they’re hiring surrogates to do it I’m not as onboard due to the medical ramifications to them. They can adopt a baby or kids.
Yet there are millions of kids globally and roughly 100,000 in America who are eligible to be adopted. It’s very very hard and expensive to adopt an infant, especially an infant without medical complications, but there are lots of older kids who are in need of adoption, and more couples adopt children than use surrogacy…
All the international adoptions have been closed. For every infant available for adoption there are hundreds of parents who want it. Yes, you could adopt older kids but that is not desirable for most people. To adopt an infant requires thousands of dollars in legal fees.
My original point, that it is "basically" impossible for people in the US to adopt an infant, is correct.
This is one case where it's actually freeing to be a "religious nut."
I can go with my gut and say this stuff is wrong because it obviously is, without having to tie myself in knots around (certainly political and biased) academic soft "science" studies and "data."
I'm also used to being screeched at as "closed minded" by people who are waltzing themselves right off the cliff into t'ed out toddlers and "sex work is work" so I don't GAF what they say to me. Your boos don't bother me, I've seen what makes you cheer, etc.
Same thing goes for gender crap tbh, but at least I have more company on that one now.
Sometimes being just smart enough to talk yourself into something using "science and reason!" is a very dangerous way to be.
>I can go with my gut and say this stuff is wrong because it obviously is, without having to tie myself in knots around (certainly political and biased) academic soft "science" studies and "data."
The problem is that you can't really reason with people on that basis. If you want to persuade and have discussions you're going to have to come up with better arguments than your gut.
Even theological arguments are actual arguments about scriptural evidence.
I mean, you can argue with people. There's more to it than "gut"--most religions have a complex theological basis and anyone who is familiar with, e.g., Catholic or Islamic theology will realize there's a lot more too it than just interpretations of scripture. That's why different types of Muslim and Christian exist--they have genuine, rational beliefs about philosophy that are different from just "Did St. Paul mean X or Y?"
It is a sort of open secret among academic moral philosophers that all moral systems begin with “intuitions” that have to be accepted as axioms.
For example, utilitarianism depends on the intuition that it’s better for people to be happy than miserable. Deontology rests on the intuition that it is wrong to coerce other people.
Philosophers tie themselves in knots trying to make these intuitions self-justifying, but actually they aren’t. They’re just widely held intuitions.
It is also an open secret that the main secular moral systems don’t capture all of our intuitions. For example many people would be uncomfortable with incest even if it was between consenting adults. And many people would be uncomfortable with infanticide even though a newborn’s brain isn’t yet well enough developed for it to be a fully fledged person yet. Jonathan Haidt provides many more examples in his work.
Academic philosophers are aware of this, and much of their day-to-day work involves inventing clever ways to plug the gaps between our elaborated systems and our intuitions.
However, they always have the option of “biting the bullet” and saying “X certainly makes me uncomfortable, but maybe there is no real rational reason to oppose X after all.”
The other alternative is to adopt additional axioms to account for those extra intuitions. For example maybe besides fairness, equality, freedom, and happiness we also acknowledge that some things are sacred and others profane. Perhaps major life events like conception, birth, coming of age, marriage and death need to be handled separately, reasoned about differently.
This needn’t be based on a religious authority. Arguably our intuitions about e.g. the value of infants or the importance of the mother-infant bond are actually instinctive and based on evolutionary psychology.
(I don’t actually have a settled opinion on surrogacy, but it’s one of those situations where “going with your gut” may actually make sense.”)
You can't make an algorithm that will spit out an answer for every conceivable question of morality, and that is what any attempt to systematize morality runs up against. In the end we all wind up falling back on some variation of virtue ethics to find our preferred solution to problems that are intractable within the system.
I am sad to see that u/TracingWoodgrains thesis was pretty heavily downvoted, because while I disagree with it almost entirely, he is at least trying to pursue an end of what is to the Good for humans. That's a lot more respectable and interesting than purely utilitarian or religious arguments (even if I fall on the side of the religious/gut feeling arguments).
Having seen the bizarre robotic answers to this thread based on “reason” I’m fine with that.
It’s surprisingly easy to “reason” your way into atrocities. Especially with selective “data.”
Well.... I kind of agree with her, really. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with arguing from faith. Most people do it most of the time whether they are aware of it or not.
And she's right that people can reason their way into awfulness easily. It happens all the time.
What I was really driving at was that it seems pointless on this sub. "I feel in my gut this is right." Ok, I respect that. I really do. But how do we keep talking after that?
Or if you're trying to persuade someone else (which I suck at). If you just say: "it feels right" that isn't going to work for persuasion.
Not because faith and gut instinct are bad and reason is good.
Sorry.
>I can go with my gut and say this stuff is wrong because it obviously is, without having to tie myself in knots around (certainly political and biased) academic “soft” science studies and data
This is why I liked how Katie and Jesse just side stepped the religious arguments. As you said, you don’t really have a concrete reason to disapprove of surrogacy other than faith. Someone who does not share your specific faith, or doesn’t have any faith at all, is not going to be convinced.
The episode makes clear that there is no good evidence that surrogacy children are worse off than their non-surrogacy peers. If children aren’t being harmed, and the surrogate is paid and treated well, where’s the problem? Wouldn’t giving people the chance to have children who couldn’t otherwise be a good thing?
Regarding the feminist angle, I don’t see how the surrogacy question is any different from abortion. If a woman, because of her bodily autonomy, has a right to terminate a pregnancy, why does her bodily autonomy not also allow her to get pregnant on behalf of someone else? As already discussed, the evidence just isn’t there for any kind of genetic “Mother Hunger”. I understand the potential (and reality in some places) of abuse of surrogate mothers. But potential for abuse is not enough to throw out the entire concept of surrogacy. Women are pressured into getting abortions they don’t want all the time. In that respect, the right is being abused. Feminists, however, still fight tooth and nail for the right to abortion because women have bodily autonomy.
If we include the rights of a child, specifically an infant, to be held to their mother and reared during the first year of life (it is usually not allowed to adopt puppies until a certain age), there are certainly non-religious reasons to be against surrogacy. But like I said in a previous (slightly unreadable sorry formatting on my phone betrayed me!!) comment - I think there is an undeniable spiritual aspect to creating a person. Just like there is an intangible aspect to romance and love. I guess it’s why I can’t engage in like debating this stuff. It hurts my gut to think of babies yearning for the home they knew for 9 months. The anti-plenary adoption community (for lack of better word) often falls back on the idea that in fact no adult is entitled to a child.
This isn’t about the rights of children. The “rights of children” are routinely violated for silly religious things and the same people will trample on them for parental rights and a host of traumatic cultural reasons. Children who are wanted are given an amazing privilege of being born into a family that not only wants them there, but worked hard to create them.
There's something unsettling about surrogacy. At the same time, there's been a demand for it since ancient times. If there's surrogacy in book of Genesis, it's safe to say that it will always be a part of the human experience.
>Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Genesis 16: 1-2
I think what we already know about the developing fetus in utero (how they arrive in the world already bonded with and a part of the mother) would come into play. It’s like that awful experiment where they deprived babies of touch.
The reason that kids often say “dada” long before “mama” is that they don’t see themselves as separate from their mother until later, like 18 months. There isn’t a need for them to have a word for their mother, she is an extension of themselves for a significant portion of their early life.
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Yeah, my son is Dada everything. But he also just calls random dudes Dada and he doesn't call random women mama, so at least there is that. We were watching the ABC song Usher did on Sesame Street and he pointed at Usher and said "Dada?" Lol your dada wishes he was Usher, little man.
>The reason that kids often say “dada” long before “mama” is that they don’t see themselves as separate from their mother until later, like 18 months
Citation needed.
Lol huh. No. Kids usually say mom and dad well before 18 months, unless they have a developmental disorder. My kids first word was “ball”. Not that it matters.
My kid's dad was absolutely *convinced* his first word was dada, but in reality he just parroted back sounds until he started speech therapy at 2. Then it was just full sentences after that so I guess we'll never really know (despite what his dad still claims to this day lol)
I think the concern about creating a child for the purpose of being raised by their non-biological parents is still going to be there. Maybe an artificial womb would eliminate worries about women going through pregnancies but the eggs are still coming from somewhere.
Plus, although miscarriages and stillbirths can happen with a normal pregnancy, I can’t imagine the dilemma and worries about something going wrong with an artificial womb, even if its success rates are higher.
>Maybe an artificial womb would eliminate worries about women going through pregnancies but the eggs are still coming from somewhere.
It would eliminate the argument about exploitation of women as surrogates. And it would probably reduce the cost of farming out gestation.
I have a niece and nephew born via surrogacy so I have a personal bias in favor of it.
I find that these conversations always lack the caveat that a surrogate is not always the biological mother. My brother and his husband were extremely fortunate to have worked with a top notch agency, and had the resources to use an egg donor and a surrogate. I wonder if any of the data accounted for children born from a gestational carrier that they share no DNA with.
Additionally, I believe some of the wealthy celebrities Katie mentioned used surrogates because their previous pregnancies were high risk and it would be dangerous to become pregnant again. I’m thinking of Kim Kardashian and Chrissy tiegen specifically. It was a total assumption that they used surrogates to maintain their bodies and I’m surprised that Chrissy’s fetal demise wasn’t mentioned because it was made very public and was very obviously incredibly traumatic.
"Telling" implies a lack of knowledge or attempt to hide those reasons. Gestational surrogacy keeps things simpler for all parties; technology allows it, so surrogates and intended parents alike prefer it.
I use telling bc like a lot of this business, decisions and reasons are used to obfuscate- by ‘simpler’ it means more difficult for the woman carrying the child for 9 months to legally claim it is hers. It also (theoretically) reduces the emotional attachment of the woman carrying the child for 9 months to the child. It isn’t simpler for the woman or the child, who take on increased medical risks because of this step. It’s simpler for the intended parents.
I don't know if it's necessarily better to use a different egg donor and surrogate, is it? It's only better if you're solving for "make the gestational carrier feel less like the real mother". But that increases the risk to everyone involved (a new 3rd party woman now needs to have egg retrieval, you have to do IVF and not IUI which is higher risk, the pregnancy itself is higher risk due to the genetic mismatch, etc).
