The New Prostitution: Surrogate Pregnancy
June 10, 2013 By Rebecca Hamilton
I’m going to be writing about the
“new” prostitution a lot in the months ahead. One of these new ways to
objectify and exploit women is commercial surrogate pregnancy.
Jennifer Lahl, president of the Center for
Bioethics and Culture, is a stalwart battler for women’s human
rights in the face of the new forms of dehumanization and exploitation that
medical technology has placed in the hands of doctors. She has fought a hard
and often futile battle against a money-hungry medical establishment which
supports doctors in exploiting and harming their patients for monetary gain.
Simple
Google Search Returned Pages of Hits Offering to Sell Women’s Bodies for
Surrogacy
This technology is marketed as a
solution for desperate families who can’t have children. In truth, what we have
is the buying and selling of women and babies over the internet in what can
only be described as a mass market for a new and virulent form of prostitution.
The purchasers are wealthy people, including many powerful celebrities, who
don’t want to be bothered with having children themselves, and homosexuals,
especially gay men.
In my opinion, one reason this
misogynist abuse of women has been allowed to flourish is that the churches
are, even now, tone deaf about women’s human rights. They focus on the lives of
the embryos that are mass produced by harvested eggs without considering that
the women whose bodies are being farmed, and whose health and dignity as human
being is being comprised, are also human beings whose human rights as well as
their health and well-being are compromised by this practice.
In truth, egg harvesting and
surrogacy is a one-two punch of human rights violations. It reduces both the
babies and the women to the level of commodities to be bought and sold with no
regard for their well-being.
It comes as no surprise to me that a
lawmaker in Washington DC wants to swing the doors wide open on the abuse of
women and children with this egregious practice. The lawmaker is Councilman
David Catania and he says he does not expect any serious opposition since all
he’s doing is “remedying … an imperfection in the law.”
Oklahoma
City Ads for Buying Women’s Bodies to Use as Surrogates.
I just love the casual way people
who are tone deaf to human rights, especially as they apply to women, decide
that buying and selling women, using their bodies like appliances, and farming
them like they were animals is not only an A-OK thing to do, it’s all for the
greater good. Misogyny is truly a wonderment, isn’t it?
Surrogate Pregnancy Bill in D.C. Draws Criticism (725)
Women
and children are exploited through this popular ‘rent-a-womb’ practice,
Jennifer Lahl charges.
Jennifer Lahl, president of the Center for Bioethics and
Culture Network
WASHINGTON
— A lack of information about the dangers of surrogate pregnancy could soon
allow the
practice
to become legal in Washington, D.C., warned the founder of one bioethics organization.
“These
issues aren’t on anyone’s radar,” said Jennifer Lahl, president of the Center
for Bioethics and Culture. “By and large, people have accepted third-party
reproduction. It’s not seen as controversial … because people are woefully
misinformed.”
Lahl
told Catholic News Agency that the average person sees nothing wrong with
surrogacy, which is the practice of a woman carrying and delivering a baby for
someone else. This could explain the lack of opposition to a new bill in the
nation’s capital, she said.
Legislation
introduced June 3 by D.C. Councilman David Catania would legalize surrogacy in
the District. If passed, it would wipe away current local legislation
prohibiting surrogacy contracts, which carry penalties of up to $10,000 in
fines or a year in jail.
“I
don’t expect there to be any significant opposition,” Catania told the Washington
Examiner.
“This is about remedying what I believe to be an imperfection in our law.”
Lahl,
who worked as a pediatric nurse for 20 years, said most people are unaware of
the negative repercussions of surrogacy. She noted that concerns with legalized
surrogacy include a lack of research in the field and a failure to consider the
impact on the child and the woman whose womb is being “rented.”
One
of the biggest concerns, she warned, is that the relationship between a mother
and a child in her womb is ignored.
“So
much is going on in that womb,” Lahl explained. “The surrogate mom and child
will be linked genetically, and there’s so much we’re learning about genetic
diseases and how much the womb plays into that child’s health.”
The
connection is more than simply physical, she continued.
“Newborns
know one thing — they know who their mother is,” she said. “I’ve known of
mothers who sing to their children in the womb or read them books. What happens
when you tell a mother to intentionally not bond with a child in their womb?”
California
lawyer Stephanie Caballero handles surrogacy cases and says 30% of her clients
are homosexual. She told the Washington
Examiner that,
with proper screening, money is not the only reason women decide to become
surrogates.
“The
first reason is because they want to help someone,” she said. “They do it [in
part] because they love being pregnant.”
However,
as part of a new documentary for the Center for Bioethics and Culture, Lahl has
interviewed numerous women who were surrogate mothers. By and large, she said,
surrogate women “are women who have financial need — wealthy women are going to
be buying the surrogacy contract.”
- See more at:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/publiccatholic/2013/06/the-new-prostitution-surrogate-pregnancy/#sthash.nsAFDxbR.dpuf
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