I came across an article recently that mentioned the organization Men Having Babies, which of course led me to exploring their website. I found they had a page on Advocating for Ethical Surrogacy Practices but quickly found some major problems. While I emailed them on April 7th to start a conversation, I haven’t heard back and I think it’s important to share this feedback more openly so all can be more aware of what’s out there. Keep in mind that I am LGBTQ+, a woman (I identify as genderqueer), and born through traditional surrogacy. This feedback applies far more broadly than just Men Having Babies but it’s the most recent example I found.
Inaccessible PDF
The PDF isn’t properly viewable on a mobile device and, at the end of the guidelines, there’s an option to download the PDF. However, you can’t download without signing up for an account for Scribd, including then starting a free trial that you’d then have to cancel.
To make it easier for everyone, I recreated the PDF and am sharing a copy of it below in its current format. You can download it directly without any need to sign up for any service.
Feedback form that’s closed
On the same guidelines, there’s a link to a form to leave feedback. This excited me to see at first until I found the form is closed to additional responses. Either remove this or open it back up again.
Limited to no consideration for the resulting child
With the more practical feedback out of the way, I encourage everyone to read through the guidelines (even just skim them) with a focus on the actual person who is born through surrogacy. What options are being given to them to get access to medical information? What options are being given to them to connect with any biological parents? What research is being advocated for around the impact of being born through surrogacy and their experience? What chance are they being given to know who they came from? What bridges are being built with those helping produce the person to prepare to connect with that same person later? What consideration is there for the “child” being an adult with questions, needs, or desires? Let’s take this for example:
Appropriate legislation should be enacted to protect the rights of all the parties in a surrogacy journey, and seamlessly terminate any parental rights and obligations of donors and surrogates.
What about the rights of the person born through surrogacy? If this is meant to advocate for ethical surrogacy, I also firmly believe all involved must be known, must be open to being contacted in the future, and prepared for a possible relationship with the resulting person born through surrogacy.
Meeting the child: Regardless of the nature of the relationship between the parties, agencies need to ensure that at the very least, the surrogate has the right to see and hold the child she carried after the delivery.
I cannot begin to underscore how low of a bar this is. Again, this is meant to be advocating for ethical surrogacy. Can’t we do better and ask for more? How does this benefit the child folks so desperately want to have? This is far too low of a bar.
What do you notice when you go through the PDF with the perspective of an adult born through surrogacy?
No surrogacy born people represented on their board
Check out their board. Not a single member was born through surrogacy or even born through any other mean as far as what’s reported. What might shift if they had better representation for the exact thing they say they are advocating for? What gaps might get filled? What experts might be consulted? What would shift about advocacy? Representation matters deeply and, as it stands right now, they don’t have full representation of those involved or, in my opinion, the most important representation.
Inspired by how much was missing in these guidelines and in all guidelines I’ve read around surrogacy, I have drafted a new framework: Ethical Framework: Rights of Individuals Born Through Traditional Surrogacy. Read it and let me know what you think. What am I missing?