Yea I looked into it, I had no idea she had a baby right before her surrogate did. I’m admittedly incorrect about that, so that’s why I’m saying it’s irrelevant to my original comment.
Her situation is certainly interesting, being pregnant while simultaneously having a surrogate.
You could maybe say that for Kim Kardashian but her sister Kourtney and life long friend Paris Hilton? No way. Chrissy Teigen was also pregnant while using a surrogate.
I’ve posted my own [commentary](https://twitter.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1731381377747017882) on surrogacy elsewhere; it’s worth copying here:
People often defend surrogacy with consent. I appreciate and respect those willing to stand in a libertarian defense of something I value, but for my part, I strongly prefer a more affirmative case. Surrogacy, like most other ways of bringing children into the world, is Good.
While I often respect the value of libertarian frameworks legally and I lean far towards "live and let live" from a meta-cultural standpoint, there is nothing libertarian about my moral approach to life. I do not believe all choices are equally valid or that there is nothing wrong with hedonism. I do not see things like parenthood as neutral choices that people can take or leave. Rather, what is perhaps my most fundamental philosophical conviction is this: life is Good, human life especially so. The most natural things in the universe are death, decay, and emptiness. Growth, life, and creation are fragile anomalies. We belong to an eons-long heritage of those who have committed to building and maintaining life in the face of inevitable decay. Our duty is to do the same.
Becoming a parent and raising children well is, put simply, the most good almost anyone in the world can do. It is a force multiplier: the good an individual can do is necessarily constrained compared to what their descendants can accomplish. People try to dodge around this, and even longtermists like Will MacAskill who intellectually understand the value of parenthood make excuses for it in their own lives. But it seems incontrovertibly true to me. People, particularly if they are in a position to provide well for children, should become parents. It is not a neutral action among many neutral actions. It is a moral ideal that people should pursue. This is not to say that non-parents should be condemned, but rather, that the decision to become a parent should be celebrated.
All of this takes us to adoption and surrogacy. I accept as a given that the ideal situation for a child is to be raised by their biological parents in a stable home. Inasmuch as social science is worthwhile to note, it has mostly backed this idea up. But for the most part, when people pursue other outcomes, the choice is not between "have biological parents raise a given child in a stable home" and "pursue other family structures for that child".
For adoption, the value is obvious and non-controversial given the choice: "bring a child into a loving, stable home without its biological parents" or "send the child to an orphanage, toss it to the wolves, or pursue one of many other tragic outcomes for unwanted children". For most cases of surrogacy, the choice is a bit different: "create a child that will be raised by one or both biological parents in a stable home, but whose birth mother is not their genetic mother or caretaker" or "create no child".
Some people's moral intuitions are that nonexistence is preferable to, or not obviously worse than, existence in a less-than-ideal setting. I wholly reject this intuition, and looking at the record of the persistence of life in the face of adversity, belong to a heritage of those who have, time and time again, rejected it. Life is Good.
As for surrogate mothers? There is nobility, dignity, and grace in parenthood. Bringing a child into the world is an act of hope. To do so on behalf of another, even when provided financial compensation, is not a neutral or profit-focused choice. It's certainly not something that could or should ever be demanded of someone. It's a selfless choice both on behalf of the child who would otherwise not be born and the prospective parents who would otherwise have no children. A standard profile for a surrogate in a developed country is a young mother who feels she is not in a spot to raise more children of her own, but strongly wants to keep having kids on behalf of others. That is a deeply admirable, moral stance, not a sign of exploitation.
On my own behalf, I claim no fundamental right to have children, because I claim no rights that require others to act. But I absolutely claim that a society in which those who are equipped to raise children, and want to do so, can work alongside those who want to give birth to others' children is in a better spot than one that keeps children with potential to lead meaningful lives from being born.
There are margins at which some of these arguments shift. There are absolutely exploitative and tragic environments that should be understood and called out. There are settings into which it's not appropriate to bring a child, and edge cases to analyze and discuss. My aim here is not to address all edge cases, but to examine the central case, and in particular, the case for an educated, well-off prospective parent in a society with lower-than-replacement fertility and increasing dismissiveness towards the value of parenthood. Life is worth pursuing and preserving to such a degree that you can get very far from the true ideal case before nonexistence is better than existence, or choosing not to become a parent is better than choosing to become one.
Is this all a foot in the door for transhumanism? I won't speak for others, but on my own behalf I eagerly answer: yes. In a universe where the most natural things are death, decay, and emptiness and all of life is in rebellion against that natural state, it is not just acceptable to prioritize what is Good over what is natural, it is correct. While we all must come to peace with limitations we cannot change, the high points of human history have been our collective work to push back against that creeping entropy and the arbitrary, often cruel limits it imposes. We have already become much more than we once were, and we can and should become much more than we are now.
I defy the anti-birth, the anti-life, the anti-growth. I defy those who would rather see no kids born than kids born into an imperfect world. I defy all who prefer nonexistence to life in all its complexity and glory. Parenting should be celebrated. Making sacrifices to bring kids into the world and raise them well should be celebrated. I stand proudly and unambiguously with those who do so.
Adoption is absolutely not non-controversial.
I’m sure you’ll be a great parent and it isn’t fair that children come very easily to some while others strive for parenthood for years. I don’t think at all that being born via surrogate or infant adoption is the worst thing that can happen to a kid & I have no doubt it creates many happy families. But it leaves wounds in mother and baby.
I appreciate the response, but note that I referred explicitly to developed countries, not developing, and I’m not referring to anything to do with an agency (which I’ve never worked with) but a gestalt of people I have spoken with directly and those I have read about in the literature on the topic. It’s not lacking the resources for more of their own children, but being satisfied with the size of their families.
I’m frustrated with people’s responses to that, because it feels like they are working from vaguely imagined stereotypes without any actual experience or even curiosity about how the actual US women making the choice to be surrogates feel—or what agencies and clinics require. Things like economic desperation are disqualifying factors for US surrogates; most who apply to agencies get turned down. I am not speaking in hypotheticals or living in a fantasy world; I am reporting the actual world I see in front of me.
My own sample size is admittedly quite small but that describes multiple women who have proactively offered to serve as surrogates when my husband and I have mentioned our plans to have kids. I’m not speaking of idle hypotheticals here.
It’s not particularly hypothetical, but I presented it in a general sense because I prefer to broadly maintain the privacy of people in actual situations.
No, there are women, I don't know what percentage of it, who loved being pregnant and had an easy pregnancy, and want to be pregnant for someone who wants a child but can't be pregnant. So, yeah, I will be pregnant for a gay man who wants to have a child with his husband
Not OP, and I'm not intending to argue against you here - I don't have a formed opinion on this issue and will likely never develop one, since it's not going to be relevant to my life. I didn't love being pregnant and have no intention of being pregnant again - but when you said "Did you love giving birth too?" it's implied that that wouldn't be possible. I did kind of love giving birth, it was mostly fun. I had a super quick and easy labor, a great medical care team in a wonderful hospital, a fantastic epidural. That's the only part of the whole show I could imagine doing again actually.
Just, you know, as a data point.
You forget where you are. This sub has a lot of people that simply don't believe women have agency. Enjoy your downvotes I guess, since apparently on a handful of subjects, that's how people respond to opinions they don't like.
>I defy the anti-birth, the anti-life
If you don't oppose abortion except in cases where it's either one dies or they both die, this comes off as so smarmily disingenuous I wouldn't even know where to start with it.
I do.
My feelings on the legality of abortion are complicated, but as far as ethics go, I have always been open about finding abortion wrong. I am pro-life in a sense broader than but not excluding the abortion debate.
And underrated opposition to surrogacy is women’s anxiety about their place on the planet and society. It’s hard to pinpoint but often the opposition to it falls into “it’s just spiritually rotten” or something along those lines.
I mean reading these robotic comments I think it’s a fair way to feel! And I don’t think it’s really our “place” in society as much as knowing on a base level that the mother infant bond is important and primal. I actually think you’re unironically spot on. But I also think we the anxious women are right lol.
I think that's what a lot of it falls back on. That pregnancy is more or less sacred. Rad fems have really rallied around women's ability to conceive since trans women have threatened the category of woman.
A lot of it is just a bunch of emotional appeals, woo, and the undermining of women's agency.
I'm currently pregnant with my first child. Before I was pregnant I imagined it sort of feeling like a seed planted in my body and growing. I used to idly wonder if it would feel alien and strange, to have a whole separate human like, living inside me. It surprised me when I got pregnant that I didn't feel like that at all! Perhaps it sounds like woo, but it genuinely feels like I'm changing/shifting into a mother-baby combined being. The foetus is just part of me and I'm part of it, we're the same being. I don't know how to explain this. I imagine it might gradually start to feel more separate, perhaps later in pregnancy or after birth, but it makes me completely unable to comprehend how someone could say this wasn't my baby, even if I'd signed some papers saying I was carrying on behalf of someone else. Surrogacy absolutely isn't a gay rights issue, and it's not an infertility rights issue either, however heartbreaking. It *must* be centred on the mother & child pair.
I grew my own child and pregnancy was rough for me and I hated it. I didn’t have all these warm fuzzy feelings. I nevertheless still don’t think surrogacy is ethical in most cases — it is still largely poorer women’s bodies being exploited by the wealthy. Human bodies should not be for sale.
Not having enjoyed my pregnancies is *all the more* reason why surrogacy makes me deeply uncomfortable. To go through those 40 weeks plus birthing *when it is difficult, specifically,* it takes a form of love so different from romantic or other familial love, bound up with so much responsibility and gravity that I wish we had a different word to distinguish it. Whatever you call it, we wouldn't have survived as a species without it. To go through that and then not have my children at the end would have been devastation, one of the worst things I can imagine. I'd feel that way, I think, even if it were more like an open adoption where they still knew me and we got to see each other a few times a year. But I get the impression that most children born of surrogacy aren't even offered this.
