Surrogacy ... not good?

It’s pretty ironic that the Vatican is against surrogacy, since it’s practiced in the Bible, and by no less a personage than the patriarch Abraham, not to mention Jacob. And the Arabs, as I will note, should be pretty damn grateful.

The English word concubine (from "one to lie with" in Latin) translates the Hebrew pilegesh, a woman bought as a slave or otherwise acquired by a man for his sexual pleasure, or to serve as a surrogate childbearer if his wife, or one of his wives, is barren. Thus barren Sarah gives her handmaid Hagar to her husband Abraham. Hagar bears Ishmael, “a wild ass of a man.” And the Arabs should be grateful because Ishmael, who will have twelve sons, is traditionally the progenitor of the Arabs.

Jacob has two wives, Rachel and Leah. Leah bears four sons, while Rachel is barren. “Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her," Rachel tells Jacob. He dutifully goes into Bilhah, who bears a son. This makes Rachel so happy ("God," she exults, "hath given me a son") that Jacob goes into Bilhah again. Bilhah bears a second son, which Rachel also calls her own.

Meanwhile Leah is no longer fertile, so she has Jacob go into her handmaid Zilpah. This concubine bears two sons, whom Leah names Gad ("fortune") and Asher ("happy"), saying "Happy am I!"

And this is not good? At least Jacob enjoyed it.

 

I mean isnt Mary a surrogate, a virgin carrying God's son?

 

I believe Catholics even pray to her.

 

Your point is solid and I do not mean to be excessively defensive, but that's not the form of surrogacy the document is addressing, in which a third party woman gestates an implanted zygote (I think that is the technical term) without her DNA

 

I'm guessing there is probably an anti-gay angle to being against surrogacy too (and that is definitely one area where a set of these same people also oppose adoption)

 

But if folks back in biblical times knew about zygotes, would such surrogacy have given them pause? I tend to doubt it, as they were certainly into children for barren women.

 

Absolutely, at least in the Alabama IVF case. Don't think so here, but could be wrong

 

I know the church has been slightly more accepting of gays in the abstract in that they aren't openly damning them to hell, but they are still formally against gay marriage and adoption right?

 

Well aware. But it's a bit more complex. This is an area I follow intently. I suspect other unstated motivations.

 

Yeah I dont think its the only motivation, just kind of an icing on the cake for their general anti-family planning stances

 

I think, and again it is just an opinion, although based on immersion in learned explication of these issues for decades, a large part of the motivation is to try to keep the Church from fracturing, at the laity and especially the Cardinate level, in advance of the next Conclave, which certain far right types have long pre-Conclaved. You may hear the name Peter Erdo a lot.

 

There is a confusion regarding what is on or off topic that occurs frequently on here. I certainly agree that we should discourage whataboutisms that bypass engaging the topic at hand. “Maybe Biden is wrong about student loans, but Trump colluded with the Russians!” The latter claim is clearly irrelevant to the topic.

However, that’s another kind of outside reference that we should never bar, which is when a fundamental claim is evaluated in a different context. E.g. “If the greater number of men in engineering proves a bias against females, doesn’t the lack of men in elementary school teaching prove a bias against men?” The important difference is that in this case the example of teaching is invoked to directly challenge the argument that a disparity alone demonstrates a bias. This is what @BLING was doing with abortion above. It is absolutely on topic and moreover is something we need to allow to properly evaluate our ideas.

 

My niece couldn't have any more children after her first one. She and her husband wanted another one, so she donated her egg and he his sperm, and another woman carried the fertilized egg to term, and they now have a beautiful second child. If that is surrogacy, I'm not sure why it should be outlawed.

 

I well remember the bitter custody battle over Baby M a female child conceived by Mary Beth Whitehead, a surrogate who answered a 1985 newspaper ad placed by a William and Elizabeth Stern. The Sterns were looking for someone to carry Bill Stern's biological child to term as Elizabeth had multiple sclerosis and it was feared a pregnancy would worsen her condition.

Bill Stern was a biochemist and his wife Elizabeth, a pediatrician. Mary Beth Whitehead was a high school drop out and the mother of 2 children. She worked part time in a deli and was married to a garbage collector who had a vasectomy after their own children were born. The couple had married when Mary Beth was 16. After the custody suit was settled in the Stern's favor with Baby Melissa awarded to her biological father and officially adopted by Elizabeth Stern, the Whiteheads divorced. Mary Beth remarried and went on to have 2 more children with Dean Gould, her second husband.

Now It's Melissa's Time

"The Infertility Center of New York, which had placed the ad, matched her with William and Elizabeth Stern of Tenafly. Whitehead signed a surrogacy contract, agreeing to be inseminated with William Stern’s sperm, carry the baby, and then give it up.

"Instead, after delivering the baby, Whitehead named her Sara and refused to relinquish her. She and her then husband, Richard Whitehead, fled to Florida with the infant and their two other children. The Sterns had police return the infant, whom they had named Melissa. Mary Beth Whitehead sued for custody. Twenty years ago, on March 31, 1987, judge Harvey Sorkow of the state’s Superior Court in Bergen County upheld the contract, terminated Whitehead’s parental rights, and escorted Elizabeth Stern to his chambers, where she adopted Melissa.

"Whitehead appealed, and on February 3, 1988, the New Jersey Supreme Court voided the contract and adoption and restored Whitehead’s parental rights. The Sterns’ Tenafly residence remained Melissa’s home, but Whitehead won broad visitation rights and legal status as Melissa’s mother.

