Renewed push to ban surrogacy

Freedom of choice includes carrying a baby for another woman ... or does it?

Surrogate parents Elton John, right, with husband David Furnish. Picture: AFP

A woman decides to have a baby for somebody else, perhaps because she needs the money or perhaps in an act of altruism.

Either way, it’s her choice, isn’t it? If we’ve learned anything since the mid-1970s, it’s that a woman can do what she wants with her body. It’s a central tenet of feminism: her womb, her decision.

All of which makes the feminist campaign against surrogacy, which kicks off in Australia this week, rather interesting.

Australian lawyers and academics, most self-described as feminist, are launching a book, a seminar and a campaign to oppose surrogacy, saying it’s akin to female slavery or a modern Handmaid’s Tale and that without celebrity endorsement and feel-good appurtenances it would certainly be outlawed.

Which may be right.

They’re feminists, though. How can you on one hand devote your life to the cause of female autonomy and agency, and then try to tell women what to do, what not to do, with their wombs?

Surrogates’ stories

Renate Klein is one of three editors of the new book, Broken Bonds: Surrogate Mothers Speak Out, in which surrogates, including two from Australia, tell their stories. She is also one of the organisers of this Friday’s Broken Bond and Big Money conference at RMIT in Melbourne, where local and international speakers will tackle such odious topics as baby brokers, cross-border trade and the problem of “defective product” — when a baby of an unwanted gender or less than physical perfection is born, and the commissioning parents decide they don’t want it.

“I am definitely defining myself as a feminist,” says Klein, a bio­logist. “But surrogacy should be illegal, for the sake of the woman and the baby. Think of what it involves: a mother grows the child over nine months in her own body. The child knows no other relationship other than with the woman who gives birth to it. We take the child from this mother, we say she is not the mother. That is just plain wrong, it is illogical, it is an abuse of human rights, and we say it should be outlawed.”

The law regarding surrogacy is different in every Australian state and territory. Altruistic surrogacy, where nobody gets paid, is mostly legal. “Commissioning parents” can cover the surrogate mother’s medical expenses, a process easily corrupted.

Commercial surrogacy, where the surrogate mother and perhaps the egg donor get paid, is banned.

To get around that ban, Australian couples have taken to travelling overseas, to impregnate women from poorer countries. Are they allowed to do this? The Department of Home Affairs advises “extreme caution”. There have been cases where parents and newborns were held up at the border on suspicion of being involved in a baby trade. With these arrangements, a child may not automatically be granted Australian entry. The commissioning parents may likewise struggle to be recognised in court as the parents.

Mobile users can view graphic here

A mum is not a bus

It is not the legality that troubles the feminist groups moving against surrogacy, however. It’s the ethics.

“I’m really, really angry at an industry who tell the surrogate mothers: This child has nothing to do with you, it’s not your baby,” says Klein. “One surrogate we know of, she was told: You are like a bus. The baby is just sitting on this bus as a passenger.

“A woman is not a bus. I find it a betrayal of a woman’s trust to say to her: You’re not going to feel anything about this child, because you are poor, and anyway it’s not your embryo, not your genes.

“Genes are not everything. They determine hair colour, skin colour. But the way a woman feels about her life, her pregnancy, what she eats, these also have a very great effect on the life of the child. It is one of the biggest lies in the pro-surrogacy industry: to describe a woman as nothing but a bus or a suitcase, carrying the baby.”

There are, of course, plenty of women who become surrogates not once but multiple times, and others who say doing so brought them great joy.

Who are these activists to argue with them?

“Well, this brings us to a very complicated field. How come that women feel especially good when we do something for somebody else?” says Klein.

“We are socialised to believe: yes, you are a good woman if you do something for somebody else, even at your own peril.

“Some do it repeatedly, some for sisters, cousins, a mother for her own daughter, and I do think this kind of altruistic surrogacy is the worst kind.

“At least in commercial surrogacy, there is a contract. It’s a bad contract, it gets broken all the time, but money is exchanged, and for most women it’s the money that matters, otherwise they wouldn’t have done it. That is why they do it, because they need the money, so it’s not really a free choice at all.

“To me, though, it says a lot (about the) social standing of women, and patriarchy, and what sort of power women have, what sort of roles we give them in society, when they are being told: You’re an amazing human being, you have made a miracle — when we are convincing them to carry a baby for somebody else. But there is human life involved. It’s not giving a box of chocolates.”

High-profile cases

Conscientious objectors point to high-profile surrogacy arrangements that have gone pear-shaped, with parents in court and babies in limbo.