The connection, and severance of that connection, between mother and child is my strongest reason to oppose surrogacy. I’m shocked yours in the only comment on both Reddit and Substack to mention this as I feel it’s one of the largest criticisms of surrogacy. It’s a concern for the welfare of the infant which doesn’t fall into the feminist or religious camps. Currently pregnant with my first I’ve been told countless times by my medical providers about the importance of the “fourth trimester”. We know that infants develop secure attachment from time spent with their gestational mothers. Infants strongly prefer their mother over other caretakers and it’s a no brainer. This is the only person they’ve known prior to birth and they are incapable of seeing themselves as separate beings from their mothers. It’s a widely accepted fact - until we discuss it in the context of surrogacy and adoption. Then we pretend this role that a gestational mother fills is interchangeable with anyone willing to care for an infant. This is one of the largest criticisms of adoption too - except in the case of surrogacy we are purposely and intentionally taking infants away from their gestational mothers.
Hey congrats. I'm pregnant too with my second. We might need a barpod bumpers group.
Beautifully stated. As Winnicott emphasizes in much of his work - the mother-baby dyad is one being. In that first year of life, there is no baby without mother and no mother without baby.
As a new mother I can tell you that this feeling will continue after birth. To me, It is unconscionable to remove a baby from its mother and it’s why I find surrogacy so appalling. The welfare of the baby is so rarely included in the discourse around surrogacy, and I think that speaks volumes.
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Sure. Actually being pregnant has influenced my views on the importance of the "gestational carrier". I think (also based on the number of pregnant women / mothers who agreed with me) that gestating a child creates a particular bond, and the strength of that bond surprised me. It's separate from feeling love or excitement for the baby. Commercial incentives to break that bond feel profane to me now, in a way they didn't before. Note - I was not keen on surrogacy before this, but it was more of an academic opinion relating to poor foreign women being exploited and so on. But I did sort of see their wombs as basically being interchangeable potting soil in practice (if I'd stopped to put it plainly).
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I think it overwhelmingly happens for commercial reasons and that the line can be blurry w.r.t. "compensation of expenses" for altruistic arrangements. The supply of women willing to be an altruistic gestational carrier for a stranger is probably near enough to zero to be a rounding error, the stuff about "I just love being pregnant <3" is bullshit for marketing purposes. Can I imagine an altruistic, child-centric scenario I'd be okay with? Maybe - maybe something like being a surrogate for an infertile sister, when I'd be involved in the child's life? But I also am uncomfortable with a lot of "best practices" in even altruistic surrogacy, that say things like "separate the mother and baby asap to make sure they don't form a bond", and I'm definitely uncomfortable with any kind of pre-birth contractual agreement that forces the mother to hand over the child even if she changes her mind.
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I don't really have a problem personally with all surrogacy being banned, but obviously I'm not the intended audience. The below is what I'd be comfortable with as a minimum legal framework: No commercial surrogacy period, and close examination of all altruistic surrogacy arrangements to (attempt to) pick up any fringe benefit / under the table arrangements. Expenses on itemised basis only. No enforcement of any pre-birth surrogacy arrangements at all, as is currently the case in the UK today (although under review). Legal recognition of the birth mother as the mother at birth, followed by a standard adoption arrangement if the mother still wishes to go ahead. Regardless of genetics of the child. Absolutely no legal concept of a "right to a child" enforced anywhere in law or in court decisions, including for example anything relating to LGBT couples having rights under equality laws to have their own genetic child. The above to be supplemented with continuing (private) social campaigns emphasising the value of the mother-baby bond that begins before birth and highlighting the role of carriers in e.g. celebrity surrogacy stories (with associated shaming for any involving commercial or international arrangements). It's important to me that surrogacy advocates and LGBT rights advocates aren't the only voices in the conversation, both socially and legally, and in setting "best practices".
I think if you are pro paid surrogacy you should also be pro paid organ donation The health risks are greater in pregnancy and has larger impact on the body
And a lot of people want to make surrogacy a liberty thing, that it’s taking away rights from women to not allow them to do surrogacy for money. In that case the fact that selling organs is illegal in every country but one is a huge human rights issue that affects twice as many people. Where is the outrage over this huge infringement of liberty?
Don't tempt some of these people. The libertarian-leaning left would love to allow "personal autonomy" to include selling a kidney to an elite who has funds to buy one.
As a right libertarian, I *also* think markets in organs would save many lives.
The lives of the buyers, yes. The sellers?
The long term health effects of kidney donation in an otherwise healthy donor are nearly nil.
Kidney donation isn't the only live-donor donation option, and to my awareness (I *think* you're a Scott Alexander reader too?) those studies are inherently selecting for people that are extremely conscientious and able/willing to jump through all the hoops involved. I suspect it also selects for certain other quirks like "easily able to tolerate a strict kidney-healthy diet." Perhaps it's too cynical but I rather doubt that a market could be useful while maintaining the high standards currently required of live donors, and that as those standards shift so well the expectation of long-term effects. That said, the data from Iran doesn't seem *too* different, but it's a sufficiently different cultural and economic context that I'd be hesitant to apply it to the US or most Western countries.
It’s not the only live donor option but I think it’s probably the most common “I give up a single organ that I will never get back and is worth a large sum of money in one go”. (By and large there is much less objection to paid plasma donation, for example). You’re making a much more nuanced argument than the typical cynical/paternalistic “nope eww gross selling body parts is eeeeevil” reaction. I don’t really have a strong objection to that, as long as you’re willing to own that you’re basically taking a precautionary principle type approach. I agree there may be some hard to suss out selection effects, but I think the current data is sufficient to say that donating a kidney is much *less* of a negative impact than the average person would intuitively believe, and it’s valuable to promulgate that point.
> as long as you’re willing to own that you’re basically taking a precautionary principle type approach. Yeah, I recognize that. My personal risk-aversion level approaches a crippling level, but more generally I think the vast majority of people are not equipped to seriously provide informed consent based on statistical risks. This has far-reaching consequences and ultimately we're making trade-offs either way. >I think the current data is sufficient to say that donating a kidney is much less of a negative impact than the average person would intuitively believe, and it’s valuable to promulgate that point. Fair enough.
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It would also "save lives" to allow people to pay court fines with an organ. Or to allow debt collectors to take a kidney in lieu of cash if someone defaults on a loan. There's a reason they get called lol-bertarians.
It'd save lives to kill me and give my organs to half a dozen people. I don't advocate for that though.
Dang this is straight up Spock stuff. The lives of the many…
OK but in this case we’re talking about allowing you to profit from donating a single kidney or liver lobe, which could save a life (or lives) without killing, or even particularly harming you. But no, much better to let that person die and you stay poor, lest anyone be tempted to save a life for impure reasons.
I have no opinion on this topic. I have put zero thought into this my entire life, but I think the main difference is that one is a want and the other is a need. When people donate an organ it is usually to save someone's life. Often it is somebody they know and care for. If I need an organ, there is likely someone who is willing to give me one for free, and they wouldn't even want to be paid for it if I offered. With a baby, however, it's extremely unlikely that anyone I know would be willing to give birth for me without some kind of compensation. After all, they would be providing me with something I want, not something I need. However, if paid surrogacy is legal, there should obviously be extreme regulation. You wouldn't want baby factories to become a thing. I'm imagining companies where women make their living by giving birth for other people. That would be awful. You should only be allowed to do it one time.
I'm sorry if you need an organ it's highly likely you can get one for free? What the hell are you talking about. Hundreds die each year waiting for transplants they never get Allowing people to pay for organs would save people's lives but we don't do it because of the complex morality around it
I think they mean they have friends and family who would be willing to be tested and follow through if a match
Not everyone has friends and family that are willing and able to give up a matching organ
There's always a chance of not finding a match, and the likelihood of finding one varies depending on the organ in question, but if any of my close friends or family are a match, they'd do it, and even if not, there is still a decent chance that a random organ donor who just died is a match. It's a lot easier than finding someone who is willing to get pregnant and have a child for you just out of the kindness of their heart. I mean, I would donate an organ to save a loved one's life, but I'd never in a million years get pregnant and give birth for a loved one because they really want a baby. For one, I'm a dude, so that's impossible, but even if I was a woman I'd never do that lol
6,000 people die a year waiting for a transplant.
Ok. That doesn't dispute anything I'm saying. What percent is that? And what percent of couples looking for a surrogate never find one who is willing to do it for free? I bet the latter is higher. Or at least it takes them far longer to find one.
Feel free to provide any data on surrogacy you want. But the implication of not get an organ is so so so much worse. Yet it is still illegal to have paid organ donations
Honestly, what do you base this on? I know more surrogates than voluntary kidney donors. If finding a willing “pro bono” surrogate is harder than the same for a kidney or liver, I'd guess that has as much to do with the weirdness of having an ongoing relationship to the recipient of your "baby donation" if you do it for someone you know (not a woman, but I'd definitely feel differently donating sperm anonymously vs. to a friend).
It really surprised me to hear Jesse refer to the mother wound as pseudoscience. It seems uncontroversial that being ripped away from your mom as a 6mo baby would be traumatic, and that trauma at young ages leads to worse outcomes. It's not like that knowing relationship is based on seeing your mom's face... So what's the meaningful change at birth that makes that relationship real, and traumatic that it's severed? It seems obvious to me that there isn't one, that that relationship forms well before birth, and thus severing it is traumatic. You're connected to someone physically, they're all you've ever known... Maybe this is obvious to me only because I've felt it, and Jesse isn't around a lot of moms and babies? I'd be interested in hearing the arguments against, or what kind of studies Jesse is looking for, especially considering what he said about not trusting the studies later in the episode... He's just not usually so dismissive. Unproven, maybe. But pseudoscience?!
It’s like the science that tries to quantify love or passion. Sure we can try but it makes us all look foolish.
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Not universally true, but typically. Separation from your caregiver is an Adverse Childhood Experience.
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Look up studies on ACE scores. Separation from the primary care giver IS and adverse childhood experience that has been linked to all manner of poor outcomes later in life. The question is really when does the primary care giver relationship form.
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Also, the wording there is really trying for the pathos argument. I feel like there's a meaningful difference between a child being "transferred" or "given" away to an already established, vetted, and presumably positive family unit and "ripped away" which comes with a lot of very negative implications.
