Choice or Enslavement? Psychological Damage in Surrogacy

Emptied of political content and stripped from its social and economic context, ‘choice’ gets marketed as a kind of cartoon feminism.” (Freedman 1985-86).

The issues around choice in surrogacy agreements are fraught with disturbing disparities that encompass race, class, and gender. When we remove the political content, as well as the social and economic context in surrogacy, we can clearly see that myth and rhetoric are used by the powerholders. These lies are used to ensure the women are manipulated, coerced, and even trafficked to produce a pregnancy and baby. This promotion is done at the cost of women and children’s dignity, their humanity, their identity, and in some cases their lives. This article will provide definitive examples of how “choice” in surrogacy is impossible, in fact would be laughable, if wasn’t so insidiously malevolent. I cannot even begin to imagine the denial or desperation women must be facing to even consider prostituting their circulatory systems, livers, kidneys, uteri and brains.  (more...)

Choice or Enslavement? Psychological Damage in Surrogacy