Speaker 0
Welcome to the Free Birth Podcast, a supportive space for people who are learning, exploring, and celebrating their autonomous choices in child childbirth. Together, we'll unpack truths, share personal stories, and claim our ability to birth freely and intuitively. Here's your host, Emilee Saldaya.
Speaker 1
There are many ways to interact with free birth society. These include our incredible offering, the complete guide to free birth, which is the most comprehensive online course available on how to give birth in your power. We also have a beautiful free birth meditation program called the sovereign birth meditation series designed to help you release your fears and actualize your dream birth. Our latest course is called through the veil, a profoundly personal, radical, pregnancy companion program by Yolanda Norris Clark that offers the opportunity to travel with Yolanda as she moves through the last trimester of her most recent pregnancy and invites you into her birth room to witness the birth of her eighth child. And if you're looking for a deeper connection and the opportunity for sisterhood in community with radical like minded women, the free birth society private membership is for you, and you can apply on our website to become a member. We also offer personalized one on one transformational coaching with a focus on learning the tools to move out of victim consciousness and towards self responsibility. Skills that translate to freedom, not only in the context of birth and mothering, but in every area of life. And finally, we are offering all of you, our amazing listeners, the free gift of Yolanda's twenty minute birth affirmations audio recording. A gorgeous soothing meditation that every pregnant mother should have. So just head on over to our website at free birth society dot com, sign up, and Yolanda's affirmations will be sent directly to your inbox. Alright, my friends. The time has come for our three part surrogacy series. I have been wanting to unpack surrogacy on this show for a while now and offer my listeners a walk through as to why it is inherently anti feminist and anti mother baby. So for the next three weeks, we will be doing a deep dive, looking at it from every angle with experts on commercial surrogacy in part one and three of this series and a personal story with our guest next week, Brianna, who will be sharing her story of deep pain and regret having signed up to be a surrogate mother. I'm offering this to all of you because until it was spelled out to me, I had never given it much thought and didn't know enough about it to be critical of it and vocal about the objective dangers. So with that, I hope you'll join me today with my guest and personal hero, Mary Lou Singleton, as we walk through the ABCs of surrogacy and why it is an industry we are staunchly against as you cannot be both for mother baby and for the commodification of women and children. Let's just start today with with just a almost just like a definition, you know, what what is surrogacy and what does, what does it look like globally? Because I think, and I'll just say at the top of this, I think that's one of the biggest kind of cognitive dissonances that happens in the western world is we don't really understand what surrogacy is like on a global spectrum. We just hear about, like, our one friend or that one sister that did it. So maybe we could start with that.
Speaker 2
Sure. So, surrogacy is now a global child selling industry, is is what I would say basically. To start with, surrogacy is is now a global industry where people who, are either unable or sometimes just unwilling to have to give birth to their own children purchase babies. And in order to purchase babies, you have to first purchase a woman Mhmm. For a period of time and before you get the product of the baby which you are purchasing.
Speaker 1
Right. Because it's it's not adoption. So the purchasing of babies. So that's obviously a pretty intense thing to hear for somebody who's new to this concept. So, yeah. I wanna just kinda ask you to give a bit of context for that, because we're gonna do a pretty deep dive today over the next hour, of the industry, of the the inherent wounding of mother baby, of the commodification of of babies and and women. So we're gonna walk everybody through as best as we can, and then we'll provide more resources at the end. And so but let's kind of we're yeah. Starting from the basics, wherever you think that would be. If somebody's never thought about this before, what would be what do we need to tell them?
Speaker 2
Sure. I mean, you know, people will say that the concept of surrogacy, the practice of surrogacy has been going on since the beginning of recorded history. That there there's a story in the bible of, an infertile woman asking her husband to impregnate her handmaid, and and then the handmaid gives birth on the knees of the legitimate wife, and the baby is handed to the wife. It's in, I think it's in Genesis. It's one of the of, the the Jacob family. I should know my bible better having gone to Catholic school, but there's a biblical old testament story that people use as, like, the first example of of surrogacy where this woman had a baby for another woman. You can see even by looking at that story, the class dynamics going on there, that this woman who's essentially enslaved is being used as, you know, an incubator for the less oppressed woman who's the wife of the man with property. So there's a real hierarchy here with the man on top, obviously.
Speaker 1
Obviously.
Speaker 2
For for all of of recorded patriarchal history, there's been, there have been stories of women getting babies from another woman and and then, not just adoption, but actually, like, this this woman was used to make the baby rather than a woman died and the baby was adopted. So surrogacy is is more like neo techno patriarchal twist on that old story, where now people rent a woman. They they sign have, a contract through lawyers and surrogacy brokers, and a woman's body is used to grow a baby that's legally belonging to the purchaser. So now the legal system is wrapped up in it. There are, you know, economic contracts drawn up. The baby is property that belongs to the purchaser and it's grown inside the woman who's the surrogate mother.
Speaker 1
Yes. And and I remember quite a while ago when you and I were connected on Facebook, I had read something that I'd love for you to expand on and and please correct me if I don't say this right, that in America, in the United States, when a woman becomes a surrogate, she shifts from being a human to property in terms of possession and legal rights. Do I have that correct or is there better language for that?
