Jul 21, 2023·edited Jul 21, 2023Liked by Aporia, Cremieux
I think it lays out clearly that surrogacy is no more harmful than pregnancy and childbirth in other contexts.
However it's undeniable that pregnancy and childbirth cause harm; so the question is if it should be allowed in exchange for money, in particular. It seems obvious it causes considerably more bodily harm than sex, and it's illegal to pay for sex in some jurisdictions. I find it strange surrogacy is legal but prostitution is not in, say, the US.
And then one must ask why surrogacy is allowed but other forms of organ donation is not. I do see the difference with kidney donation- you lose one permanently- but not maybe with liver donation.
I'm sure if there were a study showing the children of surrogates were more likely to kill themselves, it'd be taken on board.
This issue is there *isn't* any evidence it's less "healthy" compared to other forms of reproduction. Anecdotes aren't super useful, because you can come up with any number of naturally conceived children who committed suicide- most of them were, actually.
Never been prouder to be associated with Aporia- this based piece was desperately needed to clear up the completely muddled and unhinged conversation around surrogacy. Surely this article will result in the existence of some future happy healthy humans. Well done Cremieux!
"A sizable percentage of women, though less than half, struggle with relinquishing (their child), but the extent is uncertain and they tend to recover in the vast majority of cases". That's a gut-wrenching statement for any woman to read. So it's bad, but they'll get over it?
It's an inferior reproductive strategy, I'd vastly prefer my daughters to have kids the old fashioned way. Also, women only get so many at-bats, I again would vastly prefer that my daughters not waste theirs on somebody else's kids. "morality" is missing the point. Communities that stigmatize this will reproductively outcompete those that don't.
You might as well argue in favor of normalizing goths -- all this stuff will get its 15 minutes and then the world will move on. Evolution selects for winners, and as Charles Darwin said, "if you ain't first, you're last."
"Communities that stigmatize this will reproductively outcompete those that don't." - Is that true? Isn't his argument that allowing this will result in more births? How non-porous are these 'communities'? I ask as someone agnostic about surrogacy.
I fully support surrogacy to help the infertile have children.
I even support surrogacy to help women that have already born kids to have additional kids.
Something feels off though about a woman that can bear children without issue refusing to do so and using only surrogates so that they can continue a certain lifestyle. There does seem something unnatural about this. The mother is not going through a fundamental life experience to be a mother. The surrogacy relationship, rather than necessitated by circumstance, is a lifestyle choice that feels exploitative. It's one thing to say ask another women to do what you've already done, but it's different if you've never done it even if you could do it. Moreover, the buyer doesn't even really understand what they are asking of the seller since they have never experienced it.
You can no doubt find willing participants for such a thing because the world is full of desperate people, but we have an understanding that some transactions inherently violate human dignity.
The issues with surrogacy are going to parallel somewhat those with poor outcomes from fatherlessness and/or children left to daycare. In cases where fatherlessness is worse it's commonly because a new stepparent even with decent relative finnacial support creates more asymmetric intuit parenting standards, and often resentment.
So you have a relative dissonance for a child that isn't your own, no matter how good a parent/environment you can be or can offer.
If we're talking homosexual surrogacy, then the problem compounds for more reasons, sexual dissonance, higher rates of learned homosexual behavior and often the child in question will be at higher risk to homosexual propensity on both sides, which is a genetic pandora's box. but because we know that homosexual births are higher risk (for certain higher risk epigenetic damage), you'll either see higher fetal fatalities, lower birth weights which indicates genetic and epigenetic issues at a multiplied rate or other lifelong difficulties such as autism, schizophrenia, particularly for female heredity, or all of the above.
even if you're just looking at adoption, no surrogacy, you see the same issues shine through. Higher rate of disability etc. Children put into adoption, are there for very good reasons.
Do IVF treatments really lead to more twins and triplets? If we're really using just one egg and one sperm cell, instead of just spraying an egg with a lot of sperm cells hoping that one will stick, then it seems to be that producing twins or triplets should not be higher.
That's my guess. If one spends $10K+ on IVF, they're doing multiple embryo transfers to maximize their chances. For wealthy people, I would want to do this serially though. Get a batch of embryos and rank order them based on PGS. Implant one at a time into the mother or surrogate to minimize complications.
