Agreed. My two sons both know their birth mothers. They experienced a little pain. The two birth mothers have experienced a lot. Adoption is making the best of a bad situation. Surrogate pregnancy is paying someone to undergo pain on your behalf.
Posted on 12/31/2007 5:25:52 AM PST by Brilliant
Great. America aborts about 1.5 million per year and around the world others are paying women to have babies. What’s wrong with this picture? America has its dark side, too.
OK, my son is adopted. But his loss of his birth-mother was not something we deliberately arranged; we didn't bring him into being as an intentionally outsourced product or as an article of commerce.
We were responding--- after the fact ---to a tragic situation that had already happened: motherlessness. We were responding to his need, not wounding him via commercially-motivated mother-separation to serve our need.
And that's the difference. Ths reproductive concubinage transaction is organized so as to purposely eradicate any relationship between the birth-mother and the child, as if birth-giving had no personal meaning and the women were just, literally, incubators. Meat machines.
I referred to "conservatives" being against procreative adultery, and was instantly rebuked for making this generalization. Perhaps I misspoke. I should have referred instead to "Judeo-Christian conservatives." This is, historically, the group that abolished reproductive concubinage ("surrogacy"), this is the group that historically upheld, and still upholds, the integrity of sex and procreation between the marriage partners exclusively.
Separation from the woman who gave you birth is a wound. Some children --- like my son--- were wounded by chance. No child should be wounded by choice.
Agreed. My two sons both know their birth mothers. They experienced a little pain. The two birth mothers have experienced a lot. Adoption is making the best of a bad situation. Surrogate pregnancy is paying someone to undergo pain on your behalf.
Exactly, gitmo. The "surrogate" contract means intentionally structuring the situation so that the baby and the birthmother both suffer the premeditated severing of attachment in order for you to get what you want.
It's astounding that this could be legal when buying and selling babies is rightly considered criminal in every country in the world.
It's the aforethought, deliberate planning of this fractured situation is what makes the huge moral difference. It seems so few people understand that. But let's keep telling them til they get it.
I agree with you, Mrs. Don-o. It’s a deification of Freedom of Contract, so to speak. (Robert Heinlein, that libertine-tarian, predicted this way back, fwiw.)
Seems like a very reasonable distinction to me. The person who told you that you have no right to speak on it because you are an adoptive mother is not a deep thinker. That said, I don’t really know what to think about the latest outsourcing phenom in India.
In the year 6565
Ain’t gonna need no husband, won’t need no wife
You’ll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube
How has that worked out? I pretty much rejected that as an option when we were in the process. My thinking was (and is) that kids do have their moments when the wish that they had anyone else for parents, except Mom and Dad (at least I remember thinking that.)
So, why introduce that reality "You aren't my real mother. You can't tell me what to do."
You could think of it as a substitute for real economic reform in India. A woman doesn't donate eggs, or incubate another couple's child and hand it over, because that's what she really wants to do with her life. They're doing it for money, and there should be better ways for Indian woman to contribute to their families' support.
Rather like Mexicans' migration to the United States, this is a convenience for the governments that don't want to do the hard work of freeing people to earn a decent living in their own countries.
Those who are ‘ordering’ babies are likely the same class of wealthy yuppies who waited too long to go the traditional family route because they were too involved in their own selfish interests (careers, sleeping around, traveling, whatever) and are now placing custom orders for their children.
This appeals to two types: capitalists who don’t mind making a profit from unnecessary human reproduction and anti-establishment types who are seeking ‘alternatives’ to the traditional, Judeo-Christian family.
The key here is unnecessary human reproduction. If there were a genuine shortage of repopulation numbers, that would lend some credibility to the concept. But as long as there are too many people already being born in certain parts of the world, there is no need for surrogacy.
Oh, there is also a third element to this. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it is a type that doesn’t like to buy used cars or used houses, a certain nouveau riche element that likes things to be brand spanking new, custom ordered, custom tailored. They want to order a child. They don’t like the idea of ‘owning’ someone else’s throw-away or used article. Pretty sad state of affairs.
This is a moral judgment, not an objective observation. In the spirit of my post #10, I would rephrase it in this way: "There are place where parents do not have the economic opportunities or cultural resources to adequately support and rear the children they bear.
