lightreads (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lightreads) wrote2018-09-02 09:20 pm
lightreads) wrote2018-09-02 09:20 pm
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Surrogate Parenting by Amy Zuckerman Overvold
Surrogate Parenting
3/5. A survey considering intended parents, surrogates, and clinics. I read this as a historical document, as it was published in 1988, in a different world. Surrogacy in this book is almost entirely traditional – where the surrogate is inseminated with the intended father's sperm – as opposed to the more typical modern practice of gestational surrogacy – where the surrogate is impregnated with embryos from the intended parents sperm and egg, or from some combination of donors, and the surrogate's genetics are not involved. I firmly believe that, if done right, there should be functionally no difference. I also believe that the trend towards gestational is rooted in a lot of squicky feelings that do not stand up to scrutiny very well. Like, somehow it's less like "selling a baby" when the surrogate does not donate an egg as well? A lot of notions of genetic ties as "real" ties here, which is particularly poisonous I think in the third party reproduction space where it's healthy to shed a lot of that crap in order to have a good experience. (Also, let's be real, gestational makes way more money for clinics and lawyers than traditional).
Anyway, it was nice to read the chapters on surrogates and to find that they were saying the exact same things as traditional surrogates in the mid 80's as the largely gestational surrogates of my acquaintance do today. The baby was never mine, I didn't give him up I only brought him here, he was my buddy for nine months and now he's someone else's child.
This book is otherwise interesting and frustrating by turns. I was flatly horrified to read about the widespread practice of preventing any meeting between intended parents and surrogate, which strikes me as incredibly unhealthy. This also does not really happen today, at least for domestic U.S. surrogacy – surrogates and intended parents tend to have multiple meetings to feel each other out before even considering negotiating a contract, and then tend to have regular and sometimes daily contact throughout the process and even after birth.
Something that hasn't changed, sadly: a lot of intended parents do not, um. Come off very well. The thing is, they are often arriving at surrogacy from a place of deep trauma. Think eight stillbirths in a row trauma. And so many of them understandably are not equipped to enter into a surrogacy journey with the open mind and willing heart that it requires. And so they do things like complain about how they don't want to hear anything negative from the surrogate about pregnancy symptoms because it's too stressful. Bro. No. This is one reason why I know surrogates who refuse to work with anyone but gay couples, who tend to come to this process as a choice and out of deep optimism.
Anyway, interesting book. I still have so many thoughts about this industry, obviously, years after my involvement ended. Though of course, in a way, it didn't end, because it's more like an identity than a thing I did. So of course I still lurk on the surrogacy message boards sometimes, because Hogwart is growing up in the world, and she exists because of me, and that story is something she's just starting to be old enough to be told.
3/5. A survey considering intended parents, surrogates, and clinics. I read this as a historical document, as it was published in 1988, in a different world. Surrogacy in this book is almost entirely traditional – where the surrogate is inseminated with the intended father's sperm – as opposed to the more typical modern practice of gestational surrogacy – where the surrogate is impregnated with embryos from the intended parents sperm and egg, or from some combination of donors, and the surrogate's genetics are not involved. I firmly believe that, if done right, there should be functionally no difference. I also believe that the trend towards gestational is rooted in a lot of squicky feelings that do not stand up to scrutiny very well. Like, somehow it's less like "selling a baby" when the surrogate does not donate an egg as well? A lot of notions of genetic ties as "real" ties here, which is particularly poisonous I think in the third party reproduction space where it's healthy to shed a lot of that crap in order to have a good experience. (Also, let's be real, gestational makes way more money for clinics and lawyers than traditional).
Anyway, it was nice to read the chapters on surrogates and to find that they were saying the exact same things as traditional surrogates in the mid 80's as the largely gestational surrogates of my acquaintance do today. The baby was never mine, I didn't give him up I only brought him here, he was my buddy for nine months and now he's someone else's child.
This book is otherwise interesting and frustrating by turns. I was flatly horrified to read about the widespread practice of preventing any meeting between intended parents and surrogate, which strikes me as incredibly unhealthy. This also does not really happen today, at least for domestic U.S. surrogacy – surrogates and intended parents tend to have multiple meetings to feel each other out before even considering negotiating a contract, and then tend to have regular and sometimes daily contact throughout the process and even after birth.
Something that hasn't changed, sadly: a lot of intended parents do not, um. Come off very well. The thing is, they are often arriving at surrogacy from a place of deep trauma. Think eight stillbirths in a row trauma. And so many of them understandably are not equipped to enter into a surrogacy journey with the open mind and willing heart that it requires. And so they do things like complain about how they don't want to hear anything negative from the surrogate about pregnancy symptoms because it's too stressful. Bro. No. This is one reason why I know surrogates who refuse to work with anyone but gay couples, who tend to come to this process as a choice and out of deep optimism.
Anyway, interesting book. I still have so many thoughts about this industry, obviously, years after my involvement ended. Though of course, in a way, it didn't end, because it's more like an identity than a thing I did. So of course I still lurk on the surrogacy message boards sometimes, because Hogwart is growing up in the world, and she exists because of me, and that story is something she's just starting to be old enough to be told.
no subject
I don't often discuss my anonymous egg donation so haven't run into the "selling a baby" line, but my attitude is that I gave the recipients the eggs for free and was delighted to; what they paid me for was injecting myself with hormones for weeks and the risks therefrom, missing two days of work for the retrieval, and the week after the retrieval where the post-surgery swelling was affecting my appetite. The eggs themselves? No charge.
no subject
Yes, exactly. For surrogates, you get paid for all the work of pregnancy, plus incurring multiple risks, plus of course labor. There's a great saying for this: "all surrogacies are altruistic. Some are also compensated."
no subject
I realized quite recently that I need to get my two (4&1/2) some picture books about having babies that do not involve donated gametes and an excess of medical professionals.
no subject
Haha, yes, it is entirely possible that we have manage to make Hogwart believe that when you want to have a baby, you need three people minimum.