Speaker 2
Well, in the United States, you know, we our system of government, we have the federal government and then we have all the state governments. And surrogacy is governed by state law. But in, California and I think, New York is trying to pass the same law, which are two major population centers in the in the country. In those states, they have very clear surrogacy law written out, and surrogacy is not under child welfare law. It's entirely under property contract law. So when a woman is contracted as a surrogate, she is in possession of someone else's property, which is the the baby growing inside of her. And she does not have any option to, be released from that contract until she has produced the the property that belongs to somebody else. And to me, this is just horrifying. Like, there's nowhere else where I don't know why people suspend their normal beliefs about child welfare and the state's interest in children and adoption laws, which I do have big issues with those as well. But, but all of that's been suspended and now surrogacy is just property contract law. Mhmm. And so the woman signs away her rights to her own body. Often women sign away their right to, the the people who purchased her body have a right to tell her if and when she can have sex during the pregnancy, what she can eat during the pregnancy, where she can go during the pregnancy, what kind of prenatal care she has to submit to, what medical procedures she has to submit to. Obviously, the birth practices are dictated by the buyers. And then once the baby is born, she cannot renege on the contract. So in adoption law, an adoption is not a woman cannot sign adoption papers before the baby is born in in all fifty states in the United States. And a woman can always back out of the verbal agreement for adoption before be like, after she has the baby, if she falls in love with her baby. With surrogacy, a woman can't back out of the contract.
Speaker 1
Because it's seen as not hers. Right. With adoption, it is seen as hers but she's giving it up. Right? But this is from the get go, this lie that this baby is not hers.
Speaker 2
Exactly. Exactly. So when surrogacy commercial surrogacy first started in the United States in the in the nineteen eighties, they didn't the egg donation technology and vitro technology was not developed to the point where that was what was being used in surrogacy. So usually women, were impregnated with sperm from a man and it was their own egg, and the woman was carrying her genetic baby in the surrogacy contract. And then there was the case of Marybeth White Head, who was a surrogate mother who, bonded with her baby and did not wanna relinquish the baby to the couple that had contracted with her. And there was a big, there there was a really big legal, battle over it. And it's documented really well in that great book, Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism, which is really wonderful old book. And it's also documented in Beyond Conception. Those are two good radical feminist books that cover this. And so the courts ordered that, the courts decided that the the male and female parents had each made an equal contribution to the baby, that the baby belonged equal to the equally to both of them. So essentially, they were arguing that this guy jerking off and ejaculating in a cup was an equal contribution to this woman gestating a baby, making a baby, growing a baby, risking her life and and health to have this baby, and everything we know as mothers that goes into motherhood. And they said that those two contributions are equal legally. One cell. One cell.
Speaker 1
One cell versus a woman growing
Speaker 2
a baby. And ejaculation compared to childbirth. Wow. Right. Right. Not to mention the ten months of work that, you know, got you up to the point of giving birth.
Speaker 1
Right.
Speaker 2
It's so offensive to women and so incredibly dehumanizing to women and anti mother. Mhmm. But the courts, did give her partial custody of her child, but they gave primary custody to the man who tried to purchase the baby and his legal wife. And after the that Whitehead case, the Marybeth Whitehead case, people were spooked from surrogacy. And there was this big push to create what's called now gestational surrogacy, where families, people who wanna purchase a baby through surrogacy usually purchase an egg through the egg donation market, fertilize that either with sperm purchased on the sperm market or the, the sperm of that couple that's buying a baby. And then that fertilized egg is implanted into a separate woman who becomes the surrogate.
Speaker 1
Wow.
Speaker 2
And so because of that, because it's not her egg genetically, the woman just becomes an incubator and all of the mothering, like all the the physical labor that goes into making the baby is not considered, biological mothering. Right.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Every everything she eats, everything she drinks, the people she's around, her hormones, if she is out in nature, if she has a a inside job, if she gets in fights all the time and is high stress, I mean, every single aspect of what it takes to grow this baby is completely negated because now it's someone else's genetic material.
Speaker 2
Right. Right. And they're saying because it's someone else's genetic material, it's not her baby, which is so interesting because the opposite happens with when a woman purchases an egg from the human egg market and has has it fertilized outside of her body and implanted into her own body. She's the mother of that child, not the egg. You know what I mean? So it all gets down to who's paying. Exactly. Capitalism. It's pure patriarchal capitalism of who is paying. That's that's who owns the baby.
Speaker 1
I thought it was interesting in the in the article that that you participated in writing, which I'll make sure to share in the show notes of this episode, the discussion around how surrogacy is largely, black and brown women around the world and and poor, women around the world, and that those women, often, if they can, opt to have to incubate or mother, depending on which side we're gonna talk about this as, a baby of a different race to help assist in the, disassociation from the reality that they're growing their baby. Can you speak to that? Could you kinda summarize that a little bit? That really stood out to me.
Speaker 2
Well, there are different layers there. I mean, just economically, because we live in a white supremacist world, white people are more likely to have the money to to purchase a baby through surrogacy, and surrogates are more likely to be women of color. So part of it isn't even the choice of the woman who's being the surrogate. It's just who are the purchasers here. But, yes, they do everything they can. This industry does everything it can to further dissociate women from the process of of pregnancy and birth when when the woman is acting as a surrogate. And, there are, like, what amounts to industrial surrogacy farms in in Asia and in Eastern Europe where, where in Asia, especially where brown women, like women of color are being used as incubators for white babies. And this is just horrific. And the fact that any anyone with any kind of decent political analysis could could support this just blows my my mind. These women are being used as as incubators for, you know, especially thinking of that, of, like, these families are buying eggs from, off the egg market. Those are usually from working class, high IQ, accomplished white women. That's who's preyed upon in the in the egg market. Or, our women who are raised working class who don't have family capital to inherit, but who are they're white and they have high IQs and they're accomplished in sports or or academics or usually both. And, and they're tall and good looking, you know, usually, but, especially smart. That's what they want is white and smart on the egg market. So they purchase these eggs with white genetic material and then they implant them in the bodies of brown women to make white babies. That is so disgusting.