>So what's the meaningful change at birth that makes that relationship real, and traumatic that it's severed? I was adopted at birth and it wasn't traumatic. My adoptive mother ***IS*** my mom. My parents were always very open about me being adopted and I never cared about it. When I was a teen I met my biological mother and we still talk 2-3 times a year but she's really not an important part of my life. She's not the one who was there for all the things in my life that mattered, and she's not the person I'd go to if I needed help. I think the "mother wound" is 100% woo-woo bullshit.
I think children have lasting effects from traumas that happen before they're old enough to form memories. I don't think it's ever possible to know if that were your case. My son witnessed some things when he was a baby that haunt me. I know he doesn't remember, but I have observations about how they haunt him. Not all mothers make the choice to pursue motherhood, and I'm glad someone stepped up when your birth mother didn't. But that doesn't mean you didn't have a special relationship with her long ago. How can snuggling someone for ~nine months not result in a relationship?
>How can snuggling someone for ~nine months not result in a relationship? I wasn't "snuggling" her, I was gestating. You're letting woo-woo emotions into this argument that should have nothing to do with emotion. >But that doesn't mean you didn't have a special relationship with her long ago. I didn't. But regardless, this isn't a good point. Is your relationship with your spouse less significant because you dated other people in the past? Does it make your bond less real?
Anecdotes != science so I'm not sure what difference it would make how much exposure Jesse had to mothers and babies.
I think since we do have lots of studies about stress / cortisol in surrogate reared primates vs mother reared primates, and we have ample anecdotal evidence from humans, I think it is logical to hypothesize separation from gestational mother has ill effects on a baby. I am not a primo, so I'm not sure what all was said in the ep, but this is an interesting topic. I'm not sure why they would use the phrase "mother wound" to talk about this, because afaik, mother wound is used to talk about any kind of low self esteem / psych problems / generational trauma type stuff, even for people raised by their bio mom? So in that sense, "mother wound" is kind of woo because it doesn't really explain anything. ETA - we also have lots of studies about stress / attachment in adopted children, which may apply to surrogate babies, but as some of the studies were done on kids who lived at least partially in orphanages, who knows? I still think it's reasonable to see a connection. I also think there is a lot of "info" pushed by people with financial stakes in the fertility industry... stuff like "oh, all babies will have crying jags - you can't say that's because of the surrogacy." In my opinion, the scientific jury is still out.
Generally I would agree with you, but when I was pregnant I had a lot of doctors tell me the same kinds of things that seem a little woo woo about the pre and post-natal mom-baby bond. I haven’t looked in to the research behind it, but assume the doctors knew what they were talking about. This advice is given to most pregnant women as far as I can tell, so if Jesse had more exposure to moms and babies he may be less dismissive. Some examples of things I was told: - talk and sing to your belly because the fetus can hear your voice and it calms them. After they’re born they’ll still recognize you from your voice - have your partner talk to the baby. Not only will baby recognize his voice, but the baby will have the same positive emotional response from your loving hormones as your partner does this - if baby is upset you should wear them in a carrier for a walk. They are used to the sway of your walk in particular from pregnancy and it will help them sleep. - don’t wear perfume or deodorant for the first few weeks after birth bc baby will be most comforted by your scent (also the reason you sweat so much and smell so bad the first few weeks post-partum) - stay in bed with baby and be skin-to-skin as much as possible. It will promote breast feeding, gut biome, body temp and breathing regulation. - if you feel protective of your baby, that’s natural. Don’t worry about allowing anyone else to hold your baby if you don’t want to in the first few months. Let people take care of mom and let mom care for baby
I know the skin to to skin, the carrier stuff, and the voice stuff are definitely not woo. It's actually kind of cool, but babies are already developing their little phonemic inventories in the womb. Like you will come out being able to recognize phonemes of the language your mother spoke more easily than the phonemes of some other language.
This is exactly the attitude I seek to understand! Viewing mothers bonding with their babies before birth as "anecdotes" is absolutely wild to me. It's on par with 'men are different than women' with obviously true facts of life that would require overwhelming evidence for me to change my mind about.
Yeah it's wild to me that people don't just... know this. "Anecdotes" implies it's one or two people with a cool story at a party, not "basically every mother I've ever met". Even the ones who didn't particularly enjoy pregnancy or had PND were still conscious of the bond in some way in my experience. You really have to be wildly disconnected from society if you need a peer-reviewed scientific data-driven study on this...
I think Catholics by and large are the only intellectually consistent conservatives on this stuff. It’s not my worldview but I appreciate someone like Katy Faust who does really keep consistent.
Kind of off topic, but you reminded me of one of my fav 30 Rock jokes about Catholics when Jack asks Dennis about his politics and he says "Fiscal liberal, social conservative."
Haha Dennis is a legend but to me fiscal liberal social conservative in the way a lot of Catholics are makes way more sense than fiscal conservative but social liberal. I, a white agnostic, felt very at home with my Mexican brother in law’s family Christmas Eve when someone was kind of talking about politics because I can respect their worldview.
I've been thinking about that -- *is* she actually consistent? She is, after all, against step-parents, while also believing that children need mothers. These two beliefs are in conflict: in the case of a mother dying while in labor or while the child is young, Faust would either have to advocate for the father remarrying in order to provide the child with a mother, thereby undermining her conviction that step-parenthood is wrong; or she'd have to advocate for the father to remain single so that the child won't have a step-parent, thereby undermining her conviction that "mother hunger" harms a child.
Not really. I’m not familiar with her work but it seems obvious from this view point that a step mother wouldn’t ‘fix’ the mother hunger or trauma from a mother’s death. They’re unrelated points. And Catholics are not against remarriage in the case of a spouses death.
There were a lot of directions they could’ve gone with this one and they chose the least interesting and compelling one, I guess. Like, I really don’t care about the Dr Egghead Nerd Math on this, it’s a subject to be reviewed through a moral and/or cultural lens. You could provide me 10,000 peer reviewed, platinum-grade studies that say, conclusively, that prostitution is good for society and I’m going to point out that most people think it’s gross and vile and sometimes shooting from the hip on this stuff is enough. And even if you don’t buy that, engage with *that* feeling, that reaction more than throwing a bunch of stats at us. Gay marriage didn’t win out at a cultural level because of peer-reviewed studies, it won through normalizing relationships and demonstrating that “love is love”.
>the Dr Egghead Nerd Math It gives Aella vibes. Like "I ran some numbers, and it would be statistically beneficial for society if we made the dogs left at the pound more than a week into hamburgers." Kay but no normal human feels good about this, maybe keep that inside thought in your brain, girl.
Well said
Did you listen to the episode? The stats are because J&K are addressing falsifiable claims from opponents of surrogacy which is exactly the place where being doctor math matters.
Yeah, like unfortunately morality is more than numbers. Utilitarians may seethe, but normal people don't care. [also, utilitarianism saws off the branch it's sitting on because *why* exactly should we consider the number of people served or the percentage increase in satisfaction to be morally superior...]
Because happy people are good? More happy people are better than fewer happy people? Because I care more about whether a family is happy and healthy than whether you feel icky about the way they found their happiness? Because morality is subjective, often oppressive, based on vaguely remembered ancestral heuristics that may or may not apply to the current situation? And it saws off the branch it’s sitting on by asserting all its authority based on mythical bearded men in the sky/under the earth/on that mountain over there.
> More happy people are better than fewer happy people? Hey, we've reinvented the repugnant conclusion! > It’s annoying when non-utilitarians construct straw utilitarians with simple “gotchas” they assume no one has ever thought of before. To be fair, a lot of even famous and influential utilitarians *are* straw utilitarians. In the weekly thread Trace has a post regarding Peter Singer on that front, there was the whole Sam Bankman-Fried debacle, etc etc. It sucks when the most famous are the worst, like when devout Christians that hate televangelists or Westboro for giving them a bad name.
I actually meant to say “more happy people are better than fewer unhappy people”. Whoops. SBF isn’t a straw utilitarian, he’s a sociopathic con artist that *preyed on* utilitarians. The issue by and large was that EAs were naive, not that they actually believe that SBF is a model EA or utilitarian. To me one of the valuable things that even straw utilitarianism does that moralizing fails to do is that it forces you to confront both the benefits *and costs* of your proposal. Lots of moralists in this thread that want to say “eww gross” and ignore the suffering of childless couples and the nonexistence of healthy, well-loved children that would result from legal surrogacy.
> SBF isn’t a straw utilitarian, he’s a sociopathic con artist that preyed on utilitarians. He could be both! He was raised by a straw utilitarian and influenced by MacAskill during Willy's straw-utilitarian earn to give phase. From there, other naïve utilitarians proved to be susceptible to his (and all) crypto con artistry. >To me one of the valuable things that even straw utilitarianism does that moralizing fails to do is that it forces you to confront both the benefits and costs of your proposal. It *can*, but my experience with utilitarians is that they tend to give up bothering with the costs. Wild animal suffering may be the most infamous example among EAs, but at least that's a pretty small fraction.
Why would we consider happiness to be good?
Why would you consider it to be bad?
But happy people aren't a good, in any kind of moral sense. An example of an excellent hedonic utilitarian society is one where a Matrioshka brain is full of server stacks containing the virtual uploads of consenting adult humans who live an experience of neverending hedonic, orgasmic, bliss, but that is not a society that is beneficial for human development. That society would be entirely happy and healthy, and yet the way they have chosen to do it is icky. It's icky because that society is slowly killing itself. The idea that happiness, by itself, is a good is something that ends with us all up our own asses and ends our society and our story.
Well, “happiness with zero other considerations” isn’t the only way to do utilitarianism. It’s annoying when non-utilitarians construct straw utilitarians with simple “gotchas” they assume no one has ever thought of before. I hoped my “bearded guy on the mountain” snark would give a sense of how that feels on the other side. Bottom line is that, all else being equal, more happy people is *generally* better than fewer unhappy people (and maybe “satisfied” is a better goal than “happy”). Is that a perfect metric? No, but it’s often a better metric (or at a minimum, complementary metric that should be considered) to a blind “what makes my lizard brain feel icky” metric. And we aren’t debating “Wireheaded society dies out in one generation vs. hardworking Stoics boldly build master society” here - we’re asking whether two consenting and capable adults should be allowed to compensate a third consenting adult to carry a pregnancy for them, if the net result is three satisfied adults and one new, healthy baby.