I remember reading an article years ago in a newspaper published in Howard County, MD (a rather wealthy county which includes the "planned community" of Columbia, MD) about the rate of child abuse in Howard County, which exceeded that of most other counties in MD.
Turns out that child abuse is not only associated with such low-class behaviors as out-of-wedlock unplanned pregnancy, single-parenting, welfare, etc. It's also associated with wealthy, control-freak parents who demand a planned, perfect and privileged child, and who freak out when the kid acts like a kid, i.e. imperfect.
If you've spent $40,000 on an in-vitro-plus-surrogacy exotic import custom designed baby, you're likely going to have sky-high standards for customer satisfaction. If he turns out to be just an average kid, you may feel a little defrauded. If he cries and gets snot running out of his nose, you may feel definitely ripped off, investment-wise. And if he dribbles his organic pomegranate smoothie all over your $18,000 Versace Blue Barocco Velvet on Silver Leaf Sofa Set, you may just grab him by the neck and throw him against a wall.
It happens.
I'm not saying that never happens to a natural-begotten baby. I am saying that obtaining your child in a commercial transaction will tend to heighten the perception that he's something you acquired to satisfy your needs. And that's a dangerous state of affairs.
I am convinced that God designed natural marital sexual love, pregnancy, childbirth and nursing to maximize the instinctual bonding and personal, intimate, bodily attachment between a mother and her child. Deliberately designing a new physical paradigm of motherhood (e.g. surrogacy) violates the wholeness God intended, and deprives the child of the natural protections God designed.
We have never regreted that decision. We told each other there was no way we could tell that young woman (now 2 young women) "Thank You for this greatest gift we can imagine. Now please never contact us again."
The first boy's birthmother didn't feel up to the challenge of seeing him, so we sent pics and letters. Eventually, that boy got very curious about his past. He was about 14 at the time. We took him to meet his whole birth family ... they were having a kind of reunion anyway. His birthmother was out of town, though. We took him to the hospital where he was born. He was completely satisfied by the time we went back home a few days later.
His birthmother eventually got to the point where she felt she could handle it. I prepared my son ahead of time, telling him I didn't know what his expectations were but it was probably going to be like meeting any other adult. We spent a weekend with her and a bunch of half-siblings and cousins. He had a grand time with the kids. But I was right about what it would be like meeting his birthmother.
My other son has known his birthmother and her family from day one. I don't think he "got it" until he was about 6-7. We visit them about once or twice a year. Mrs gitmo and I have become good friends with his birth-grandparents.
It has been helpful to be able to get family medical information. We have also been able to call one of the birthmothers and tell her we think we know what is going on with one of her kids because of medical conditions our boy has.
It was definitely a scary step to take, but we are convinced it was the way to go. In fact, it was because of our open relationship with the first birthmom that the second one approached us about adopting her then-unborn child.
So, why introduce that reality "You aren't my real mother. You can't tell me what to do."
My older son has once or twice used something like that. But he recognizes that we are his real parents. We just ignored him when he threw that out. I feel much more comfortable that there will never be a moment when they feel we have hidden the truth from them. And those questions about why this happened are already addressed during a time when they are not distraught. They fully understand their birthmoms love them but this happened because they couldn't care for them. We have made a point that we never say one negative word about their birthmoms and the ladies know that.
Do you have pictures of that sofa?
I can say from experience that pomegranate does not wash out.
On eBay: $18,000 Versace Blue Barocco Velvet on Silver Leaf Sofa Set Costs more than our car did, new.
I think we paid $18,000 for the Big Van (a year old with 30,000 miles).
Zot, that’s an ugly thing, but it wouldn’t show blue Kool-ade spills, at least!
Ha! Here they come with slurpees!
LOL! Even that bilious blue would probably still show pomegranate stains, though. That stuff is BAD.
It wasn’t a moral judgment. Your explanation is exactly what I meant by ‘too many’ in ‘certain parts of the world.’ I didn’t think it needed an explanation given the context of the post and my previous post (the value of human life, the immorality of farming people as a commodity, one country aborting by the millions each year and people in those countries buying children from surrogates).
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