Speaker 1
So what about in Canada, it's the only country I know of, maybe there's others, where it's illegal to accept money for it. What what kind of do you say to that? Because there's still an exchange. There's always an exchange. Right? Why else would somebody do anything? And so what do you what do you kind of think about that when when it's not money specific?
Speaker 2
Well, that gets called altruistic surrogacy versus commercial surrogacy, But I have never seen a case of altruistic surrogacy where the woman choosing to be the surrogate wasn't getting something economically out of the arrangements, unless it's within families Mhmm. Where sometimes a sister will agree to to be a a surrogate. But even then, the the purchaser of the baby is, paying the legal fees. The lawyers are making a ton of money in those cases. So someone's always making money. Lawyers are always making money whether it's adoption or surrogacy. And
Speaker 1
So money is still sorry. I'm ignorant about this. So money is still very much involved in a, let's say, in a Canadian exchange of a baby or purchase of a baby even if the surrogate mother is not receiving dollars.
Speaker 2
Right. Right. Money is involved. The lawyers are getting money for sure. And then usually the woman's living expenses are covered during the course of the pregnancy and for some amount of time after the pregnancy. Her medical expenses are covered. And often within that, she's often getting more than what her baseline income would have been. So it's, you know, there is an economic incentive for most cases where altruistic surrogacy is happening.
Speaker 1
Okay. Interesting. Yeah. I think that was that was kind of one of the opening lines when Yolanda started to teach me about this couple years ago was, you know, to to understand the class, you know, the classist setup of this and that if you, you know she said something like, do you see rich white women being surrogates? I was like, oh, shit. You really don't. Okay. And that was kind of the first and that's, I guess, where I wanna go to next is, you know, that that it's obviously in this society build as the most selfless, loving thing a woman can do, a breeder can do, is give the gift of family, give the gift of parenthood, to someone who either is, believed to be unable or, or uninterested. So what what kind of do you do you have to say about that?
Speaker 2
Well, I think that female socialization and patriarchy is, just interminable lessons in self effacement and selflessness. Right. I think that, it's easy to prey on women for that. And we're taught that our worth is is comes from our ability to be selfless. Right? Like, that's that's how a woman is is worthy as to how how giving she is, how selfless she's willing to be. And I think we can't examine surrogacy without looking at female socialization to start with. And then I do think that in liberal circles, especially, women get a lot of social capital from being a surrogate for for gay men. We've seen that quite a bit that there's this, elevation socially and all of these props and and, like, just all of this this social congratulation energy that happens when a woman is willing to be selfless for gay men, when women are surrogate for gay men, which says a lot about, again, the the pecking order in our society and who's who's most important and even, you know, being a gay male doesn't mean you aren't in a higher place in the hierarchy, in of male supremacy over women. Gay men absolutely are above women in the hierarchy.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. There are men. Women are still
Speaker 2
serving them. Women are still it's like, oh, I'm gonna be selfless to these men.
Speaker 1
Mhmm. And the the entitlement of parenthood is so interesting. You know, the this concept of deserve and entitlement, which is, you know, totally, totally misplaced and and a very sensitive subject, right, because infertility is very painful, and I'm not trying to at all take away. And and I and I don't know what that's like. But the shift from, you know, discovering that a woman is infertile or two gay men who obviously cannot bear children, or a woman who doesn't want to have, carry their own child because they're an actress and they don't wanna put their body through that. You know, all of these are very, common scenarios in the states. And so that the solution is that they're entitled to buy a baby and rent a woman and buy a baby, because they deserve a child just like anyone else who can who can literally create a child, or naturally create a child is so, accepted. And like you just were speaking to, it's so revered. It's so it's so completely accepted that anyone who can afford it is entitled to parenthood. Yeah. It's just it just blows my mind.
Speaker 2
Right. Well, and surrogacy is being sold as cool right now. It's very much commodified cool and and as we see radical inclusion. Right? Exactly. Exactly. And that, commodified cool is is such an interesting phenomenon to watch of how easily people, especially liberal minded people who wanna be open minded and open hearted, how susceptible they are to neoliberal patriarchal advertising about this stuff. They'll they'll buy it as oh, that's cool. So I am I am into that.
Speaker 1
And that's exactly what we're talking about before we're recording, you know, I I fell for that. I I was absolutely that person, before it was really spelled out to me because until until the blinders came off and it was really explained to me, as a highly oppressive issue, I thought, yeah, you know, sure. It's just another way to include people. Let's let's, you know, put parents for everyone. You know, I just I hadn't ever given the criticism to it that it deserves, until I did. Right? And then and then thankfully, once it was spelled out to me, there's no going back. And and I guess that that's what's on my mind right now is how many birth workers and and women who believe they are pro choice, and doulas and midwives, you know, and women who who really believe that they're for women are completely behind surrogacy. So, what is the if we could kind of connect some dots for them, and I'm so grateful that that women in my life have connected the dots for me, you know, what let's do that. Let's connect those dots for for very, very good hearted, well intended women who are out there, you know, really believing that they are serving women and they are for women, and and haven't given surrogacy a critical thought. What would we say?
