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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   37124 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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I see another clear difference between these two situations in regards to the child's experience. If a mother gives her baby up for adoption, for whatever reason, the child must accept that his or her mother was not in a position to raise them, and find solace in the fact that another family was. This is just a sad fact of life that is part of the child's experience.

However, in the case of surrogacy, the child must understand that its parents wanted the position of sole parenthood so much that they compensated the child's actual birth mother in order to make her go away forever. And that is a weird twisted possessive experience that the child is left with in relation to its family that it will be growing up with.

So the child is trapped trying to establish normal familial relations with someone who saw it more as a possession than another human being who has a right to a relationship with a mother. And this is especially the case for gay male couples, who have unilaterally decided that their child can and will be happy enough to grow up without a mother just because they want to feel more normal and like they haven't lost out on any important American suburban experiences by embracing their gay lifestyle.

This is similar for lesbian couples, but not quite, given the number of men who seem happy to donate their sperm for a little bit of cash and don't seem bothered by the idea that they have children out there who they'll never know or care for. That is more analogous to the adoption where the child just understands that their father wasn't interested, but they do have parents who are.

The act of gestating a child and giving birth almost always, if not completely always, changes a woman's body forever, and is traumatic, and takes a lifelong toll, which is supposedly compensated for by a lifelong benefit of having a child to care for. I don't see how any one-time payment can be equivalent. I would be interested in hearing from a surrogate who really felt like it was.

My apologies for mixing up all the pronouns when referring to the child.

However, in the case of surrogacy, the child must understand that its parents wanted the position of sole parenthood so much that they compensated the child's actual birth mother in order to make her go away forever.

Or simply that the child was wanted so much that it was worth thousands of pounds to the parents... Do you think that child feels better or worse than the child of hetero parents who tell him he was an unplanned mistake?

So the child is trapped trying to establish normal familial relations with someone who saw it more as a possession than another human being who has a right to a relationship with a mother.

Do you apply this standard to IVF etc? Cruel, selfish parents willing to spend big money to pervert sacred nature so they can have their desired accessory-child? No, probably not, right?

And this is especially the case for gay male couples, who have unilaterally decided that their child can and will be happy enough to grow up without a mother just because they want to feel more normal and like they haven't lost out on any important American suburban experiences by embracing their gay lifestyle.

Do you also apply this standard to, say, women who use sperm banks, or single mothers who decide to keep a pregnancy after the would-be father has walked away or vanished?

I see IVF as different because the child isn't denied a mother and the child's mother still gives birth to them, even if she's not the genetic mother. I'm not that worried about the perversion of nature, sacred or not.

I would not apply the same standard to women who use sperm banks or have absentee fathers. I don't see why you would think i would.

Giving up an egg or giving up sperm so a woman can gestate and give birth to a baby she will parent is not similar to being paid to go through the entire birth process and then leave forever.

Other users have made an excellent point as well, which is that every argument you can make for surrogacy can be made for legalizing selling your kidney, or a lobe of your liver, and kidneys aren't sentient, and your liver will eventually grow back. I'd appreciate if you could explain if you think people should be allowed to sell a kidney or a lobe of their liver if you think a woman should be able to rent out her womb.

The simple answer here is to also support legalizing the sale of kidneys.

Those who recoil in disgust at this modernist-transhumanist depravity may be surprised to discover that the one country in the world where kidney sales are legal is the decidedly anti-modernist Islamic Republic of Iran. Their decision to legalize kidney sales was not motivated by some kind of debauched ideology; it was purely pragmatic. And it worked: today, there is no waiting list for kidneys in Iran.

I will admit, I was disgusted when I first saw this idea on the sidebar of /r/neoliberal, but I have since come around.

Iran is not a compelling example for me. In fact, I find it to be the opposite of a compelling example. It is interesting to know that about Iran, however, so thank you for sharing.

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