Looking at
an article by Michael
Cook (editor of the bioethics
newsletter BioEdge and a columnist for Australasian Science) in The Age (19th July):
Please note: Words in
bold in the article are my own.
First the title- it’s a doozy - Marriage leads to children - gay marriage
leads to surrogacy - no proof of this just the author’s “opinion”
but its an attention grabbing headline isn’t it?
A TV show called The
New Normal will have its premiere on NBC in the US soon. It's about a gay
couple and the single mother they engage to have their baby.
"She's just like an easy-bake oven except with
no legal rights to the cupcake," the surrogate-mother broker tells Bryan
and David. This is a hard-nosed description of the woman's role in gay marriage
and child-rearing, but it sums it up accurately – does it? Or is it perhaps a T.V. show desperate for ratings and so
trying to be as sensationalist as possible – Do we know take grabs from T.V.
shows and use them as proof? Is this reasonable?
In heterosexual relationships, the birth rate rises
when couples are married. Hang on what are we saying here? That
people who marry have children, or people deciding to have children usually
marry (after all, that option is open to them). Both point to a rise in birth
rates but for different reasons. It is not the marriage act per se, but the
intention of the couple to remain together of which children and marriage are
subsequent results. One would expect similar dynamics to apply to same-sex
couples – in that if same sex couples could marry they would before they have
children but if they can’t they will have children anyway. For lesbian couples, this
is not a huge problem; all they need is a sperm donor. So then
allow lesbian couples to marry.
But male couples need surrogate mothers – ah lets poke a stick at homosexuals –
after all this is an easy target – gay men cannot bear their own children.
There are no official statistics, (so its all guesswork based on what the
author of this article wants to believe) but it appears gay couples account
for a substantial chunk of the overseas market (and that has nothing to do with marriage, does it). So will the
legalisation of same-sex marriage lead to even more surrogate mothers in India?
Wow,
here’s a long bow to draw. BioEdge, the bioethics newsletter I edit,
emailed IVF clinics in India and the US asking whether they were preparing for
a rising demand for surrogate mothers – science at its best.
The answer was a resounding yes. Our survey is far
from scientific, (so why use it, except of course it suits your argument) let
alone comprehensive, but it suggests that poor women in developing or
economically depressed countries will be recruited to service gay couples (no, it suggests you believe that this will
happen).
Dr Samit Sekhar, of the Kiran Infertility Centre, in
Hyderabad, also forecast an increase. He said a ''sizeable number'' of the
centre's clients were gay. ''We have seen an increase in the number of gay
couples and single men approaching our clinic as soon as legitimacy to their
public union is granted in their respective states or country."
There was one dissenting voice. A spokeswoman for Dr
Shivani Sachdev Gour, of Surrogacy Centre India, Megan Sainsbury, rebuked BioEdge
for its inquiry. "We are not preparing for an expansion of services for
gay couples. Why would you ask this?" However, most of the contented
parents featured on Sachdev Gour's blog last month are gay (so let us discount the one that disagrees and label them as biased).
A leading US infertility doctor, Jeffrey Steinberg,
who runs the Fertility Institutes in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, told BioEdge
he got a surge of inquiries whenever a jurisdiction legalised gay marriage
(doesn’t mean an increase in surrogacy,
only that now that is it legalised they can go through the normal channels).
At the moment he uses only carefully screened American surrogates, but he is
thinking of outsourcing their jobs to Mexico.
Supporters of same-sex marriage must recognise they
face a serious moral dilemma (nope, not
at all, the moral dilemma of surrogacy is not the debate about same sex
marriage). Cheap wombs might bring gay men the happiness of being
the father of a child of their own. But the cost of that happiness is often
borne by poor and uneducated women.
Just some
points. So lesbian marriage would be okay?
We ban all
same sex marriage to protect the wombs of women in India?
The
argument that same sex marriage should be legal has nothing to so with the
ethical dilemma of surrogacy – that is an entirely different issue that
involves couples, married or otherwise, same sex or otherwise.
This whole
article is nothing more than another attempt to drag unrelated ‘ethical’ issues
into the waters of the same sex debate merely to try and dirty those said
waters.
“Oh look
Momma, the same sex couples are all flying to India (well the male ones) to buy
surrogate mothers.
Perhaps the
real issue is the poverty in India and the working conditions that allows us
rich countries buy cheap goods (there is the real ethical dilemma). Which I
would have thought had very little to do with same sex marriage.
At least
this article was labelled opinion – I just think the label should have been a
lot bigger.
Read more of this article: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/marriage-leads-to-children--gay-marriage-leads-to-surrogacy-20120718-22aco.html#ixzz212Nf8Njx
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