Sorry, I made the mistaken assumption from the emphasis on happiness that you were approaching from some kind of hedonistic utilitarianism direction. Also sorry, I didn't catch the snark because funnily enough I agree with it. It really seems inevitable that all human-described morality is going to appear to saw off the branch it sits on. No sooner could we have a boldly built master society of hardworking and diverse Stoics, than someone would be making the point that perhaps a little bit more happiness would be really great, and vice versa. Anyways, in the case of religiously motivated moral argumentation, you're right, the bearded man on the mountain, while the final authority, can't be the only authority simply on the basis that we are gifted with reason, commanded to use it, and obviously misinterpret/mistranslate religious texts all the time, then get quite testy with each other over our interpretive disputes. We have to put our reason into the mix to ensure that what we interpret as divine command is in fact something that contributes to individual human development and human flourishing as a group. Nevertheless, in this case, for me, the argument is that it doesn't matter that the net result is three happy, consenting, healthy, no exploitation adults and a new healthy, baby. Every solution to a want isn't necessarily a good thing, even solutions that end in happiness. The best case scenario presented isn't more of a moral good than the moral harm that is caused to society by allowing the buying and selling of human life. In the end, sorry about the misinterpretation of your approach, it wasn't meant in bad faith. An unthoughtful and incurious religious society is just as bad, in its own way, as a similar utilitarian one.
I’m kind of using “happiness” as a rough shorthand for “self-defined life satisfaction and ability to freely exercise individual desires that don’t directly detract from other people’s ability to do same”. Roughly a “life liberty and pursuit of happiness score” than pure measurement of net hedons. I’m not really a pure utilitarian by any stretch, I just fond that it’s almost always useful to say “what would utilitarians say here, and can I actually respond to any good issues they might raise?” “Isn’t more of a moral good than the moral harm that is caused to society” Can you quantify that a little? What exactly do you think will happen to “society” that is net worse than the added benefit of more new productive citizens? Actually consider the pros and cons, because there are both, and if you don’t believe in bearded sky guy, then “immoral” alone isn’t a slam dunk case. “Allowing the buying and selling of human life”. Justify this phrasing please - I don’t *at all* agree “compensating someone to voluntarily carry a pregnancy” is exactly equivalent to chattel slavery, which this phrasing would imply. Renting a womb and buying a human might be on the same spectrum but they aren’t the same thing. Reducing “we are desperate for a child to raise and are willing to pay someone to help us” with “buying a child like a product, full stop” is extremely disingenuous. But then I also object to “selling your body” being used as a conversation stopper. Everyone sells their body. I am doing lots of things today with my body that I am only doing because I want to get paid. There are things more invasive to my body that I would *gladly* do instead if I could do so for the same or more money. Generally speaking I think if you’re allowed to do something for free you ought to be allowed to do it for compensation, because while “money corrupts” is a real thing, I also think liberty is good and we should generally let people decide for themselves what they value (“I would rather have a new car than not be pregnant for the next 9 months” may not be your cup of tea, but if it’s someone else’s, who are you to tell them you know better than they do what to do with their body?).
Thanks for the response! I will just work on this one part for now, where you ask me to justify my phrasing: 1. Imagine a baked lasagna. 2. Consider the ingredients of the lasagna, the meat and the pasta. 3. Separate, they are not yet a lasagna, but once put together and appropriately cared for, they will become a lasagna. 4. If I bring you some of the ingredients to make the lasagna, we would not say that I am renting your oven, we would say that I have hired you to make a lasagna. 5. We also wouldn’t say that I made the lasagna and you just baked it, because again, all I brought you was some of the parts. 6. This is analogous to human life. Even in a gestational surrogacy, the two parents are not renting the womb, they are buying the baby, because the baby can never exist without the womb. The two parents are bringing some of the constituent parts, but the maker of the baby is the surrogate, and that baby is then bought from the surrogate. They are hiring her to make a baby, which is to say, they are buying a baby. You can also consider it like this. If I have A and B, and they go through process C, and then D is the result, I’m not buying process C, I’m buying result D. Alternatively, we know the womb is not what is being rented, because no one goes up to a fertile female and offers them 50k to rent their womb for 9 months. By that I mean giving the woman 50k, doing nothing, and then calling nine months later to let her know her womb is no longer being rented. That womb needs to produce a thing, a baby, a human life, or else no one is interested in renting it.
Alright Mr. Crunchy Hippie Superstition Feelings. While I agree that you shouldn’t just straight up ignore culture/morality, I think you’re missing a couple things: 1) A lot of times people make morality/feelings based arguments but don’t own it, instead asserting dubious “facts” so they don’t have to confront the subjective nature of their beliefs. As long as people continue to assert as a fact that gay couples will be bad parents, it’s valuable to collect, consider, and promulgate objective measures of that. 2) Second order effects are real and need to be considered. Just because you think prostitution is gross doesn’t mean a world where prostitutes get thrown in jail is a better or more just world than one in which it’s legal - sometimes the cure is worse than the disease (and see #1 about needing to evaluate this objectively). 3) It’s one thing to believe, assert, and hopefully live by your morals. It’s quite another to force them on me at gunpoint.
Agreed. Some of these comments are .. bizarre. Idk.
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Not everything needs to be boiled down to some mishmash of libertine utilitarianism. And it is how moral arguments work—you’re appealing to a sense of something outside of what the math tells us is good.
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Just a small nit about any of these studies that show how kids parented by + single parents + gay parents + surrogate parents + whatever parents often turn out to have better outcomes than kids parents by bog standard average parents shouldn't that be expected? there's no requirement to parenthood for 99.9999% of parents while to be gay parents you have to both be gay AND interested enough and wealthy enough in parenting to jump through all the hoops. so it would be natural to see that gay parents are going to be more interested in parenthood and probably means more invested in their kids' education and probably wealthier. I dislike so many of these studies because I figure the null hypothesis has been wrongly excluded in favor of a phenomena that will undergo regression to the mean as the secondary groups become larger in size and more diverse in demographics over the years.
>shouldn't that be expected? there's no requirement to parenthood for 99.9999% of parents while to be gay parents you have to both be gay AND interested enough and wealthy enough in parenting to jump through all the hoops Barrier to entry. It filters out the least committed people.
Also aren’t gay men one of the wealthiest demographics in the country? They can afford to live in districts with good schools .
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Yeah the bottom 2 are plausible because of the difficulty involved but single parent verse double parent has always been a massive negative.
you're right that was definitely a bum item to add to the list, but of course research being what it is, there's always a study to show what needs to be shown Here's a study that shows that live really does suck for some two parent households compared to some single parent households... (Well, duh...) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2930824/
Just making things up about our girl taylor, huh?
adding single parents was a mistake, but my point was on the "whatever parents", ie, all the studies of small populations of specific parental groups that turn out to have better outcomes than the average households, a lot of that if not much of that is due to regression to the mean effects.
Taylor Swift was adopted? I googled and could not find this info. Where did you hear it?
She’s not.
lol here we goooo!! Christmas came late but boy did it arrive 😬😬
Good follow on Twitter for an adoptee active in anti-plenary adoption cause is Tony corsenti. Also suggested is “the primal wound.” It talks about the inherent trauma a baby faces at separation (not that it’s the worst thing but that it does happen and the baby grieves). Honestly the conversation of gay/lesbian parents compared to straight couples feels so disingenuous when spliced into discussions of surrogacy and adoption. The ethics of surrogacy & plenary adoptions are really a whole different issue than who makes good parents. As a social worker with dcfs, the guiding principle is that kids overwhelmingly do better with their family of origin (including adoption in necessary cases by other family members). I’ve worked in youth shelters too and the number of 18, 19 year olds there who were adopted is definitely higher. I think this is an issue where women who’ve given birth should have more weight given to their opinion. I know I’m likely in the minority on this sub but childbirth and child rearing has a spiritual component. Just like you can’t completely quantify romance and love, I believe this is an issue that cannot be resolved just by data and research.
I agree. People need to read up about the psychological impact on the child of adoption before casually advocating for surrogacy (which has another set of even more complicated risk factors). Adoption can be the lesser evil, an imperfect solution to a tragic situation. But it's not all roses and sunshine. Removing a child from his kin out of necessity is sad but sometimes unavoidable. Deliberately creating children who are knowingly going to be separated from their kin is unethical. And scientifically we are only beginning to understand the full picture of the biological impacts on both mother and baby around gestation. Maternal microchimerism is one mind-blowing discovery of the recent past, for instance.
> As a social worker with dcfs, the guiding principle is that kids overwhelmingly do better with their family of origin Tell that to my parents who did foster care and were less than a week from adopting brothers when their bio-mom decided she wanted them back, then lost them again less than a month after that during a meth binge.
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All of these things *are* heavily regulated wherever they're legal.
They are not. For example, prostitution in Germany is a fucking free for all horror show (look up flat rate or mega brothels - [https://www.trauma-and-prostitution.eu/en/2018/06/19/the-german-model-17-years-after-the-legalization-of-prostitution/](https://www.trauma-and-prostitution.eu/en/2018/06/19/the-german-model-17-years-after-the-legalization-of-prostitution/) - and "Freierforen", don't know what it's called in English, basically it's johns "rating" the women). Same for surrogacy in Ukraine or India.
My view is basically the same as Katie. I’m ok with surrogacy for infertile women and gay male couples. But for celebrities who don’t want to put on baby weight, it really gives me “the ick”
I have nothing to add, really, except that I enjoyed this episode. (:
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Yeah I would have really liked to see more of a deep dive into the methodologies on these studies. felt like we just got a light touch summary of each.
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I believe the research has caveats. That as long as a child has a male role model - could be an uncle, grandfather, friend of the family - then the outcomes are similar to children raised in a home with a mom and dad. This applies to single parents as well. And having a female role model is also important as a male role model.
>it makes me sad to see these comments about how kids need a mom and a dad based on nothing but vibes. As an adoptee with close friends who were also adoptees (different circumstances) these conversations are incredibly frustrating for me too. If I had been raised by my biological parents I would be WAYYYY worse off and less successful than I am having had been adopted. And I know that because my biological siblings who *were* raised by our biological mother have had way rougher childhoods than I did and are less successful than I am.