Speaker 2
Right. That's and that's a hard one because watching that is really fascinating seeing how many home birth and natural birth advocates are behind this and really think it's a great thing. I think that, there's this cultural belief that everyone has a right to have children and I would back up from that and say, as a midwife, I believe that, if at all possible, every baby has a right to a mother. More than every person has a right to be a parent.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
And I think that we have to be radically honest that in both surrogacy and adoption, something terribly tragic has happened to the baby. And and we have to keep talking about that, that we understand the importance of human bonding. We understand that pregnancy is a constant state of biochemical communication between the mother and the child. And the relationship between a mother and her child does not start at the moment of birth or when a baby gets placed in her arms by an adoption agency. The the relationship of mother and child is biological and starts when that when that embryo implants in the womb and it's continual from that moment forward. And and that has that primal relationship has been severed every single time a surrogacy is take is, surrogacy situation is taking place. And that's tragic. Mhmm. And And
Speaker 1
that's making the baby a product. It's so dehumanizing, and there's no regard, and your article gets into this. There's no regard for the wellness of mother baby or even just the baby. Like, even if someone can't wrap their head around how to care for a woman, even the baby that you're buying, you're not considering the the primal wound, the the inherent trauma, unavoidable. The baby doesn't know that it's going to a loving family that very much wants a baby. That's great for you guys. I'm sure that's true a lot of the time. But that has nothing to do with a newborn who's now just been removed abruptly from the only thing it's ever known from its home. Whether it's genetically the embryo or not, none of that matters to a baby.
Speaker 2
Right. Right. Yolanda is so good about explaining, you know, mothering like a mammal, and you would never see other mammalian species participating in any kind of practice like this. Do we sometimes see mammals take in another species when a tragedy has happened and the the mother of of of a newborn of a different species or even of the same species has been killed or injured, yes, that happens. We see cross species nursing. We see cross species mothering. But only only when a tragedy has happened and only when something else has broken that bond between the, the true mother of of that baby and and the baby. And in surrogacy, we're normalizing
Speaker 1
Yeah. We're doing it.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah. Mother infant separation. We are completely normalizing it. We're completely degrading and dehumanizing mothering, which you and I know is a physical process.
Speaker 1
Well, that that's kind of getting back to the birth worker piece. That's the part that's so hard for me to swallow and I can only, you know, I can I can only trust that it's because it hasn't been spelled out because these are women who serve women, who who say they're for women, who say that they sent her women, and yet are being supportive of one of the most disgusting and dangerous and harmful attacks on mother baby that literally exists in our culture? So, those can't happen at the same time. Right? You you we we have to wake up as birth workers, I mean, as women too, and as a whole culture and community and world, but but specifically, I know a lot of birth workers listen to this podcast and, you know, and and I'm really speaking to you right now. I think that's it's just something that that we really need to sit with and and and I think, you know, you touched on it earlier around this complicated path of how do we quote unquote support everyone and practice radical inclusion and still center women, and we actually don't. We can't do both. If we're talking about patriarchal systems that are meant to sabotage mother baby, you don't support and and, radically include, you know, those practices. And and I think it's very significant to say at this point, I should have said it at the top of the show, I don't know how you feel, but I do not blame surrogates. I have no, I have no judgment really in my heart towards a surrogate woman, mother, because our society has preyed on them. They have set us up to believe, like we spoke to earlier, that the the highest validation, that the way we can be held and revered, the highest in the society is to give, give away our baby, really, and whether you're accepting money for it or not, you know. And so, you benefit socially, undeniably, you know, surrogates benefit, by being and they're lifted, you know. And, I've I've read articles about, you probably know way more about this than I do, but the that there's a very high rate of regret and depression, with postpartum with women who who have who have sold their babies, but there's no space for them to talk about it. Right? Because they've just spent a year being revered, oh my God, and how many women say, oh my God, I could never do that, you're so amazing. Like, there's so much in that sentence alone. Well, yeah, why couldn't you do it? That's actually the piece we need to stay very connected to. And so, anyway, that that rambling was to say, you know, if you if you were a surrogate, or if you're considering it or whatever, you know, my our our conversation today is is not at all to attack you or target you. To me, it's actually much more about talking about the people who are asking you to be an incubator. Those are the people I have an issue with. Those are the people that I think we really need to to to, you know, highlight and and kind of come after on this subject. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2
No. Absolutely. And I think about it frequently of what would a Nordic model of surrogacy look like? And and I can't really get there. For those who aren't familiar with it, the Nordic model is, a model of addressing prostitution that that started in the Scandinavian countries and now is is happening more and more around the world where, the state and the system recognizes that impoverished people are sometimes placed in a position where they have nothing to sell but their body. But it simultaneously recognizes that it's it's always exploitive to buy another person's body. And so the Nordic model decriminalizes selling sex, but criminalizes purchasing sex. Right. Sometimes I think of that, like, put it in the hands of women. You know, I often when I'm when I'm talking to people who are really gung ho about surrogacy and very supportive of surrogacy, I often ask them how they feel about a woman purchasing sperm from a sperm bank. So there's no question of like father's rights legally, and inseminating herself and then selling the baby on Craigslist. Are they
Speaker 1
would be appalled. Right?
Speaker 2
They're they're all appalled by it. They're completely appalled by it. But why? How is that different? How is that any different? And, oh, that's that's horrific. Or if, you know, a woman just selling her her newborn, which is actually happening more and more around the world as trafficking is families sell girls all the time all over the all over the world.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Why is this different? And people say, oh, it's because it's the legal contract. Mhmm.
Speaker 1
It's protected within the system. There's some sort of loyalty that if it's contained in the system, then somebody has decided that it's okay and therefore it is.
