"Wombs for Rent! ....Outsourcing Pregnancy

[KoKo]

Money Changes Everything

by The Center for Bioethics and Culture

By Jennifer Lahl, CBC President

Outsourcing pregnancy has become big business, transforming having a child into a “bits and pieces” brokered industry: sperm from a handsome Scandinavian stud; eggs from a smart, beautiful Ivy League woman; a womb-for-rent from a poor woman in India trying to provide food and education for her children; and brokers in the middle helping set up the legal transactions to build a better baby the 21st century way. Just this past week, London’s Daily Mail ran a story titled, “The Designer baby factory: Eggs from beautiful Eastern Europeans, sperm from wealthy Westerners and embryos implanted in desperate women.”

Sadly, the “gestational surrogates”—truly desperate women—in these stories are identified as “uneducated, bare-footed, dirt-poor Indian women from outlying villages.” The surrogacy consultants who run the WYZAX surrogacy clinic assure intended parents that the surrogates will not get attached to the babies.

The Romneys didn’t have to exploit a poor woman in India. They chose to exploit a woman, probably much less poor, right here in the U.S. And their surrogate might not have felt so exploited. She was just “helping a couple have a baby”—and being compensated for her help. Because of little regulation in the U.S., commercial surrogacy is legal and couples like the Romneys don’t have to outsource their pregnancies to India. Our Canadian neighbors got it right when the Supreme Court of Canada wrote, “allowing the purchase of human gametes and surrogacy services devalues human life and degrades those who choose to participate in such a commercial transaction” (emphasis mine).

Many of the news stories I’ve read over the weekend about Tagg and Jen Romney using a “gestational surrogate” state that this means the child is biologically theirs. I’m not sure how the press came to that conclusion because a gestational surrogate only provides the womb. Gestational surrogacy is just the derogatory term for the woman who carries and gives birth to the baby. They could have used an egg donor, which would mean the egg donor would be the genetic mother. They could have used a sperm donor too, meaning Tagg wouldn’t be the genetic father of the boys, if that was the case. And all this, apparently ignoring the Latter Day Saints’ position on surrogacy (the LDS church strongly discourages surrogate motherhood). Tagg and Jen have used this same surrogate in the past to give birth to their first son.

Outsourcing pregnancy. Wombs for rent. Commercialized Conception. Call me shocked and disgusted.

http://www.cbc-network.org/2012/05/money-changes-everything/

[Skidmore]

1. I'll bet they have a binder of candidates for the job.

[KoKo]

2. probably...Romney got it confused it was the Binder of Surrogates Bios & Photos that Tagg and

the other son and his wife had to leaf through to choose the "PERFECT" Romney Surrogate to birth the next dynasty.

sigh.....

[hughee99]

3. So she's suggesting the government SHOULD be deciding what women

can do with their womb?

[LisaL]

4. Yea, I don't think that is a winning argument.

Romney's son is hardly the one person to use a surrogate.

[NotThisTime]

5. That's not a good idea for so many reasons

[KoKo]

6. I think she's trying to protect the Poor from being exploited by the rich...

And, you must be thinking that if a woman can make money "renting out her womb" (which is what this really is) then it's pefectly okay and if you think it's okay for poor women to rent out their womb because of hard times then it's fine for rich women to rent out their wombs also.

How many rich women do you think want to "rent out" their wombs, though.

There's a bit of an ethical question here about exploitation which could be discussed beyond what we do with our wombs when it's rape, or personal circumstances.

It's an interesting question and something that will need to be sorted out in discussions about the pros and cons, though.

[LisaL]

7. Unless they are forced to do it, we are talking about choice.

[hughee99]

8. So if a woman who didn't need the money wanted to carry a baby,

and even charge money for it, it would be okay, but poor people shouldn't profit from it?

As far as rich women renting out their wombs goes, that argument isn't going to get you far. It's REALLY easy to name a host of jobs poor people HAVE to do that rich people don't want to do.

I can certainly agree that no woman should be forced to do this, but I can't argue that no woman should be allowed to do this (regardless of income).