The Baby M case, from the US, is perhaps the first example.

In 1986, a woman of insubstantial means, Mary Beth Whitehead, changed her mind about surrendering the baby she bore for a well-to-do couple, William and Elizabeth Stern.

A feminist collective in New York applied to join that case, ­arguing that surrogacy “violates the dignity of women”.

The brief argued that legalising a system that allowed women to bear other people’s children, for a fee, would “lead to the exploitation of women, especially poorer ones, by more affluent couples”.

“It’s difficult,’’ the brief argued, “because for years we have been saying it’s wrong to tell women what they can or can’t do with their bodies.’’ Yet Marilyn French signed it. So did Betty Friedan.

More recently, Australians were appalled by the Baby Gammy affair. A couple from Perth entered into an arrangement with a Thai surrogate, who ended up carrying twins. The boy had Down syndrome, so the commissioning parents left him behind while taking his more desirable sister home.

There have been at least as many high-profile cases where things seem to have gone rather well. In May 1988, a Victorian woman, Linda Kirkman, gave birth to her niece, Alice, after carrying a baby for her sister, Maggie, and it worked out fine.

Then you have the celebrity cases: Nicole Kidman has a child born to a “gestational carrier”. Elton John has two sons, both born of surrogates. Kim Kardashian last year announced the birth of a daughter, Chicago, by saying: “We are incredibly grateful to our surrogate who made our dreams come true with the greatest gift one could give.”

Klein is conscious of the “success stories” and says: “Everyone can rest assured, I still would ban it.

“I have heard all the arguments: it’s a woman’s right to choose to do this for another couple. But it’s got nothing to do with reproductive freedom. Abortion is a very difficult decision for a woman, but there is no child at the end of abortion. There is a child at the end of surrogacy.

“Whenever I see surrogacy, I always think: where is the mother? She is never in the picture.

“I don’t know about these individual cases, but with women we talked to, for the surrogate mother it’s very close to slavery. Because for the nine months before the baby arrives, the mother is totally at the mercy of the other parents. There are all these tests she has to have, they can decide what she eats, they can decide on foetal reduction for her, if there are too many babies, or abortion if the baby is disabled or the wrong sex. And afterwards there is the ill-health, the medication she has to take to stop the breast milk ­coming.

“You say: they seem happy about doing it. If you go back to slavery, some of the slaves, they said they were quite happy, their masters treated them well. Uncle Tom comes to mind.”

Mothers erased

Surrogate mothers who carry babies for men in same-sex relationships are at particular risk of being “erased” by the process, she says.

“This I object to very strongly. I’m a lesbian myself, I have been for 50 years. Some gay men, I’m sure, are fantastic fathers. Some are not, same as with the heterosexual community.

“I don’t want to argue my case on surrogacy on the idea that a child must have a mother. But for me, the way the women are erased from the picture, made invisible, is a feminist issue.

“Women are not to be erased. Women are human beings. They are the mothers of these children. It is illogical to say otherwise.”

Klein’s group says the Australian government would do well to ban all international surrogacy, “which is just a baby trade, with poor women at the end of it. Australian parents were going to India, where the mothers are very poor, and they closed that market, and now they are going to Russia, where it’s real cut-throat, with lots of middlemen. This really is not a nice industry.”

She would like to see a ban on altruistic surrogacy as well, but understands that this will be a more difficult fight, “so what we are trying to do is to really raise people’s consciousness, where we can say to good people who are bereft at not having their own biological child: no, we’re not going to do that, we’re not going to hurt other people.

“We understand your pain, but do you really want to live with this on your conscience?

“Because even if the arguments on the female autonomy don’t hold — and I think they do hold — we have an industry here that relies on female labour, that damages women, and yet we allow it.

“Like 50 years ago, (if you said) ban smoking, people would have laughed at you. But of course it’s an uphill battle, because we have pro-surrogacy groups — they dominate the media landscape, and they have their happy stories and who doesn’t like a happy story?”

Klein’s book contains mostly personal accounts from surrogates around the world, including two Australians, the first of whom, Odette, explains how she was encouraged to have a baby for her cousin. A dispute over the child ended up in court, and Odette describes how she longs “to hold him, touch him”.

She is forbidden by court order from so doing, making her the mother on the birth certificate of a child she many never see again.

The second Australian contribution is from Rob, whose partner had a baby for two friends. It damaged her health and smashed their relationship. They have seen the child only twice: once in hospital and once in court.

Broken Bonds and Big Money: An International Conference on Surrogacy takes place on Friday and Saturday at RMIT, Melbourne.