Speaker 2
Right. There's a legal contract that happens before conception. Like, oh, what does that remind me of? Oh, that reminds me of the old patriarchal marriage game. Right? I mean, it's sort of like which babies are legitimate and which are illegitimate. And if a woman takes things into her own hands and creates a baby outside of legal contracts and patriarchal authority figures, that's illegitimate surrogacy. That's that's not that's not surrogacy. That's wrong. But if she, meets with the men in suits and signs the papers before anything is implanted in her body, Oh, that's that's beautiful. That's an act of love. That's that's something she can get paid for. And everybody celebrates it.
Speaker 1
Right. And that that's that's the line I think, you know, I really hope everyone walks away with. That this is the commodification of our bodies and our babies. It literally is that. It is buying our bodies, renting our bodies, and selling our babies. And so, you know, right there, like, women are not free until this stops. Women are not free until a lot of things stops, but this is one of those things. And we really need to remember that when we're when we're when we're holding the truth of female oppression around the world. And again, going going back to what we said at the beginning, remembering that the vast majority of women who are, being bought as incubators around the world are usually poor and black and brown.
Speaker 2
Right.
Speaker 1
That that is very, very relevant, to this conversation. And then I'd love for you also to give a little recap of of in the article, about, preying on military wives and and that whole piece in the states.
Speaker 2
Right. Isn't that that is so interesting. Yeah. Because
Speaker 1
I sent it to a bunch of my military wives friends and was like, you guys have to read this.
Speaker 2
Right. Well, military culture is is obviously, you know, in my opinion, a very exploitive culture of of working class people to begin with, where anyone who signs a contract to give the military ownership of their body, which is essentially what it is to become a soldier, is already in in a very compromised situation. And my critiques of the US military are are, of the ruling class people at the top, definitely not people who are enlisted into the military because that's the only way they can go to college or seal a job. So, so we're already dealing with working class people, and and the military doesn't pay families enough to survive on, at least not survive uncomfortably. And so these women, who are married to men in the military are preyed upon by the surrogacy industry. And they're often women who already have one or two children who they have to have a good track record as a breeder, which should be concerning to everybody looking into this. And, and there it's a way to make twenty five to forty thousand dollars for their family. And often that's gonna help them get out of debt, help them buy a house when they get out of the military. It seems it it's it's something that these women think is gonna help their family economically. And these are also women who are separated from their communities. The military moves families every two years. It's a very brutal system designed to destroy roots and connections where you belong to the military, you don't belong to any other community. And women don't have deep roots with other women in the military. That when they move to a new place, when there's, when their their husbands are are reassigned somewhere else, often the other wives will come in and help support them, but these aren't your friends you've had for fifteen years. This is a new group of women. So these are women without deep roots and without old friends near them to help advise them not to do this.
Speaker 1
So would you talk a little bit about the primal wound and the, you know, that whole?
Speaker 2
Right. The primal wound is, is a phrase that comes out of the adoption healing movement of of people who, adoptees who most of whom had been gaslit their entire childhood, some of whom hadn't even been told they were adopted, who felt overwhelming grief, despair, depression, and never knew what was going on and finally got together and started researching and consciousness raising and and creating a a body of of, literature and help around healing from adoption as an adoptee. And the primal wound means being separated from your mother. It means being taken from your mother and given to someone else to raise. And it's the, you know, primal wound. It's it is this, wounding that happens at the the moment of your entry into this world. And what we know about adoptees, even when we factor out when we look at at adoptees who were placed in, stable middle class families where the parents the adoptive parents stayed together, There was no known physical, sexual, or emotional abuse. Even among that group of adoptees, we know that there are three to four types more likely to kill themselves than people who were not adopted.
Speaker 1
Wow. Yeah. I remember reading something about it that part of the primal wound explanation was that when a when a baby is separated from the mother, that the mother and the baby read biologically read each other as dead. Right. Which when I heard that, I mean, I stopped in my tracks, you know, I never I've never forgotten that line, because of course it would. Right? Of course. If we look to nature, of course. Exactly. It doesn't matter what's happening. You know, it's just like disruption when a woman is having an amazing birth at home and then goes to the hospital and then boom, her labor stops. It doesn't matter that her neocortex can say, I'm okay, I'm at the hospital, this is where I chose to be and I'm safe here. Her primal brain is going, where the fuck are we? You know, who are these people? What are these lights? You know, you know, and so forth, you know, and it's it's a similar, you know, comparison that there's no it doesn't matter. Well, the baby can't do it anyway because it's a newborn, but even the surrogate mother, you know, maybe she can say I really wanted this woman to have this baby and and, you know, I'm I'm okay with this and all of that, but her physiology, her hormones, her her biology is not able to, just rebound like that with a with a piece of logic or a or a plan.
Speaker 2
No. No. We often see is surrogates, after they physically recovered from a birth where where the baby was sold to someone else, they wanna do it again. Like, there's this desire to do it again. And I I think of that as this recreation of trauma, like this, I'm gonna keep doing this so I don't have to deal with what I've done. Like, we see in a lot of trauma cycles. Mhmm.
Speaker 1
And I know women who have been surrogates who, they have they use the term keeper baby and they say, well, now I need to have a keeper baby, which is so gutting.
Speaker 2
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Have you not heard that?
Speaker 2
No. I haven't heard the phrase keeper baby before. I find it kind of appalling.
Speaker 1
No. It's totally appalling. It's so sad because all you you should keep all your babies.
Speaker 2
Right.