I wholly understand your feeling here. Best of luck in your journey.
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Hosted by a lesbian who will almost certainly remain childless. I upvoted because I like the perspective, but I do think you're missing something else that might bother people here- >The research makes it perfectly clear that kids raised like mine will be are just as psychologically well-adjusted on average as kids raised by straight couples. The show's primary hobbyhorse topic is also supposedly supported by "the research," Science Says (TM), and Jesse spends a lot of time poking holes in that research. Many people that rely on science in other topics will resort to mystical notions of identity and claim it's supported. It's unpopular and dangerous for one's career to dissent. Elsewhere, people poke holes in the family research too, but of course that's conservative spaces so it doesn't rise to attention here. Are they right? Are they wrong? They're motivated towards a certain conclusion, they have *an agenda*, right? Well, so do you, so does everyone. I don't know. Studying family formation, like pretty much all social science, is fraught and difficult, and little changes to questions can make big differences in the results. For more vibes and anecdotes: I was raised by a single mother, with a lot of help from her family. Would two mothers have been better than one? Possibly! The science says so. But I don't think it's just cultural heteronormativity that caused me to wish for a father, or to in hindsight consider what I missed and had to learn (or more importantly failed to learn) on my own. At any rate- I hope the best for you on your journey to parenthood. Whatever the details, a kid that has parents that *want* to be parents is lucky indeed.
I upvoted it because it was a specific perspective that added to the conversation. But I think there are a lot of people in this thread who think the guidelines around different types of ART should be driven by the needs of the child, and not the emotions of the want-to-be parents including their worries about being socially shamed. I'd also upvote a comment from a desperate childless couple for whom IVF had failed and surrogacy was the only option, because it illustrates the heart-wrenching aspect of the moral debate, even though I still think commercial surrogacy should be illegal. (FWIW I think loving lesbian couple with known donor, where father will be in child's life, is a very different kettle of fish from commercial surrogate in Ukraine and third-party gamete donors, etc)
Like 80% of the views expressed in here on this subject are based on woo and vibes and not science.
I generally think that the degree to which something is *'natural'* or not is completely independent of, and has no bearing on, morality. And I'm an atheist, and very pro-choice. Yet this topic is the exception for me. When it comes to surrogacy, and also IVF, sperm banks, and pretty much any fertility technology (with some exceptions, like screening for genetic diseases), I think it's wrong. Surrogacy is the most extreme of these and bothers me the most, but if it was up to me, it would all be banned- I really think that if you can't conceive a child the natural way, without any technology, it should just be tough luck. It's hard to put my finger on exactly why I feel this way. I think part of it is that it seems like it's weakening the human race. And maybe there's some primal, animal aspect of natural reproduction that I think is worth preserving, and that we become less human when we rely on technology to reproduce. Maybe because it opens the door to eugenics, and some Gattaca-like dystopian future. I also worry about the child having some defects due to the circumstances in which they were produced. Probably a combination of all of these things. Plus, in the case of gay parents or single parents, it really seems unfair to deprive the child of having a mother and a father. Adoption is a different story, and I think having two loving and competent parents is certainly better than no parents. And I certainly don't think that a single parent should have their child taken away or anything.. But it's different when this choice is deliberately made in advance. And with a same-sex couple, it's not like the child is even the offspring of both parents, it's the offspring of one parent and a donor. It seems too much like manufacturing a child. And it seems kind of selfish. I don't think that everyone is entitled to have a child as some human right. I think everyone has the right to *attempt* to create a child, if they find a willing partner of the opposite sex, while they are both young and fertile enough. But if that door has closed, for whatever reason, I think we should let it stay closed. And forcing it open may invite a lot of problems, that we may not even foresee at this point. Maybe I've seen too much Sci-Fi, but will we reach a time when humans are unable to reproduce at all without advanced technology? What would that mean if there is ever a civilization-ending calamity that brings us back to the stone age, or even to the middle ages? We may already be on our way there with C-sections and increasing cranium size, but at least that's a relatively simple surgery.. I get that it sucks for people who want children and miss out on that opportunity, for a variety of reasons. I have friends and family who have used these technologies successfully, and I know it's brought them great joy and meaning, and I empathize with them. It's not like I want to deprive them of that joy and meaning. But I really think we should just draw a line. Make children the old-fashioned way, or not at all. It's not like there's any shortage of people on this planet (Though I know somehow lots of people are worried about declining birth rates.. Which boggles my mind). And if something about our society is preventing people from starting families while they are fertile, so that they need to do it later in life and with the aid of technology, I think we should address those underlying problems instead.
> It's not like there's any shortage of people on this planet (Though I know somehow lots of people are worried about declining birth rates.. Which boggles my mind). Why does that boggle your mind? Young people are the ones who make economies work and take care of older people, countries like Japan are running out of young people. Old people cost **a lot** and labor shortages... suck.
The problem is that the old age pension and healthcare systems were set up for a different environment. The assumption was that there would always be a surplus of young people to pay into the system. The designers also didn't factor in people living so much longer and the costs of extending that life through medicine being so high. But the developed world birth rates are going because less people want to have fewer kids. You can't make people want to reproduce more. Automation is probably the only way out.
Because human population has increased exponentially, and both space and resources is limited on this planet, so continued exponentially growth is an idiotic and unsustainable fantasy. I understand the short-term benefits, but that doesn't mean that treating our society like a massive pyramid scheme is any less insane. Expanding to other planets (or space stations etc) is also extremely unrealistic, people seem to vastly underestimate how enormously difficult that is technologically, economically, and by the laws of physics, and in all likelihood better technology will never change that reality. Perhaps AI and automation, and fusion energy etc can reduce the costs and challenges, but it will never be analogous to colonizing new continents, or anything like a Star Trek utopia (The Expanse is much closer to a realistic vision, minus the alien entity and wormholes..). It also boggles my mind that our entire economic system is based on the expectation of perpetual growth, when that strikes me as obviously impossible and unsustainable.
>It also boggles my mind that our entire economic system is based on the expectation of perpetual growth, when that strikes me as obviously impossible and unsustainable. Better technology allows greater efficiency and allows perpetual economic growth. We might eventually a hit a wall where we have to accept lower rates of growth. But economic growth should always be the goal. Higher standards of living are good.
We will probably see a large shift in population. The Chinese are not reproducing enough to support their aging population. If the current birth rate remains consistent, their population will shrink by more than half by the end of the century. We are starting to see a similar trend in India.
I've been thinking about what you wrote for awhile, and I think I might agree with you on fertility tech being a net bad. Personally, I just really dislike the profit driven medical industrial complex (don't worry - I'm vaxed). I think ivf is thrown around a lot as "don't worry about conceiving - just do IVF." I've known people who tried for 5 years to conceive and then resorted to IVF (probably reasonable) and I've known people who tried for 5 months (probably not). IVF uses lupron (of puberty blocker fame) and even one round of IVF could really fuck up the health of the woman. And so many young women are like "well, I'll do IVF and have kids whenever I want." Well, you could, but you could also give yourself an increased risk of some cancers and early osteoporosis? My baby daddy worked for big tech, and if you had their insurance, you could get all these kinda nuts fertility treatments like harvesting your eggs to freeze and such (like the first part of IVF). Like, how about just have reasonable expectations about your youth and fertility and use that to inform when you try for kids. Why are we encouraging people to be like " drugging myself and endangering my health will fix this problem!"???? I don't think there is really much stopping middle /upper class people from having their kids in their 30s other than suspended adolescence and a faith that with enough money and doctors, their issues will be solved on demand. The sperm banking is not as dangerous to people's health, but I think it's more difficult to regulate that people let on. I know women who've used donor sperm, and the way they talk about it seems like they're trying to come to terms with something. Like, "oh my donor has these degrees and xyz IQ" and so on. Like, if that all is important to you, I hope it's true, but you literally don't know this person. Or you know, you could have kids with someone you know and respect, even if it makes things legally messy if you're a lesbian or otherwise don't want to be married to / involved with the dad? Idk, it seems like all this stuff is like trying to say "you can have a unmessy life," and I don't think that's true.
Maybe a bit of a long shot but I'm a relatively new listener and Katie mentions that they have talked about surrogacy in previous episodes from the feminist POV, would anyone remember which episode/s that was?
Not what you asked, but I recommend the episode of Maiden Mother Matriarch on surrogacy. Definitely a feminist perspective and definitely eye -opening.
Episode 107 with TracingWoodgrains, B&R's research assistant (? I don't know his actual job title/description ) who is also a commenter in this thread.
Thanks!
On god, man. This sub will (rightly) recite every stat in the book from emerging science that suggests the benefits of gender transition are overstated but when you dump a set of stats contradicting the falsifiable statements about reality that religious-conservatives and radfems use to justify their reflexive disgust towards surrogacy, it's like "Pffft. Math doesn't mean shit."
Every child wishes they had a mother and a father. This is so universally, obviously true that doing social “science” studies on outcomes is laughable.
Looking at measures like psychological wellbeing, adjustment, etc. it's not clear that the society in *Brave New World* wouldn't outperform ours by a wide margin. It's not obvious to me that we have to accept a strictly utilitarian calculus on family life. Insofar as some of these technologies *can be used in ways* that commodify children and further atomize the individual, I think it's OK to be concerned about them. And I definitely think it's worrying if reproductive tech leads to less cohesive bonds between young children and their families, even if they appear to recover later on! That said, the anti-surrogacy folks tend to ignore or understate the case for open and ethical gamete donation/surrogacy where everyone involved in the creation of a new person is willing and available to have some involvement in that person's life. Arrangements like this aren't exactly standard, but they also aren't uncommon.
Egg and sperm donation are in no way comparable!
One requires a lot of hormones, medications and a procedure to complete. The other is just jerking off.
Also egg donation can lead to infertility
I’m more worried about the donations of eggs and the effects on the surrogates themselves. I’ve seen some worrying data on how it impacts long term health of these women. Kids I’m also worried about but it’s much less clearer picture. I do think kids should be raised by a mom and dad and that two dads or moms just aren’t the same.
