News Right to children or children’s rights? Surrogacy debate comes to a head in Rome
News Right to children or children’s rights? Surrogacy debate comes to a head in Rome
It seems cruel and unnatural to rip a child from their mother and give the child immediately to other people. I do believe that surrogacy internationally doesn't have any safeguards in place and that it is ripe for abuse. We should not traffick human beings, and certainly not babies.
With regards to surrogacy, I am on the side of the rights of the child. I have only had one child and afterwards ended up infertile. I may be speaking from a position of privilege in that I already had one child but I didn't think it was some sort of human right to have another if my body wouldn't give me another.
It seems cruel and unnatural to rip a child from their mother and give the child immediately to other people. I do believe that surrogacy internationally doesn't have any safeguards in place and that it is ripe for abuse. We should not traffick human beings, and certainly not babies.
Surrogate mothers don't choose to carry a baby for 9 months for kicks. It's a choice driven by poor financial situations, one that can lead to a multitude of problems. Besides the actual delivery, there's anemia, depression, morning sickness, the list goes on and on. And a woman that has to go through that because she needs the money, not because she actually wants a baby, should be given better options instead. This article barely mentions surrogate mothers.
Potential parents don't have a right to be parents. Only adults that are actually capable of raising a child (not just in terms of responsibility, but also other factors such as financial status: poor parents still need to feed their child, afford medication if and when needed, etc.) should try for a child. It's also ignorant to simply say "just adopt", since adoptees deserve good parents and a healthy home life too. Besides, adoption shouldn't be viewed as a way for potential parents to have children, but rather a system for children to be given homes and families.
It's saddening to see that "Italy’s main gay family advocacy group" Rainbow Families gives priority to parents who simply want children, instead of putting first the rights of children and surrogate mothers. I'm not against gay couples being parents, that's not the point. Rather, the fact that Rainbow Families disregards the rights of both surrogate mothers and children is worrying, because I know women's rights, gay rights and children's rights are not incongruent with one another, much on the contrary. It shouldn't be viewed as "this is anti-gay" but rather "this is protecting women from being exploited and children from being viewed as commercial products".
One of the people mentioned in the article is a gay man who calls the biological mother of him and his husband's children their "carrier". Maybe it was just unfortunate wording, maybe he's a truly morally upstanding person, maybe it was even an issue of translation, but the word "carrier" bears some unfortunate implications in my opinion. It feels like when children are bought like commercial products, their mothers are viewed as nothing but baby factories too. It's at least nice to know in their particular case, the biological mother, the gay couple and the children all seem to have good relationships. Hopefully that's true. This doesn't negate the fact that the great majority of cases isn't going to be this good.
The article also mentions that the Vatican holds the opinion that human life begins at conception (a common anti-abortion belief) and that the counter-rally supported by Rainbow Families also had the purpose of "[voicing] opposition to proposals by Italy’s hard-right-led government to make it a crime for Italians to use surrogates abroad". However, even if their reasons for certain opinions comes from a conservative point of view, it doesn't mean those opinions are necessarily wrong. I'm not a conservative, far from it. I'm just saying that if a conservative says the sky is blue and surrogacy is wrong, it doesn't automatically mean the sky is actually red and surrogacy is morally good.
gretchenantwort
Jul 21 2024, 1:01 PM #3While it's definitely important to discuss the rights of the children had by surrogacy, I find it highly distressing that the ONLY person in this article to mention the rights of the surrogate mothers is Pope freakin' Francis.
Surrogate mothers don't choose to carry a baby for 9 months for kicks. It's a choice driven by poor financial situations, one that can lead to a multitude of problems. Besides the actual delivery, there's anemia, depression, morning sickness, the list goes on and on. And a woman that has to go through that because she needs the money, not because she actually wants a baby, should be given better options instead. This article barely mentions surrogate mothers.
Potential parents don't have a right to be parents. Only adults that are actually capable of raising a child (not just in terms of responsibility, but also other factors such as financial status: poor parents still need to feed their child, afford medication if and when needed, etc.) should try for a child. It's also ignorant to simply say "just adopt", since adoptees deserve good parents and a healthy home life too. Besides, adoption shouldn't be viewed as a way for potential parents to have children, but rather a system for children to be given homes and families.
It's saddening to see that "Italy’s main gay family advocacy group" Rainbow Families gives priority to parents who simply want children, instead of putting first the rights of children and surrogate mothers. I'm not against gay couples being parents, that's not the point. Rather, the fact that Rainbow Families disregards the rights of both surrogate mothers and children is worrying, because I know women's rights, gay rights and children's rights are not incongruent with one another, much on the contrary. It shouldn't be viewed as "this is anti-gay" but rather "this is protecting women from being exploited and children from being viewed as commercial products".
One of the people mentioned in the article is a gay man who calls the biological mother of him and his husband's children their "carrier". Maybe it was just unfortunate wording, maybe he's a truly morally upstanding person, maybe it was even an issue of translation, but the word "carrier" bears some unfortunate implications in my opinion. It feels like when children are bought like commercial products, their mothers are viewed as nothing but baby factories too. It's at least nice to know in their particular case, the biological mother, the gay couple and the children all seem to have good relationships. Hopefully that's true. This doesn't negate the fact that the great majority of cases isn't going to be this good.
The article also mentions that the Vatican holds the opinion that human life begins at conception (a common anti-abortion belief) and that the counter-rally supported by Rainbow Families also had the purpose of "[voicing] opposition to proposals by Italy’s hard-right-led government to make it a crime for Italians to use surrogates abroad". However, even if their reasons for certain opinions comes from a conservative point of view, it doesn't mean those opinions are necessarily wrong. I'm not a conservative, far from it. I'm just saying that if a conservative says the sky is blue and surrogacy is wrong, it doesn't automatically mean the sky is actually red and surrogacy is morally good.
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