Speaker 1
Ideally. Yeah. In my when we had the big Facebook group, there were quite a few surrogates in the group, none of whom would ever be able to free birth, which I don't think they understood. And and thankfully, some women actually that I've been connected to since this whole project, were entering the process of surrogacy and upon, because of their desire to free birth, when they reviewed the contracts realizing that that would never happen in a million years, that was the the exit for them to realize how they would have no autonomy over their their themselves and their experience. And then I also know surrogate women that I've met in in in my life over the last many years, who, they they they have a a keeper baby first. Terrible term I know, but we'll just keep going with it, and they're in such debt from the hospital birth that they then have a Suro baby to pay for the first baby. I mean, it's so so tragic. Right. That these these are the these are the solutions available, you know, that that we can see at this point, you know, that these women can see.
Speaker 2
So many women in in the world have nothing to sell but their bodies. And we're just in a late stage capitalism is a horrible situation to be in. I think with surrogacy, like, so much going on in the west with neoliberal capitalism, this selling it as this empowering choice, this beautiful thing is that's where, that's the hardest part to tease apart is people are actually believing that and buying that. They can look at a surrogacy factory in in India and see the horror there, but it's like, oh, if the woman's freely choosing Exactly. To sell her body, then then it's it's this beautiful thing. It's like, no, as we've already discussed, no one freely chooses that. Rich women, women with options don't do this. Right. They don't do it. And, then it's it's really fascinating. So it's kinda funny.
Speaker 1
Always bring it to same with sex work, you know. People always bring it to, oh, well, I know one white woman of privilege who chooses sex work. Okay. You know one? Okay. Right. We don't even need to get into why she's choosing it, whatever, you know, but it gets painted. We're so there are so few people in the white privileged spaces who are sex workers or surrogates, you know, compared to the the entire global population of surrogates and sex workers that, you know, I constantly see people, to your point, or out of being an empowered choice, you know, bringing up these, like, one or two people that they've ever heard of as the example of why it's empowerment and not, not having even a a real ounce of of the grasp of the scope of what is happening globally. You know, not even to get into the incentives that would cause a privileged white woman to do sex work or surrogacy.
Speaker 2
You know?
Speaker 1
Mhmm. That's kind of irrelevant really.
Speaker 2
Yeah. I I heard Sherry Smiley talk a few years ago. She is an indigenous, activist who works fighting the the sex trade and, prostitution, especially is the way it price upon indigenous women. And someone from the audience asked her, what would you say to someone who says, you know, for some women, this is a choice and it's empowering. And Sherry Smiley didn't miss a beat. She said, she said, if you're in that one to five percent of women where this really is truly a choice, you truly have a free economic choice to participate in prostitution, I'm gonna say to you, make a better choice. Right. Because your decision to commodify it by your own body is hurting all women.
Speaker 1
Exactly. Right. It is all connected.
Speaker 2
Exactly. You know, we think of this with birth workers supporting this and how it really makes it impossible for us to we cannot simultaneously advocate for preserving the mother baby physical bond and say surrogacy is is a fine practice. You can't have it both ways. Right. You can't say there's something special or, timely important about birth and the mother's relationship to her baby and also say any, you know, any gay man can buy a baby and that's beautiful and great.
Speaker 1
Right. And then and then, you know, you see on social media the photos that literally make me cry. I mean, I have I've had to unfollow pretty much everybody because the photos celebrating the gay men buying the baby from the mother in the labor and delivery room, and you see the woman who just birthed sitting there without her baby. And these other two people, you know, crying and getting skin to skin with their baby, and it's just oh my god. I mean, those photos and how they're celebrated and how they're shared throughout the birth world
Speaker 2
Oh, it's horrific. Of all places. And frequently, it's like her it's her headless. Right. Bloody belly, crotch, and legs. You see that, like, that's that's the gateway to, like, then, oh, this crying couple of two men gooing and going over a baby and everyone in the room is crying. And there's this literally, like, decapitated Mhmm. Female body that's just been used to breathe this baby.
Speaker 1
Nameless, headless. Yeah.
Speaker 2
Totally.
Speaker 1
Stripped of all humanity and and identity. Absolutely. Yeah. And, exactly right. I mean, I'd say that's like the fundamental point of of why I wanted to do this episode is that you cannot actually say you're for women, say that you, are in love with birth and that you wanna help heal the planet through peaceful birth and mother baby and have any grasp of the significance of of normal, you know, biological, physiological birth and postpartum, you know, and what what violence begets violence and all like, the whole grasp of of why people think they're in the birth world, and then also, be sharing those surrogate, you know, photos on your social media. Like, nope. Absolutely not. And if you're, you know, and again, like, if you're feeling very triggered by this and this is very new to you, that's okay. I was you two years ago, you know, this this I only know this now because it was taught to me and that's why I'm sharing that with with you guys today, is because, I'm really grateful that women like Marylou here today and and, you know, Yolanda and some other women, in my life were willing to take the time and break this down, and are willing to stand in the fire of attacks and and, you know, just constant, adversarial, you know, energy everywhere by trying to to speak up for for women. Right? It's like Right. Right. We think we're all doing the same thing, but actually, yeah. This is a such a glowing topic of of that there is there's more to learn and it's really gutting and to feel that and to cry about it, and learn about it, and then and then take your stance on it. And I think that's where sorry, I I we can go back to this, but I think that's actually getting to the the point of why this is so hard for birth workers, is this confusing kind of, you know, very misogynistic, very, leftist, too sensitive, don't wanna hurt anyone's feelings, you know, kind of thing that we're in right now in in culture, that to stand against surrogacy would harm and be mean to women choosing to be surrogates. Or, you know, like we said earlier, kind of then points to that not every woman deserves to buy a baby. And, we're so afraid to hurt each other's feelings in this culture, that we're all silenced by it.