"The landmark case made society grapple with the consequences of surrogacy. The state Supreme Court set precedent in ruling that a fit mother cannot be forced to give away her baby; in essence, the court said that biology and gestation trump a contract. Gestational carriers, who have no genetic relationship with the children they bear for other couples, have since replaced paid surrogates in New Jersey."
_____________

After Baby M : Mary Beth Whitehead Has a New Storybook Life, and Some Tough Talk About Surrogate Motherhood.

"Mary Beth Whitehead was to be paid $10,000 under the contract she signed with the Sterns. On March 27, 1986, she gave birth to a girl, whom she had agreed to surrender. In her book, she says this was the moment when she changed her mind and decided to fight, even to run and hide, to keep her baby.

"Whitehead named the child Sara Elizabeth. The Sterns named her Melissa. The world knew her as Baby M. The Whiteheads and the Sterns swapped the child back and forth in the week after the birth, and then Whitehead kept the baby for four months, until she was forced to give her to the Sterns. The prolonged court battle was tedious and ugly.

Baby M’s Adoption

"Four days after the baby’s first birthday, New Jersey Judge Harvey Sorkow called Mary Beth Whitehead “a woman without empathy.” He also said her husband “has been shown to be an episodic alcoholic.” He said the Sterns were more emotionally and financially able to be Baby M’s parents. The judge awarded the child to the Sterns and performed an adoption ceremony in his chambers that made Elizabeth Stern the legal mother of Melissa."
_____________

The article has further details on the prolonged custody suit. At one point Stern recorded a phone call he had with Whitehead. She said, “I’d rather see me and her dead before you get her. I gave her life and I can take her life away.”

She later said she didn't mean what she said but was angry and felt powerless, but her rights to the child were terminated by the presiding judge.
___________________

Now It's Melissa's Time

The Sterns’ attorney, William Stern and Dean Gould declined comment for the article. Gould said he would pass along a reporter’s request for comment to his wife, but Mary Beth Whitehead Gould did not respond to the request and Richard Whitehead is no longer alive.

At the time the article was published (2007) Melissa Stern was about to celebrate her 21st birthday. After receiving two e-mails requesting comment she responded by phone. At the time she was a junior at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. where she was a sorority member majoring in religion. She recalled how strange it was to have the Baby M case come up in her bioethics class. She said she wants to become a minister, and is open to having her own children someday.

But she does not want to talk about how being Baby M has affected her life. She said that she decided to speak despite the wishes of her parents, who have guarded their privacy closely. When she says 'my parents' and 'my family,' she is talking about William and Elizabeth Stern. Legally, they are her parents now: A source with firsthand knowledge of the case confirmed that when she turned eighteen, Melissa Stern initiated the process of allowing Elizabeth Stern to adopt her, which involved terminating Whitehead Gould’s parental rights.

“'I love my family very much and am very happy to be with them,' Melissa Stern says, referring to the Sterns. 'I’m very happy I ended up with them. I love them, they’re my best friends in the whole world, and that’s all I have to say about it.'”

 

Likely so. Neil Patrick Harris and his partner have 2 children born from surrogacy as do Elton John and his partner. No doubt there are many others.

My granddaughter has a friend whose mother who carried a child for a hetero couple in California as the wife was unable to do so. This situation was rife with problems from the get go. According to my granddaughter and her friend, the surrogate mother is "bat shit crazy." She is Bi-polar and likely suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder. She had my granddaughter's friend when she was 16 and since then had 2 more children of her own with 3 different fathers. She answered an ad placed by the California couple and was paid $50,000 to carry a child conceived with the husband's sperm.

She claimed she was not doing it for the money, but because she wanted to help them achieve their dream to have their own baby, and she liked being pregnant but the latest man in her life did not want anymore children.

The pregnancy was going fine but she went into labor before her due date and the baby was born several weeks early with long term complications requiring additional weeks of hospitalization. The parents honored their contract with the surrogate and took the baby home when he was released from the hospital.

I wonder if they regret their decision to employ a surrogate to carry their child...

 

Do you or anyone know if most surrogacies are still done with just the man's sperm fertilizing the surrogates' egg or is an egg and sperm taken and placed in the surrogate? I guess it could be done either way unless the donor couldn't produce viable egg. I wonder if that effects the surrogates parental rights after birth?

 

Here is an explanation that is a starting point. Here is an example of a gay couple who were going to buy a surrogate baby. Thank goodness for the baby. The predator who was about to buy him got arrested.



I think the concerns about pedo predators and pedo pimps being able to adopt or get a surrogate baby are valid.

 

It certainly was a complicating factor in the Baby M case. William Stern, the baby's father was listed on her birth certificate as her father, but Whitehead was named as her mother on the document. Under the circumstances custody was given to the Sterns but Whitehead retained visitation rights . Terribly confusing situation for a young child. Only when Melissa Stern reached majority age was her mother Elizabeth Stern was able to officially adopt her.

 

The whole idea is to come into this world one way or another. Only then can you find out what a lousy world it is.

 

The argument against paid surrogacy and I do not really buy into it is that the practice exploits lower income women by turning them into paid incubators for the convenience of more affluent couples who desire parenthood without the inconvenience of a pregnancy. The problem with that argument is that most couples who opt for surrogacy like your niece and her husband do so because the woman is medically unable to carry a child to term or is unable to become pregnant naturally in the first place, the latter also being the reason that couples opt for IVF in the first place. While I believe the preferred alternative would be a surrogate mother who agrees to the procedure because of concern for the biological mother with compensation limited to reimbursement for medical expenses but that's not always the case with paid surrogacy being a viable alternative with safeguards.