I enjoy your presence on Twitter, but it seems like your work here could use an editor.
Consider this sentence: "In other words, fifteen years of surrogate births amounted to less than half a percent of the births in a single year of that monitoring period." It looks like you're attempting to convert overwrought algebra into prose.
Or this one: "Global Market Insights projected that the market for surrogacy would grow by more than an order of magnitude between 2018 and 2032. For a market worth $14 billion in 2022, that amounts to a sizable $129 billion by 2032." I fail to see why there's equivocation about the starting year.
And what's happening in your paragraph about the stigma of ARTs? Is this some novel form of speculative reasoning fresh from the statistics department?
Regarding this section:
"Who are Surrogate Mothers?
Surrogates are often sisters, mothers, friends, or extended family members. Since surrogacy involves relatives, this can make it appear like incest is involved – but it isn’t, because donor eggs are typically used."
Did you mean to say, "Surrogate Mothers... are often... mothers"? Also, you suggest that when surrogacy involves relatives, it's only 'typically' not incestuous. Am I showing my ignorance here? Is it, in fact, occasionally incest-adjacent in the way that you say is 'typically' just an illusion?
Nevertheless, the primary thread of your article — "there is little evidence of physical or psychological harm to the surrogate mother, the surrogate child, or the intended parents" — is dubious. With these population comparisons, which are vulnerable to selection effects you don't seem to have adequately accounted for, you can only measure relative harm. Comparing child-rearing in WEIRD countries to historical populations, it's clear that contemporary practices can be generally harmful. Any harmful effects of ART might indeed be drowned out in the societal tide of harm inflicted on children. This makes them too faint to discern, but this isn't the same as saying with any kind of confidence that 'harms appear to be minimal'.
You seem to gloss over this issue in your note about how children with no mother and two fathers seem to fare better psychologically than the average child. This says more about normative society than about the infinite malleability of child-rearing forms. Your conclusions are only as reliable as your control group. If the standard is a child with a mother and a father, but a child without a mother is better off, what does that truly imply?
I think it lays out clearly that surrogacy is no more harmful than pregnancy and childbirth in other contexts.
However it's undeniable that pregnancy and childbirth cause harm; so the question is if it should be allowed in exchange for money, in particular. It seems obvious it causes considerably more bodily harm than sex, and it's illegal to pay for sex in some jurisdictions. I find it strange surrogacy is legal but prostitution is not in, say, the US.
And then one must ask why surrogacy is allowed but other forms of organ donation is not. I do see the difference with kidney donation- you lose one permanently- but not maybe with liver donation.
I'm sure if there were a study showing the children of surrogates were more likely to kill themselves, it'd be taken on board.
This issue is there *isn't* any evidence it's less "healthy" compared to other forms of reproduction. Anecdotes aren't super useful, because you can come up with any number of naturally conceived children who committed suicide- most of them were, actually.
Never been prouder to be associated with Aporia- this based piece was desperately needed to clear up the completely muddled and unhinged conversation around surrogacy. Surely this article will result in the existence of some future happy healthy humans. Well done Cremieux!
Thank you.
"A sizable percentage of women, though less than half, struggle with relinquishing (their child), but the extent is uncertain and they tend to recover in the vast majority of cases". That's a gut-wrenching statement for any woman to read. So it's bad, but they'll get over it?
It's an inferior reproductive strategy, I'd vastly prefer my daughters to have kids the old fashioned way. Also, women only get so many at-bats, I again would vastly prefer that my daughters not waste theirs on somebody else's kids. "morality" is missing the point. Communities that stigmatize this will reproductively outcompete those that don't.
You might as well argue in favor of normalizing goths -- all this stuff will get its 15 minutes and then the world will move on. Evolution selects for winners, and as Charles Darwin said, "if you ain't first, you're last."
"Communities that stigmatize this will reproductively outcompete those that don't." - Is that true? Isn't his argument that allowing this will result in more births? How non-porous are these 'communities'? I ask as someone agnostic about surrogacy.
Interesting and well written. Bravo!
I fully support surrogacy to help the infertile have children.
I even support surrogacy to help women that have already born kids to have additional kids.