Speaker 2
Exactly. Exactly. I think that, you know, if we don't speak out against this and we don't stop this, anyone who's looking down the road of what's coming with with the climate catastrophe and and the collapse of of economic systems that's that's already happening in so many places in the world, If we don't stop this, the only economic choices our daughters are going to have are prostitution and surrogacy. Oh, God. Right? I mean, this is this is horrific that we're grooming the next generation to believe that selling their bodies is a viable economic option. And I just, you know, I just again wanna back it up. Like, anyone who supports this, I wanna really seriously challenge them of, like, how do they feel about a woman buying sperm at a sperm bank, inseminating herself, and selling the baby through her own channels, you know? And if they are opposed to that, then they cannot support surrogacy without being a hypocrite. Because there like I said before, there are no child welfare laws around surrogacy. Anyone with the money can buy a baby. You do not
Speaker 1
Even more supportive of that analogy than what's actually happening because at least the woman could still, in theory, on this made up analogy, you know, the woman could still birth the way she wanted. She'd be making all the choices. She would, of course, be probably doing it out of desperation and obviously lack of support and money and all that stuff, but even honestly that analogy is less offensive to me than the surrogacy farming factories and the, yeah, I mean the contracts of giving over your legal rights and all of that.
Speaker 2
Absolutely. Absolutely. There are no, you know, again, there are absolutely no, state child welfare requirements for purchasing a baby through surrogacy. This is completely different from adoption. This, you know, in adoption, say what you want about that industry. There are safeguards to try to prevent abusive people, mentally ill people, people who shouldn't who the state says should not be raising children from from engaging in adoption. You have to have home visits. You have to have social work visits. You have to have mental health assessments. With surrogacy, anyone with the money can buy a baby. Woah.
Speaker 1
Because because we see it culturally as it's their baby.
Speaker 2
It's their right to do it. And then, you know, we talked about the primal wound and what happens when an infant is separated from the mother and just the the horrible tragedy of that. But we don't even know what all of this reproductive technology is doing to our species. You know, even before we get to the birth, most surrogate situations these days are, a product of the of egg harvesting where even before before ovulation, a woman has has been given really strong chemicals to make her hyper ovulate, to make her produce Betty Boar eggs that she dorily would. Excuse me. And then then she goes through an operation where they're harvested from her body and just that word harvesting is so disgusting. Oh. And then those eggs are fertilized outside of her outside of a human body, like they're either put in a with sperm around them and the sperm swim to them. But more frequently, a sperm is, this tail is taken off the sperm, the head of the sperm is put in a micropipette and it's shoved into an egg. So there's no natural selection going on with the fertilization process. And then those embryos, those fertilized eggs grow into embryos outside of the human body for a few days before they're put into a human body. What does that do to a human to have that happen? Not to mention sometimes it's not just a few days, sometimes they're frozen for years.
Speaker 1
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2
And we're at the point in the progression of this technology that now there are women birthing children where the embryos were conceived before the mother birthing was conceived. Does that make sense? Like the a year old. Yeah. The embryos might be, like, thirty years old being put in a twenty five year old body.
Speaker 1
Woah.
Speaker 2
Right.
Speaker 1
Woah. Did you watch Handmaid's Tale?
Speaker 2
I read the book and I watched some of it, but I had to stop watching because I felt like they were eroticizing the rape scene.
Speaker 1
Same. Same. Yeah. I didn't get too far with it. But No. Pretty,
Speaker 2
Right now, we're gonna mark it on what is genius and we are living this, like, combination of the Oryx and Crake trilogy and Handmaid's Tale of all of this hyper technology and the patriarchy. Oh my gosh. That's so exciting.
Speaker 1
Okay. So anything else about I'm specifically thinking of that article because it just did such a good job of like boom boom boom boom, these are the these are all the kind of different puzzle pieces to consider of why we're against surrogacy. Is there anything else that we haven't covered that we need to touch on?
Speaker 2
There's you know, I I got into a heated discussion on Facebook with someone about surrogacy, and I think when we're talking about Handmaid's Tale, this discussion really reminded me of The Handmaid's Tale, where this midwife was explaining that, this surrogate birth that had happened was it was fine because this woman knew the family and she'd had, two other babies for them in the past and they she actually, like, lived in an apartment that they owned for a while, like, very close to them. She was like part of the family. And and I asked I asked her, this person who was pro surrogacy, do you really think that's a that's a beautiful thing that a wealthy family has a female servant that they love very much? And this person was advocating that it's a beautiful thing that a family knows their surrogate. They've been so kind to her. They've given her a place to live that's actually a part of their family manner. They feed her very well. They love her. And I said, you know, is that the world you wanna live in where rich families have a female servant that they treat very well who births their babies for them? Wow. And to me, that is The Handmaid's Tale. Mhmm. That's horrific. You watch The Handmaid's Tale the way it's, the way that TV show has been put together. One of the things they did really well was to show the primary schools with the little girls who are gonna be handmaids in them and how the implication is those girls won't resist. They know it's their it's their destiny to be a handmaid.
Speaker 1
That's how it is.
Speaker 2
Yeah. It's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1
It's Like, let's pivot to that for a second because we've already talked about the the woman who is, you know, being socialized and and bred, to think that this is a gift that you're giving, that it's reasonable compensation compensation given your lack of options, you know, whatever. We already kinda covered that, but now let's pivot to the women, you know, the the privileged women with money, who think it's ethically okay to ask a fellow woman, if she can use her body and then keep her baby. Right.