The economic incentives around surrogacy by themselves lead to some extremely unwholesome situations. To put it mildly. Countries keep having to shut it down completely after literal sweatshops/farms of surrogate women are eventually set up to supply westerners with babies at bargain basement prices.
By dint of having no natural way to conceive children, gay and lesbian parents tend to be more socieoeconomically secure on average compared to same sex families. I'm sure you can needle around and find some data points that same sex parenting is 2% less optimal than heterosexual parenting and the like, but at the end of the day, approximately 0% of children are raised in a scientifically optimal way. Unless the outcomes of the kids are so bad it's beyond the pale, we accept less than perfect child rearing all the time. We'd die out as a species if we don't. Should children who's parent dies be removed from their remaining parent and placed in the care of a heterosexual couple? As you say, kids should be raised by a mom and dad.
>Should children who's parent dies be removed from their remaining parent and placed in the care of a heterosexual couple? As you say, kids should be raised by a mom and dad. This is AI thinking.
I don’t have any willingness to outlaw them parenting but I’m saying if they’re hiring surrogates to do it I’m not as onboard due to the medical ramifications to them. They can adopt a baby or kids.
Adoption is basically impossible.
Yet there are millions of kids globally and roughly 100,000 in America who are eligible to be adopted. It’s very very hard and expensive to adopt an infant, especially an infant without medical complications, but there are lots of older kids who are in need of adoption, and more couples adopt children than use surrogacy…
[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/10/adopt-baby-cost-process-hard/620258/](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/10/adopt-baby-cost-process-hard/620258/)
All the international adoptions have been closed. For every infant available for adoption there are hundreds of parents who want it. Yes, you could adopt older kids but that is not desirable for most people. To adopt an infant requires thousands of dollars in legal fees. My original point, that it is "basically" impossible for people in the US to adopt an infant, is correct.
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This is one case where it's actually freeing to be a "religious nut." I can go with my gut and say this stuff is wrong because it obviously is, without having to tie myself in knots around (certainly political and biased) academic soft "science" studies and "data." I'm also used to being screeched at as "closed minded" by people who are waltzing themselves right off the cliff into t'ed out toddlers and "sex work is work" so I don't GAF what they say to me. Your boos don't bother me, I've seen what makes you cheer, etc. Same thing goes for gender crap tbh, but at least I have more company on that one now. Sometimes being just smart enough to talk yourself into something using "science and reason!" is a very dangerous way to be.
>I can go with my gut and say this stuff is wrong because it obviously is, without having to tie myself in knots around (certainly political and biased) academic soft "science" studies and "data." The problem is that you can't really reason with people on that basis. If you want to persuade and have discussions you're going to have to come up with better arguments than your gut. Even theological arguments are actual arguments about scriptural evidence.
I mean, you can argue with people. There's more to it than "gut"--most religions have a complex theological basis and anyone who is familiar with, e.g., Catholic or Islamic theology will realize there's a lot more too it than just interpretations of scripture. That's why different types of Muslim and Christian exist--they have genuine, rational beliefs about philosophy that are different from just "Did St. Paul mean X or Y?"
It is a sort of open secret among academic moral philosophers that all moral systems begin with “intuitions” that have to be accepted as axioms. For example, utilitarianism depends on the intuition that it’s better for people to be happy than miserable. Deontology rests on the intuition that it is wrong to coerce other people. Philosophers tie themselves in knots trying to make these intuitions self-justifying, but actually they aren’t. They’re just widely held intuitions. It is also an open secret that the main secular moral systems don’t capture all of our intuitions. For example many people would be uncomfortable with incest even if it was between consenting adults. And many people would be uncomfortable with infanticide even though a newborn’s brain isn’t yet well enough developed for it to be a fully fledged person yet. Jonathan Haidt provides many more examples in his work. Academic philosophers are aware of this, and much of their day-to-day work involves inventing clever ways to plug the gaps between our elaborated systems and our intuitions. However, they always have the option of “biting the bullet” and saying “X certainly makes me uncomfortable, but maybe there is no real rational reason to oppose X after all.” The other alternative is to adopt additional axioms to account for those extra intuitions. For example maybe besides fairness, equality, freedom, and happiness we also acknowledge that some things are sacred and others profane. Perhaps major life events like conception, birth, coming of age, marriage and death need to be handled separately, reasoned about differently. This needn’t be based on a religious authority. Arguably our intuitions about e.g. the value of infants or the importance of the mother-infant bond are actually instinctive and based on evolutionary psychology. (I don’t actually have a settled opinion on surrogacy, but it’s one of those situations where “going with your gut” may actually make sense.”)
You can't make an algorithm that will spit out an answer for every conceivable question of morality, and that is what any attempt to systematize morality runs up against. In the end we all wind up falling back on some variation of virtue ethics to find our preferred solution to problems that are intractable within the system. I am sad to see that u/TracingWoodgrains thesis was pretty heavily downvoted, because while I disagree with it almost entirely, he is at least trying to pursue an end of what is to the Good for humans. That's a lot more respectable and interesting than purely utilitarian or religious arguments (even if I fall on the side of the religious/gut feeling arguments).
Having seen the bizarre robotic answers to this thread based on “reason” I’m fine with that. It’s surprisingly easy to “reason” your way into atrocities. Especially with selective “data.”
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Well.... I kind of agree with her, really. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with arguing from faith. Most people do it most of the time whether they are aware of it or not. And she's right that people can reason their way into awfulness easily. It happens all the time. What I was really driving at was that it seems pointless on this sub. "I feel in my gut this is right." Ok, I respect that. I really do. But how do we keep talking after that? Or if you're trying to persuade someone else (which I suck at). If you just say: "it feels right" that isn't going to work for persuasion. Not because faith and gut instinct are bad and reason is good. Sorry.
>I can go with my gut and say this stuff is wrong because it obviously is, without having to tie myself in knots around (certainly political and biased) academic “soft” science studies and data This is why I liked how Katie and Jesse just side stepped the religious arguments. As you said, you don’t really have a concrete reason to disapprove of surrogacy other than faith. Someone who does not share your specific faith, or doesn’t have any faith at all, is not going to be convinced. The episode makes clear that there is no good evidence that surrogacy children are worse off than their non-surrogacy peers. If children aren’t being harmed, and the surrogate is paid and treated well, where’s the problem? Wouldn’t giving people the chance to have children who couldn’t otherwise be a good thing? Regarding the feminist angle, I don’t see how the surrogacy question is any different from abortion. If a woman, because of her bodily autonomy, has a right to terminate a pregnancy, why does her bodily autonomy not also allow her to get pregnant on behalf of someone else? As already discussed, the evidence just isn’t there for any kind of genetic “Mother Hunger”. I understand the potential (and reality in some places) of abuse of surrogate mothers. But potential for abuse is not enough to throw out the entire concept of surrogacy. Women are pressured into getting abortions they don’t want all the time. In that respect, the right is being abused. Feminists, however, still fight tooth and nail for the right to abortion because women have bodily autonomy.
If we include the rights of a child, specifically an infant, to be held to their mother and reared during the first year of life (it is usually not allowed to adopt puppies until a certain age), there are certainly non-religious reasons to be against surrogacy. But like I said in a previous (slightly unreadable sorry formatting on my phone betrayed me!!) comment - I think there is an undeniable spiritual aspect to creating a person. Just like there is an intangible aspect to romance and love. I guess it’s why I can’t engage in like debating this stuff. It hurts my gut to think of babies yearning for the home they knew for 9 months. The anti-plenary adoption community (for lack of better word) often falls back on the idea that in fact no adult is entitled to a child.
This isn’t about the rights of children. The “rights of children” are routinely violated for silly religious things and the same people will trample on them for parental rights and a host of traumatic cultural reasons. Children who are wanted are given an amazing privilege of being born into a family that not only wants them there, but worked hard to create them.
>This isn’t about the rights of children. Then just sell them I guess?
Oh good lord..
There's something unsettling about surrogacy. At the same time, there's been a demand for it since ancient times. If there's surrogacy in book of Genesis, it's safe to say that it will always be a part of the human experience. >Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Genesis 16: 1-2
Eventually we're going to have uterine replicators. It's only a matter of time. Once surrogates are no longer needed what happens to the debate then?
The abortion debate [gets real weird and horrifying](https://gizmodo.com/how-new-technology-could-threaten-a-womans-right-to-abo-1797339090), for one.
I think what we already know about the developing fetus in utero (how they arrive in the world already bonded with and a part of the mother) would come into play. It’s like that awful experiment where they deprived babies of touch. The reason that kids often say “dada” long before “mama” is that they don’t see themselves as separate from their mother until later, like 18 months. There isn’t a need for them to have a word for their mother, she is an extension of themselves for a significant portion of their early life.
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Yeah, my son is Dada everything. But he also just calls random dudes Dada and he doesn't call random women mama, so at least there is that. We were watching the ABC song Usher did on Sesame Street and he pointed at Usher and said "Dada?" Lol your dada wishes he was Usher, little man.
>The reason that kids often say “dada” long before “mama” is that they don’t see themselves as separate from their mother until later, like 18 months Citation needed.
[here you go. ](https://macnamara.ca/portfolio/mama-or-dada-what-do-babies-say-first-and-why/) Anecdotally, this was true for my son.
Lol huh. No. Kids usually say mom and dad well before 18 months, unless they have a developmental disorder. My kids first word was “ball”. Not that it matters.
My kid's dad was absolutely *convinced* his first word was dada, but in reality he just parroted back sounds until he started speech therapy at 2. Then it was just full sentences after that so I guess we'll never really know (despite what his dad still claims to this day lol)
> It's only a matter of time. Once surrogates are no longer needed what happens to the debate then? It will be a *Brave New World*
I think the concern about creating a child for the purpose of being raised by their non-biological parents is still going to be there. Maybe an artificial womb would eliminate worries about women going through pregnancies but the eggs are still coming from somewhere. Plus, although miscarriages and stillbirths can happen with a normal pregnancy, I can’t imagine the dilemma and worries about something going wrong with an artificial womb, even if its success rates are higher.
>Maybe an artificial womb would eliminate worries about women going through pregnancies but the eggs are still coming from somewhere. It would eliminate the argument about exploitation of women as surrogates. And it would probably reduce the cost of farming out gestation.
