I have an extremely erratic internet connection just now, so I guarantee you this will be short. That’s if I can get it posted at all. There’s a short story in today’s paper about Thai surrogacy–the fallout of the Baby Gamay story I already blogged about. The main point is that Thailand is not letting intended parents leave Thailand with the children Thai surrogates gave birth to at the moment. It’s a drastic remedy when you think about it. No question in my mind that Thai surrogacy needs reform, but keeping the children (and through the children, the intended parents) in Thailand hardly seems an answer. On the other hand, it surely a deterrent. Who would choose Thai surrogacy knowing that the risk was you’d be living in Thailand. (Nothing against Thailand–but if you didn’t plan to move there, it would be rather a complication.)
What really moved me to write, though, is the last sentence of the story in the Seattle Times. It is by Rod McGuirk who writes for AP. I cannot find a link to this anywhere–but as I say, my access if really spotty.
So here is what it says:
Scores of Australian biological parents are currently pregnant through surrogates in Thailand.
This, to my mind, is newspeak–the language of George Orwell’s 1984. There may be biological parents in Australia (though remember I prefer “genetic?”) But there is no way they are pregnant. And I haven’t the slightest idea what it means to be pregnant through another person. It is (to my mind) bad enough when a non-pregnant person with a pregnant partner says “we’re pregnant.”
Pregnancy is personal. The surrogates are pregnant. The providers of genetic material are not. It’s a terrible thing to twist language to suggest otherwise.
Gonna go now while the connection holds…..