Something feels off though about a woman that can bear children without issue refusing to do so and using only surrogates so that they can continue a certain lifestyle. There does seem something unnatural about this. The mother is not going through a fundamental life experience to be a mother. The surrogacy relationship, rather than necessitated by circumstance, is a lifestyle choice that feels exploitative. It's one thing to say ask another women to do what you've already done, but it's different if you've never done it even if you could do it. Moreover, the buyer doesn't even really understand what they are asking of the seller since they have never experienced it.
You can no doubt find willing participants for such a thing because the world is full of desperate people, but we have an understanding that some transactions inherently violate human dignity.
Fair enough, let's debate.
The issues with surrogacy are going to parallel somewhat those with poor outcomes from fatherlessness and/or children left to daycare. In cases where fatherlessness is worse it's commonly because a new stepparent even with decent relative finnacial support creates more asymmetric intuit parenting standards, and often resentment.
So you have a relative dissonance for a child that isn't your own, no matter how good a parent/environment you can be or can offer.
If we're talking homosexual surrogacy, then the problem compounds for more reasons, sexual dissonance, higher rates of learned homosexual behavior and often the child in question will be at higher risk to homosexual propensity on both sides, which is a genetic pandora's box. but because we know that homosexual births are higher risk (for certain higher risk epigenetic damage), you'll either see higher fetal fatalities, lower birth weights which indicates genetic and epigenetic issues at a multiplied rate or other lifelong difficulties such as autism, schizophrenia, particularly for female heredity, or all of the above.
even if you're just looking at adoption, no surrogacy, you see the same issues shine through. Higher rate of disability etc. Children put into adoption, are there for very good reasons.
Do IVF treatments really lead to more twins and triplets? If we're really using just one egg and one sperm cell, instead of just spraying an egg with a lot of sperm cells hoping that one will stick, then it seems to be that producing twins or triplets should not be higher.
Your reasoning is correct: the reason IVF produces more multiples is because of greater than single embryo transfers.
That's my guess. If one spends $10K+ on IVF, they're doing multiple embryo transfers to maximize their chances. For wealthy people, I would want to do this serially though. Get a batch of embryos and rank order them based on PGS. Implant one at a time into the mother or surrogate to minimize complications.
I enjoy your presence on Twitter, but it seems like your work here could use an editor.
Consider this sentence: "In other words, fifteen years of surrogate births amounted to less than half a percent of the births in a single year of that monitoring period." It looks like you're attempting to convert overwrought algebra into prose.
Or this one: "Global Market Insights projected that the market for surrogacy would grow by more than an order of magnitude between 2018 and 2032. For a market worth $14 billion in 2022, that amounts to a sizable $129 billion by 2032." I fail to see why there's equivocation about the starting year.
And what's happening in your paragraph about the stigma of ARTs? Is this some novel form of speculative reasoning fresh from the statistics department?
Regarding this section:
"Who are Surrogate Mothers?
Surrogates are often sisters, mothers, friends, or extended family members. Since surrogacy involves relatives, this can make it appear like incest is involved – but it isn’t, because donor eggs are typically used."
Did you mean to say, "Surrogate Mothers... are often... mothers"? Also, you suggest that when surrogacy involves relatives, it's only 'typically' not incestuous. Am I showing my ignorance here? Is it, in fact, occasionally incest-adjacent in the way that you say is 'typically' just an illusion?
Nevertheless, the primary thread of your article — "there is little evidence of physical or psychological harm to the surrogate mother, the surrogate child, or the intended parents" — is dubious. With these population comparisons, which are vulnerable to selection effects you don't seem to have adequately accounted for, you can only measure relative harm. Comparing child-rearing in WEIRD countries to historical populations, it's clear that contemporary practices can be generally harmful. Any harmful effects of ART might indeed be drowned out in the societal tide of harm inflicted on children. This makes them too faint to discern, but this isn't the same as saying with any kind of confidence that 'harms appear to be minimal'.
You seem to gloss over this issue in your note about how children with no mother and two fathers seem to fare better psychologically than the average child. This says more about normative society than about the infinite malleability of child-rearing forms. Your conclusions are only as reliable as your control group. If the standard is a child with a mother and a father, but a child without a mother is better off, what does that truly imply?