Global Capitalism In Action

Although I disagree with one point in this, Suzanne Moore writes:

At the age of 21 Pattaramon Chanbua already has two children, aged six and three. She works on a food stall in a small seaside town south-east of Bangkok. It is an extremely hard existence.

When offered A$16,000 (£9,000) to become a surrogate mother for an Australian couple she saw a way out:

“The money that was offered was a lot for me. In my mind, with that money, one, we can educate my children; two, we can repay our debt.”

We only know about her because of a baby boy called Gammy, one of the twins she gave birth to seven months ago.

Gammy has Down’s syndrome and a congenital heart condition, and according to Chanbua, the Australian parents took Gammy’s twin sister but left him.

The outrage this has provoked has resulted in donations being made online to fund medical care for Gammy.

The couple in question deny this version of events, saying that the surrogacy agency – organised out of a house in Bangkok – only knew that there was a baby girl, and did not know she had a twin brother.

They have described the situation as “traumatising”. Indeed. For now, Chanbua and her mother are caring for the “unwanted” child.

All of this is heart-rending: fertility tourism at its worst. In countries where there is very little regulation I suspect there are a lot more stories like this.

Many couples travel to Thailand for IVF and surrogacy, which the Thai authorities are now saying is illegal but has clearly been thriving.

Surrogacy is a moral and legal minefield.

In the UK it is legal, but with the vague and strange proviso that no money other than “reasonable expenses” should pass hands, with an agreement drawn up by individuals. Rebekah Brooks had her baby this way.

Many European countries ban it outright, and in the US laws vary dramatically from state to state. California is known to be surrogate friendly, drawing up gestational contracts, regardless of a person’s marital status or sexual orientation.

These contracts establish the legal parentage prior to birth so that no adoption proceedings are necessary. This is the liberal ideology in full flow, with a baby as a consumer choice.

It appears to work well for various celebrities. Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick used surrogates, as did Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban. Kidman, in bizarre celeb speak, expressed her gratitude to “in particular our gestational carrier”.

Yes, that makes me queasy. A woman as mere gestational carrier: the renting of wombs. What is wrong with adoption?

Well, many couples become too old to be considered as adoptive parents, and others clearly want a genetic link to their desired baby.

Male gay couples need to hire surrogates – although, again, I would prefer that adoption was made easier for them.

For all the Californication of this complicated exchange, the case of Gammy highlights exactly what is wrong with the whole process.

The surrogate did not appear to understand the reality of what she was doing – she has said that the surrogacy agency suggested that “it would be a baby in a tube”; and that the parents were paying for a healthy child, not “damaged goods”.

One may argue that a woman has every right to do what she wants with her own body.

This is an argument that is regularly made about sex work but so often ignores the context in which women make those choices.

Thailand, which now has to be seen as cracking down on surrogacy arrangements and sex-selective IVF, is full of young women prepared to sell their bodies.

So is India, which is now emerging as the hub of fertility tourism. It is low cost there, and the packages which are offered include the fertility treatment, the surrogacy fee, the cost of delivery and the flights.

Poor Indian women will rent their wombs to richer, infertile couples. Go online now and you can look at the competitive prices.

This is global capitalism in action.

It is a twisted version of slavery, in which the bodies of impoverished women are disposable receptacles for the privileged.

Sure, I have read tabloid stories about happy surrogates: women who just love being pregnant and can’t wait to serve up a baby for a fee.

But little Gammy reminds us what this trade is really about: the actual value of the surrogate.

All of it is repulsive, and the reaction of those who have donated money to help this child tells us you do not have to give birth to a baby to want to care for it.

Trading wombs and babies on the free market devalues women. It devalues life.