Speaker 2
It's, yeah, it's incomprehensible and I have to say I don't understand the grief of infertility, I've never wrestled with infertility myself, but I do know we live in a culture that doesn't address grief at all that we're we I think that if a woman who wants to have children is unable to have children, the proper response is to surround her with love and have a culture that that's, helps express and support the grief around that rather than trying to suppress that grief by thinking you can fix that by buying a baby.
Speaker 1
Right. Exactly. And it goes back to the entitlement. I just one of my friends just had a wonderful breakthrough because she's had five miscarriages. She very much wants a second child. She has a first child and, and continues to have losses. And she looked into surrogacy and very quickly, thank thankfully had the epiphany, what am I doing? Why do I feel entitled to a second child just because I want one? That doesn't mean I'm entitled to it. And, oh my god, I would be asking another woman,
Speaker 2
to to
Speaker 1
to let me buy her baby. And she just just because of her own, you know, inner wisdom or whatever, she came to this epiphany on her own and and put it to rest. But, you know, too too many women I know's credit who who have been unable to have, more children that they wanted or or no children at all, who have also not then said, I am entitled to a baby and I'm gonna go buy one. You know, they have dealt with the deep, deep, you know, I'm I'm sure unimaginable pain and grief of of not being able to call in life in the way or in the numbers that you want. And they dealt with it, you know, and they and they figured out how to navigate that for themselves without asking another woman, if she could rent her body. So I think that, like you said, we need to we need to participate in a society of women, supporting each other in our grief, in our processing, in our in our, you know, different therapies and and and community. And we cannot we cannot allow that infertile privileged women get to just be entitled to buy babies. And I think that's the final point I wanted to just rehash out again. I think what what what feels true for me is that this cognitive dissonance is happening because of an inherent belief that the baby isn't the incubators if it is someone else's egg. I think that that's what happens. Right? That's the separation. Oh, well, if this couple over here that wants a baby inject their DNA into this body, and the woman agrees and is well compensated, which, you know, there's no compensation that could that could psychologically match it. But, you know, that's where that separation happens. Right? Is this this willingness to believe that it's not actually the mother's, the woman who's carrying the baby. And and again, going back to the birth workers that we're speaking to today, if you are a birth worker, then you know, if you really sit with this, you actually know that a woman growing a baby is biologically minus the egg, you know, is in every other way, absolutely the the mother to this baby. And I think that's that's like the tilt, right, is people are are down with this because they're willing to believe the lie that it's not the surrogate's baby.
Speaker 2
Yes. I agree with that. And I think that that comes down to that very patriarchal belief that we talked at at the beginning of how, the sperm and the egg are equivalent, like, that that the person who contributes the genetic material is the is the parent. That's patriarchy, right? To say to say it's all about the genetics, it's not about the labor. And then that's the roots of capitalism of the it's all about who owns Mhmm. Means of production, not about the producers.
Speaker 1
But it is also it's her blood.
Speaker 2
Yes.
Speaker 1
Like, there's so much in that baby. It's her hormones. It was their placenta. Like, yeah. Okay. Genetically or DNA wise. Okay. But everything else that literally makes this human, all the other physical matter, is that woman's and came from that woman. It's so deeply painful.
Speaker 2
It is. And we're just we're such a dissociated society. And we're also a culture of no limits, you know, that we won't acknowledge biological limits, which is why we're in the environmental crisis. It, goes into the whole identity politics of it doesn't matter what your biology is. You can you can identify as whatever whatever you want. And then this whole idea of you can't accept the limits of of what your body has imposed upon you with fertility. You have a, supposedly have a right to to be a parent. Mhmm.
Speaker 1
Okay. Anything else that we didn't cover that we should before we close?
Speaker 2
Well, I hope it's okay to throw this in here because I think about this a lot as as a mom and a midwife and, now as a grandmother that when we use this term infertility, I just wanna unpack that a bit and say that, that often what we're dealing with in wealthy upper middle class and upper class women who are purchasing babies is not so much infertility as post fertility. These are women who've waited until they're forty to try to have a baby. In my opinion, that is not infertility, that's post fertility. And I would like as, you know, as ecologically minded people and biologically minded people to start opening that conversation too of, really getting away from this classist idea that, it's somehow, like, you know, low class to have your babies when you're fertile. Mhmm. Women are unquestionably best suited to have babies in their twenties and early thirties, you know, and that's that's the best time to start having babies if you wanna have babies. And if you've waited till you're forty five, you're not infertile. You're you're post fertility.
Speaker 1
That's such a good point. Yeah. Wow. Yep. That's a really good point. It's such a your language. Right? Language matters so much.
Speaker 2
So much.
Speaker 1
Yes. Thank you for bringing that up, and that's a that's a great note to close on. And like I said, I will include the article you you participated in in helping create, in the show notes, and, you know, if if there is anything else you think of that I should include when we release this episode. Yeah. And I'm I'm very open to hearing everyone's feedback, and wondering what this brings up for everybody, and and I just wanna reiterate this really deeply, truly, genuinely is not meant to shame, women who have have been surrogates, or maybe are right now. You know, we're we're we have to be able to separate ideology from the people involved in it. You know, we have to be able to talk about systems that oppress us, and that is not blaming the women who are part of those systems or who are the victims of those systems. Yeah. Anything else?
Speaker 2
And I think that's all great. As always, it's wonderful to talk to you, Emilee. Thanks for doing this this episode in particular.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Thank you. It was time. That's it for today, everyone. Join us next week for another episode of the free birth podcast. Thanks for joining us, and remember, your body, your choice. Lots of love.