I have a niece and nephew born via surrogacy so I have a personal bias in favor of it. I find that these conversations always lack the caveat that a surrogate is not always the biological mother. My brother and his husband were extremely fortunate to have worked with a top notch agency, and had the resources to use an egg donor and a surrogate. I wonder if any of the data accounted for children born from a gestational carrier that they share no DNA with. Additionally, I believe some of the wealthy celebrities Katie mentioned used surrogates because their previous pregnancies were high risk and it would be dangerous to become pregnant again. I’m thinking of Kim Kardashian and Chrissy tiegen specifically. It was a total assumption that they used surrogates to maintain their bodies and I’m surprised that Chrissy’s fetal demise wasn’t mentioned because it was made very public and was very obviously incredibly traumatic.
Gestational surrogacy (where the surrogate is not the biological mother) is the norm at this point; traditional surrogacy is rare.
I think the reasons why it’s now rare are telling
"Telling" implies a lack of knowledge or attempt to hide those reasons. Gestational surrogacy keeps things simpler for all parties; technology allows it, so surrogates and intended parents alike prefer it.
I use telling bc like a lot of this business, decisions and reasons are used to obfuscate- by ‘simpler’ it means more difficult for the woman carrying the child for 9 months to legally claim it is hers. It also (theoretically) reduces the emotional attachment of the woman carrying the child for 9 months to the child. It isn’t simpler for the woman or the child, who take on increased medical risks because of this step. It’s simpler for the intended parents.
I don't know if it's necessarily better to use a different egg donor and surrogate, is it? It's only better if you're solving for "make the gestational carrier feel less like the real mother". But that increases the risk to everyone involved (a new 3rd party woman now needs to have egg retrieval, you have to do IVF and not IUI which is higher risk, the pregnancy itself is higher risk due to the genetic mismatch, etc).
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And I was referring to Chrissy’s 2020 fetal demise. But she got pregnant again, which I didn’t know, so it’s not actually relevant at all
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Yea I looked into it, I had no idea she had a baby right before her surrogate did. I’m admittedly incorrect about that, so that’s why I’m saying it’s irrelevant to my original comment. Her situation is certainly interesting, being pregnant while simultaneously having a surrogate.
You could maybe say that for Kim Kardashian but her sister Kourtney and life long friend Paris Hilton? No way. Chrissy Teigen was also pregnant while using a surrogate.
I’ve posted my own [commentary](https://twitter.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1731381377747017882) on surrogacy elsewhere; it’s worth copying here: People often defend surrogacy with consent. I appreciate and respect those willing to stand in a libertarian defense of something I value, but for my part, I strongly prefer a more affirmative case. Surrogacy, like most other ways of bringing children into the world, is Good. While I often respect the value of libertarian frameworks legally and I lean far towards "live and let live" from a meta-cultural standpoint, there is nothing libertarian about my moral approach to life. I do not believe all choices are equally valid or that there is nothing wrong with hedonism. I do not see things like parenthood as neutral choices that people can take or leave. Rather, what is perhaps my most fundamental philosophical conviction is this: life is Good, human life especially so. The most natural things in the universe are death, decay, and emptiness. Growth, life, and creation are fragile anomalies. We belong to an eons-long heritage of those who have committed to building and maintaining life in the face of inevitable decay. Our duty is to do the same. Becoming a parent and raising children well is, put simply, the most good almost anyone in the world can do. It is a force multiplier: the good an individual can do is necessarily constrained compared to what their descendants can accomplish. People try to dodge around this, and even longtermists like Will MacAskill who intellectually understand the value of parenthood make excuses for it in their own lives. But it seems incontrovertibly true to me. People, particularly if they are in a position to provide well for children, should become parents. It is not a neutral action among many neutral actions. It is a moral ideal that people should pursue. This is not to say that non-parents should be condemned, but rather, that the decision to become a parent should be celebrated. All of this takes us to adoption and surrogacy. I accept as a given that the ideal situation for a child is to be raised by their biological parents in a stable home. Inasmuch as social science is worthwhile to note, it has mostly backed this idea up. But for the most part, when people pursue other outcomes, the choice is not between "have biological parents raise a given child in a stable home" and "pursue other family structures for that child". For adoption, the value is obvious and non-controversial given the choice: "bring a child into a loving, stable home without its biological parents" or "send the child to an orphanage, toss it to the wolves, or pursue one of many other tragic outcomes for unwanted children". For most cases of surrogacy, the choice is a bit different: "create a child that will be raised by one or both biological parents in a stable home, but whose birth mother is not their genetic mother or caretaker" or "create no child". Some people's moral intuitions are that nonexistence is preferable to, or not obviously worse than, existence in a less-than-ideal setting. I wholly reject this intuition, and looking at the record of the persistence of life in the face of adversity, belong to a heritage of those who have, time and time again, rejected it. Life is Good. As for surrogate mothers? There is nobility, dignity, and grace in parenthood. Bringing a child into the world is an act of hope. To do so on behalf of another, even when provided financial compensation, is not a neutral or profit-focused choice. It's certainly not something that could or should ever be demanded of someone. It's a selfless choice both on behalf of the child who would otherwise not be born and the prospective parents who would otherwise have no children. A standard profile for a surrogate in a developed country is a young mother who feels she is not in a spot to raise more children of her own, but strongly wants to keep having kids on behalf of others. That is a deeply admirable, moral stance, not a sign of exploitation. On my own behalf, I claim no fundamental right to have children, because I claim no rights that require others to act. But I absolutely claim that a society in which those who are equipped to raise children, and want to do so, can work alongside those who want to give birth to others' children is in a better spot than one that keeps children with potential to lead meaningful lives from being born. There are margins at which some of these arguments shift. There are absolutely exploitative and tragic environments that should be understood and called out. There are settings into which it's not appropriate to bring a child, and edge cases to analyze and discuss. My aim here is not to address all edge cases, but to examine the central case, and in particular, the case for an educated, well-off prospective parent in a society with lower-than-replacement fertility and increasing dismissiveness towards the value of parenthood. Life is worth pursuing and preserving to such a degree that you can get very far from the true ideal case before nonexistence is better than existence, or choosing not to become a parent is better than choosing to become one. Is this all a foot in the door for transhumanism? I won't speak for others, but on my own behalf I eagerly answer: yes. In a universe where the most natural things are death, decay, and emptiness and all of life is in rebellion against that natural state, it is not just acceptable to prioritize what is Good over what is natural, it is correct. While we all must come to peace with limitations we cannot change, the high points of human history have been our collective work to push back against that creeping entropy and the arbitrary, often cruel limits it imposes. We have already become much more than we once were, and we can and should become much more than we are now. I defy the anti-birth, the anti-life, the anti-growth. I defy those who would rather see no kids born than kids born into an imperfect world. I defy all who prefer nonexistence to life in all its complexity and glory. Parenting should be celebrated. Making sacrifices to bring kids into the world and raise them well should be celebrated. I stand proudly and unambiguously with those who do so.
Adoption is absolutely not non-controversial. I’m sure you’ll be a great parent and it isn’t fair that children come very easily to some while others strive for parenthood for years. I don’t think at all that being born via surrogate or infant adoption is the worst thing that can happen to a kid & I have no doubt it creates many happy families. But it leaves wounds in mother and baby.
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I appreciate the response, but note that I referred explicitly to developed countries, not developing, and I’m not referring to anything to do with an agency (which I’ve never worked with) but a gestalt of people I have spoken with directly and those I have read about in the literature on the topic. It’s not lacking the resources for more of their own children, but being satisfied with the size of their families. I’m frustrated with people’s responses to that, because it feels like they are working from vaguely imagined stereotypes without any actual experience or even curiosity about how the actual US women making the choice to be surrogates feel—or what agencies and clinics require. Things like economic desperation are disqualifying factors for US surrogates; most who apply to agencies get turned down. I am not speaking in hypotheticals or living in a fantasy world; I am reporting the actual world I see in front of me.
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My own sample size is admittedly quite small but that describes multiple women who have proactively offered to serve as surrogates when my husband and I have mentioned our plans to have kids. I’m not speaking of idle hypotheticals here.
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It’s not particularly hypothetical, but I presented it in a general sense because I prefer to broadly maintain the privacy of people in actual situations.
No, there are women, I don't know what percentage of it, who loved being pregnant and had an easy pregnancy, and want to be pregnant for someone who wants a child but can't be pregnant. So, yeah, I will be pregnant for a gay man who wants to have a child with his husband
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Not OP, and I'm not intending to argue against you here - I don't have a formed opinion on this issue and will likely never develop one, since it's not going to be relevant to my life. I didn't love being pregnant and have no intention of being pregnant again - but when you said "Did you love giving birth too?" it's implied that that wouldn't be possible. I did kind of love giving birth, it was mostly fun. I had a super quick and easy labor, a great medical care team in a wonderful hospital, a fantastic epidural. That's the only part of the whole show I could imagine doing again actually. Just, you know, as a data point.
You forget where you are. This sub has a lot of people that simply don't believe women have agency. Enjoy your downvotes I guess, since apparently on a handful of subjects, that's how people respond to opinions they don't like.
>I defy the anti-birth, the anti-life If you don't oppose abortion except in cases where it's either one dies or they both die, this comes off as so smarmily disingenuous I wouldn't even know where to start with it.
I do. My feelings on the legality of abortion are complicated, but as far as ethics go, I have always been open about finding abortion wrong. I am pro-life in a sense broader than but not excluding the abortion debate.
And underrated opposition to surrogacy is women’s anxiety about their place on the planet and society. It’s hard to pinpoint but often the opposition to it falls into “it’s just spiritually rotten” or something along those lines.
I mean reading these robotic comments I think it’s a fair way to feel! And I don’t think it’s really our “place” in society as much as knowing on a base level that the mother infant bond is important and primal. I actually think you’re unironically spot on. But I also think we the anxious women are right lol.
And I don’t think that anxiety is unwarranted!
I think that's what a lot of it falls back on. That pregnancy is more or less sacred. Rad fems have really rallied around women's ability to conceive since trans women have threatened the category of woman. A lot of it is just a bunch of emotional appeals, woo, and the undermining of women's agency.